Acid Mothers Temple
October 25th, 2025
Metro Gallery
Baltimore, MD


Source: Tascam DR-40X (X/Y config) > Stereo image balanced and expanded > Tiny dash of EQ, mostly to tame room resonance around 400-500Hz and shrill harmonics at 5KHz > Little pinch of limiting > Gentle sprinkle of tags + ReplayGain info > Tender application of 16/44.1 conversion with dither and SoX resampling

SOUND QUALITY: A- [I'd like a little less room acoustics. I'd like a little bit more spatial definition in the mix. I'd like a little more low end, I'd like a little bit better-defined high end, and as long as we're talking druthers, I'd like a pocket-sized immortal unicorn that shits not just rainbows and gold, but any and every substance I could ask for, up to and including authentic paper money or complex mechanical constructions such as integrated circuits or entire circuit boards, on demand. Defecation isn't mandatory, as long as the substances are readily produced in some fashion. In fact, it doesn't even have to be a unicorn - pretty much any animal in an immortal form would suit the desire, though I'm not much of a cat person if I'm to be honest. It's not that I dislike them - I could almost certainly form a perfectly-copacetic bond with a pet cat, especially if it were immortal - but there's a certain slack-jawed foaming camaraderie amongst cat-owners and their fawning enablers that I've never really been able to get behind. I'm not saying that all cat pictures are absolute wastes of time, but there've been like ten or so good ones. Where was I - oh, yeah, the sound quality exists and I think I gave it an A-minus, probably. There's things that could be better about it, but, you know...]

THE BAND:
Kawabata Makoto : guitar, speed guru
Higashi Hiroshi : synthesizer, fishin’god
Jyonson Tsu : voice, guitar, bouzouki, midnight whistler
Sawano Shozo : bass, hex man
Satoshima Nani : drums, another dimension

SPECIAL GUEST:
Cotton Casino : synthesizer, vocals, good behavior

NO LONGER WITH THE BAND BUT WE WON'T FORGET THEM:
Shimura Koji : drums, latino cool
Tsuyama Atsushi : monster bass, voice, cosmic joker
Tabata Mitasuru : guitar, guitar-synthesizer, maratab
S/T : bass, space & time

TRACK LIST:
01. Blue Velvet Blues [10:12] >
02. Santa Maria [8:56] >
03. La Novia [15:44]
04. In A Not C Session [10:48] >
05. Flying Teapot [5:52] >
06. OM Riff From The Melting Paraiso UFO [6:06] >
07. Interstellar Overpop [7:49] >
08. Pink Lady Lemonade [11:26] >
09. Dark Star Blues > Speed Guru [15:00]

Note 1: Many an eternitywhiffon was spent in frenzied internal debate over where to drop the track split for La Novia. All "official" La Novias from 2024 and 2025 available on the band's Bandcamp page start with the quiet bit (6:20 of this track). I could entertain an argument that 0:00 > 6:20 of this track is an outro jam of Santa Maria, or even an argument that this is an attempt at Black Summer Song that doesn't quite become Black Summer Song (see https://acidmotherstemple.bandcamp.com/album/made-in-london for an example of Black Summer Song actually becoming Black Summer Song). Entertaining arguments, however, is not synonymous with accepting them in their entirety, or even in their partialities. Kawabata is doing some La Novia stuff here (most evident at 2:38 on), so La Novia it is.

Note 2: This is the first Acid Mothers show I've personally witnessed since 2008 which did not conclude with that legendary warhorse of warhorses, Cometary Orbital Drive. A child born while those notes first drifted out of a Pink Lady Lemonade improv in San Francisco (if my memory of Kawabata's retelling is correct) would, in many jurisdictions, be eagerly anticipating its first car.


SHOW NOTES:
Another great show at the Metro. Now, granted, any show at the Metro where I don't get locked out of the parking garage is a winner in my book, but this one is excellent on its own merits.

Kawabata mentions in his blog entry that he was in a lot of pain tonight (any whole-spine donors are encouraged to get in touch, as well as surgeons capable of whole-spine transplants), and ignored his reverb to focus on wah and fuzz. The result is some really fiery fretwork throughout which, in this humble notewriter's opinion, really kicks this show into the upper echelon of Acid Mothers experiences. Really nice delay work leading off In A Not C which brings to mind the little improvisations Zappa performed between Jones Crusher and My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama for a couple weeks in January/February 1977 (listen to "Leather Goods" for an officially-released example).

The entire show was gifted with a fully-authentic psychedelic oil-and-paint light show by the immensely-gifted Tree Sap Lights, who also donated a small corner of an elevated table as a secure surface for the DR-40X to rest upon. Mr. Tree Sap Lights can be heard being congratulated on his beautiful lightwork at the very end of the recording.

Unfortunately, due to the mixing console's temperamental reputation, there is no soundboard recording for tonight.


BAND PAGE:
http://www.acidmothers.com

KAWABATA'S ROAD BLOG:
https://ameblo.jp/speedguru/

KAWABATA'S ROAD BLOG ENTRY FOR THIS SHOW:
https://ameblo.jp/speedguru/entry-12941231782.html

TREE SAP LIGHTS:
https://www.instagram.com/tree_sap_light_show_/


REQUESTS & REMINDERS:
Do not sell this recording. Do not buy this recording. Do not sell this recording, then buy it from yourself. The animal could, in fact, be slightly larger than pocket-sized, though I would prefer to keep the overall size small enough to fit in an overhead compartment - not that putting it in overhead compartments is a central plan of mine, but it's a decently-intelligible frame of reference. Frankly, size is probably lowest-priority of the qualities I'm looking for in this magical and quite possibly mystical creature, at least to a certain extent, as space as somewhat finite in the context of earth-bound matters such as circuit-board-defecating possible-though-not-mandatory-equidae, but as long as these qualities exist within the hypothetical of my overall druthers, encompassing desires both small (such as ideal sound quality) and great, it does still deserve to be mentioned, as one of the aforementioned druthers I'd so very much like to have.


CREDITS:
Metro Galaxians - Merry Gaiety

Torrented by the taper: ZaPenguin (zappa.penguin@gmail.com)