Are We Experimental?

Japanese psychedelic warriors Acid Mothers Temple are as hellbent on blowing your mind as ever on Are We Experimental?, an album whose title becomes a rhetorical question from the very first track, which sounds roughly akin to throwing Jimi Hendrix and Thurston Moore's guitars up against a high-voltage electric fence. At various points in the past, AMT have straddled the line between the tuneful and the tonally ambiguous, but this one really separates the day-trippers from the true sonic assassins. Even the most conventionally structured moments on Are We Experimental? are miles further out than the most outre offering of space-rock godheads like Gong or Hawkwind (who seem to be touchstones for the Temple's work). Wild blasts of synthesizer bounce back and forth across your cranium while acid-baked layers of guitar methodically melt your brain straight down the middle amid the occasional effects-laden vocal chants and murmurs -- this might be what Sun Ra and his Arkestra would have sounded like if they'd decided to go the psychedelic route back in the late ‘60s. Does one really need a more elaborate enticement than that?