酸母寺精选

评语：The most recent (as of this writing) AMT release has a title that refers to Captain Beefheart, which provides even more of an explanation for just what this band is. AMT would never be confused for channeling Howlin’ Wolf, but their balance of chaos and control, exacting detail and cosmic sweep, shares values with Beefheart—and there’s some impressive homages to Gary Lucas on here. Another piece in the AMT puzzle, but the puzzle has no borders so keep your ears open for more to come.

评语：AMT toured South America in 2017, and in Argentina they took the time to perform and record with the great experimental band Reynols. That produced two fantastic studio albums; heavily improvised and full of softer and calmer explorations from the band, but no less deep nor cosmic.

评语：Add in the hardcore/punk drummer and violinist SSW Opera and you get AMT at an absolute thrashing peak. Heavy, but with sonic fury rather than psychic weight.

评语：Yes, AMT playing Terry Riley’s In C! Live! On radio station WFMU in 2002! Yes, In C is here in fragments, but the band isn’t so much playing through the entire piece as starting with it and then launching off into somewhere not previously imagined. That this was even done is remarkable.

评语：AMT album titles often have a pun that refers to something else: Another record, a book, a movie. They don’t seem to mean anything; they’re just part of the free cosmic attitude that makes records like this possible. It’s like three different bands marching into the studio while playing, colliding with each other, and saying, “What the hell, keep going!”

评语：Is there such a thing as outsider funk? It’s like the band read about funk and heard a couple songs on AM radio and decided, “We can do that too.” And they can, in their inimitable style, which means layering a free, psychedelic piano solo over an almost psychotically obsessive guitar riff.

评语：This is another set of late ‘90s cassette recordings reissued digitally in 2023. Trippy, yes, but also, to borrow a phrase from another notable Japanese band, heavier than a death in the family. Extremely dense and often threatening, like Blue Cheer without the, er, cheer, there’s a kind of honesty in these tracks, a recognition that not all altered states are enjoyable.

评语：AMT’s psychedelia is a potent, sensual experience in itself, which can obscure what’s going on at a fundamental level. What this album shows is that, at their core, AMT are one hellacious band. Stripped down to Kawabata accompanied by synthesizer, bass, and drums, this is tremendous rock playing, with heavy riffs and exalted, intense soloing that approaches the limits of musical expression.

评语：Every cosmic journey begins with a single step. The first AMT studio album is the kind of step perhaps only Kawabata could make, an immediate immersion into a lo-fi world of flowers, paisley, and go-go boots—and that’s just this one track. The AMT vision of collapsing multiple cultural eras into one is there from the start.

评语：The closest AMT has gotten to being a conventional outfit is through the song “Pink Lady Lemonade,” recorded during their first two years of existence. It runs like a thread through their discography, appearing on studio releases here, live recordings there. In its own way, the song is AMT’s Grateful Dead track, something from which listeners can divine slight changes in manner and mood as the contexts shift through the years. This album brings together three versions recorded from 1996 to 2019.