Crystal Rainbow Pyramid Under the Stars | Healing Crystals for Crystal Healing

Manufacturer: Important Records
Customer Rating:
List Price: $16.98
Sale Price: $11.15
Availibility: Usually ships in 24 hours
Free Shipping Available
Buy Now

Product Description

"God bless you AMT." -- Pitchfork

Brand new full-length album from Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso UFO features the recent addition of female vocalist Kitagawa Hao. Recorded over a period of four months at The Acid Mothers Temple, this is a very clean-sounding and polished AMT. Frontman Kawabata Makoto admitted, only half joking, that this has the "cleanest sound in AMT history!" More controlled than many of their speaker-destroying, fuzz-blasted speed-guru jams, Crystal Rainbow Pyramid is focused on mystic ambient passages leading into Makoto's head-heavy echo-riffs. Crystal Rainbow Pyramid is clearly one of the new classic AMT recordings. Prepare to have your mind blown slowly with evolving heavyweight jams and climactic peaks of exquisite ecstasy. Artwork by Seldon Hunt.

Product Details

No details are available for this product

Video Reviews

No video reviews found for this product.

Customer Reviews

Are You Kidding Me?

Review Date: August 8, 2007

Reviewer: Kevin Mclain,

This has to be the best AMT album in recent memory. What a psych-rock masterpiece. Highly recommended.

AMT continue their winning streak with another highlight

Review Date: October 15, 2007

Reviewer: D. Hamilton-Smith, Merrye Olde Engelond

`Crystal Rainbow Pyramid Under The Stars' is the newest release from the always prolific Japanese semi-commune known as Acid Mothers Temple. It professes to be the "cleanest sounding" album yet and, as far as I've heard, that's correct. `Crystal Rainbow...' has the most balanced production I've heard on any AMT record. For a start, the drums are easily picked out, which makes a huge difference. So often in the past they have been reduced to faint thumps and distant hi-hats, which lessened the hypnotic power of the band just a little. The instrumentation herein is just as multi-layered and rich as before, only this time everything is more clearly audible. Everything sounds big, nothing sounds cluttered. And though existing fans will already be used to the freewheeling confusion inherent in any AMT listening session, the stronger production can only be a plus.

And onto the songs themselves. The opener `[...] Head Man...' is a thoroughly wild, slightly atonal jam that lasts a little over seven minutes and sees the new vocalist Kitigawa marking her place inside the Acid Mothers whirlwind. It's a solid track, and the relatively short length works in its favour. The remaining hour of `Crystal Rainbow...' is a mellower affair. The (almost) title track is a lush, triplet-time groove that hits all the bases with aplomb. It's not only one of the best Acid Mothers songs around, it's also the one I would use as an introduction to the band. Its opening old-school riff is rooted in conventional stoner fayre, although it's liberally sprinkled with spacey madness for the entire duration. Already the album is shaping up to be a pretty damn good Acid Mothers record, but what follows propels `Crystal Rainbow Pyramid Under The Stars' into the higher echelons of the band's achievements. `Electric Psilocybin Flashback' is in their space-folk vein, but it's a 40 minute multi-part monster. A half-Eastern, half-Mediterranean guitar riff drones through the opening few minutes, leading into some sublime saxophone lead lines and beyond. Only in the last ten minutes does this track drag slightly, but that's only a minor quibble. It's easily one of the most expansive and interesting pieces they've put their collective name to, and rounds off an excellent record. Acid Mothers Temple show no sign of slowing down, and when their output is reliably this good, there's no need for them to.

Acid Mothers Temple - 'Crystal Rainbow Pyramid' (Importand Records) 4 1/2 stars

Review Date: May 25, 2009

Reviewer: Mike Reed, USA

This three track CD was pretty much what I had expected. It's been noted this title is one of AMT'S most polished recording to date. "Pussy Head Man From Outer Space" (7:42) is pretty much your usual Acid Mothers Temple wall of noise-space rock to emotionally absorb. "Crystal Rainbow Pyramid" (21:57) features some semi-mutated vocals as well as some hot female vocals from newest band entry Kitagawo Hao. Tune also features some echoing guitar riffs that fully allows the listener(s) to enjoy plenty of tripping bliss - to some, it might sort of sound like an undiscovered Hawkwind cut, from their 1972-73 era. Finally, "Electric Psilocybin "Flashback" (40:21) is a lengthy (you think?) FULL-throttled, all-out spaced out head spinning piece that'll give you more fuzz guitar than your brain will know what to do with. Entire disc appears to be focused on a 'mystic ambient' vibe. Get a copy now before it becomes out-of-print. Definitely recommended.

An acid trip, minus the acid.

Review Date: October 13, 2008

Reviewer: Alex TB,

I miss when all bands released albums every year or two, instead of leaving big four or five year gaps between albums. The wait isn't always worth it. Yeah, if the album ends up being excellent, then there is nothing to complain about, but back in the 60s and 70s, bands cranked out albums at breakneck paces, because it was their job and that's just what they did to put bread on the table. The industry has changed. Now, we often wait four years for an album that sucks. It really impresses me that bands like The Beatles and Led Zeppelin released one or two albums a year with such consistent quality. And I'll apologize, because mentioning the kitschy Japanese psychedelic band Acid Mothers Temple in the same paragraph as The Beatles or Led Zeppelin is a sin. But I'm a sinner. So are these guys. Gluttony. Lust. Pride maybe?

Acid Mothers Temple are a noise rock band that don't really make music with song structure. They mostly solo over sheets of hard noise and vintage space age sound effects. And the solos aren't that great. I'd call them trashy. But at the very least, Acid Mothers Temple know who they are, and they won't pretend to be anything else. They just aren't quite up with the times. Not that that's bad or anything. They are probably just completely stoned. I wish I could give them a time machine so they could go back in time and do damage three or four decades ago. I think they would enjoy that.

Crystal Rainbow Pyramid Under The Stars does not do anything different than the bands previous albums, but it arguably does them better, and it is much more well produced. The other Acid Mothers Temple albums sound extremely rough in terms of production, and Crystal Rainbow Pyramid smoothens things out a bit in that respect. The album consists of three songs that continuously get more progressive and impressive as they go along. The opening Pussy Head Man From Outer Space is reminiscent of Electric Love Machine from the bands most popular album, Univers Zen Ou De Zero a Zero, in that it is a short rocker with a mildly cognisible progression. It is the shortest song on the album, but that isn't saying a lot, because it clocks in at about 7:42. The albums self titled song comes next, and it is over twenty minutes. Which isn't that bad, really. It's a nice, slow, groovy song, and it changes things up a lot. But by this time, we start to ask ourselves if it is really necessary to have songs this long. These grooves could have lasted half as long and been just as effective, and the lengths feel like they were achieved for the sake of quantity.

Nothing says this more than the albums meatiest song, the final forty minute long epic Electric Psilocybin Flashback. It opens with an eastern guitar riff that reoccurs throughout the song in order to segment it, but really, it is a boring riff that sounds tired after one minute. The song doesn't really do anything new or exciting, bar some fun saxophone solos that drift in and out that could have probably been given their own song. In all honesty, this song is mediocre enough to be a b-side. And it's forty minutes long. Go figure. At the very least it will please AMT fans though, and if you enjoy noise rock, it will glide over your ears and have you grooving along for at least around fifteen minutes before it starts to piss you off.

I enjoy Acid Mothers Temple way more than any other noise act out there, and in that way this album was worth it to me. It isn't a huge accomplishment of 2007, but if you are even considering Acid Mothers Temple, you probably know what kind of music you are in for. If not, the best introduction is Univers. It is the best album, the most digestible and fun, and really, you don't need anything else. Crystal Rainbow Pyramid Under The Stars isn't even comparable to Univers, but it definitely isn't a failure. I like it. It's not great, but it's not bad. And I'd say it probably satisfied AMT themselves thoroughly, and that might be what matters most.