Acid Mothers Gong - Live in Nagoya (Vivo CD)

As the name suggests, Acid Mothers Gong is the inevitable meeting between krautrock kingpins Gong and present-day torchbearers Acid Mothers Temple. Daevid Allen, Gilli Smyth and Josh Pollock make up the Gong side whereas this particular Acid Mothers Temple configuration is Kawabata Makoto, Higashi Hiroshi, Tsuyama Atsushi and Yoshida Tatsuya, which I believe falls somewhere in between the lineups of the Cosmic Infero and the Melting Paraiso U.F.O.. The meeting of these two goliaths came to fruition at a show in 2003 and these are the resuts - an hour plus psychedelic blow-out of epic proportions. Hey, it's not every show you get to perform with your idols (or is it? An Acid Mothers Gong "Live in Tokyo" disc is scheduled to follow), so AMT were going to have to make the best of it...which they did. The Acid Mothers leave behind the heaviness of their more recent releases ("Starless and Bible Black Sabbath", "Anthem of the Space", etc) and set the controls for the heart of the milky way with smooth, free-flowing jamming not unlike early Gong records. When two bands understand eachother as well as these two do, perfect synchronization doesn't seem to be a challenge. The first four tracks average fifteen minutes apiece, the last of which is "Lady Lemonade", a variation on an Acid Mothers staple. All four start out slow and pick up a full head of a steam before coming to a riotous conclusion. The final three cuts are shorter with even more breathless freakouts, as if the band are cramming those same fifteen minutes of jamming into a much tighter space. If your CD shelf is already overflowing with Acid Mothers Temple releases you can maybe afford to let this one go, but for the unitiated or those curious to check out what a combination of these two bands on the same stage can offer, it comes highly recommended.