Acid Mothers Temple

The venue (?) La Casa, run by Milan's Arci, is apparently a really great spot; it almost feels like New York's Village Vanguard. One catch: instead of going down, you have to climb the stairs to see the show. The space is intimate, with a few small tables and a bar counter that couldn't be any smaller… in short, very "cool". First impression, purely aesthetic: 8+.

Let's talk about the music. At 10:30pm Jennifer Gentle (two guitars, bass, drums and the usual sampler) take the stage and, for about 35 minutes, entertain the ravenous crowd with a splendid suite that, to give you an idea, echoes Goodspeed You! Black Emperor, Cul De Sac and, faintly, Sigur Ros (in the brief vocal passage at the start). Fairly original and technically proficient, the five guys from Padua show a solid knowledge of rock and excellent taste in arrangements. If I really had to pin down their genre, I'd call it "psychedelic rock". Definitely a band to keep an eye on.

Great. The support act's performance comes to an end, and the "big guns" take the stage.

After a bit of commotion setting up their gear due to the cramped space, the five Japanese musicians take the stage and launch into what would turn out to be an unforgettable show.

After a sampler intro that reveals Acid Mother Temple's love for Daevid Allen, the band led by Kawabata Makoto (frontman and guitarist) first bursts in with an aggressive sound underscored by the pyrotechnic runs of bassist Tsuyama Atsushi (a virtuoso wielding a Gibson "SG" bass with only three strings!), before giving itself over to a choral psychedelic noise that tears through the eardrums and minds of the stunned onlookers.

The volume is cranked to the max and the sheer power feels like watching a bombing raid.

The five excellent musicians are true stage animals, thrashing about as if seized by convulsions, in perfect "rock" fashion.

The first "track" ends and they move on to the second: pure no wave. You half expect the spirit of Arto Lindsay to come pouring out of Makoto's guitar!

Makoto, visibly irritated, starts to signal that something is going wrong… He lunges at the microphone to counter Atsushi's "singing" (howling?) but, before finishing the verse, smashes (quite literally!) the equipment on the floor. The track keeps going at full throttle: it's a rising climax that sends the tension through the roof.

I'm sure that anyone lucky enough to have witnessed Hendrix live felt something very similar to what tonight's audience felt, standing there seemingly in a trance while these five Japanese musicians filled Via Ripamonti with that violence only rock can generate.

About halfway through the fourth track, though, disaster strikes: blackout.

A blackout that was no accident, as it later emerged that the venue manager, before the band began their performance, had warned the organizer that if the five "monsters" overdid it with the volume, he would "pull the plug" on them.

Well, I can assure you that for me (and for everyone else, I'm sure!) it amounted to a genuine act of musical euthanasia.

The five musicians, seething with rage, hurl their instruments to the ground and storm off stage. It's over. What a disgrace!

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