Acid Mothers Temple and Tjutjuna at The Drunken Unicorn, Atlanta

Bring earplugs.  

Last night, Japan's Acid Mothers Temple performed at Atlanta's Drunken Unicorn, and man, were they loud.  My ears are still ringing.

Denver's Tjutjuna (the "t's" are silent) opened.

I forgot to bring my camera, so all that I have to show are my crappy cell-phone pics.  

Tjutjuna are an experimental, instrumental psych-rock band.  They made good use of a theremin, and it's not too many quartets that you see that have two drummers - fully half the band were drummers.  Although the twin drums provided a propulsive rhythm, the first 30 minutes of their set was marred by the mix which drowned the guitar behind the rhythm section.  It wasn't until guitarist Brian Marcus finally plugged his guitar into another amp that it could be heard over the house PA system, which improved things considerably.  Here's a sample from their first album, Fire Talk.

As noted above, headliners Acid Mothers Temple were loud.  In all, they played a full, 90-minute set and although they didn't play an encore, I don't think anybody left feeling anything less than satisfied.

They sound as though they're influenced by You-era Gong and early psychedelic pioneers Hawkind (am I the sole surviving Hawkwind fan?),  which aren't bad influences at all.  Their typical approach to songs involves repetition and improvisation, with a riff repeated over and over again, each time with added intensity, until it gets so heavy that it would threaten to collapse under its own weight, and then repeated some more until it finally does collapse, and then repeated yet still more until it rises from its own ashes and is carried off into the stratosphere by the band.  To give you a better idea of what I'm talking about, here's the complete April 19 Acid Mothers Temple concert at the Mercury Lounge in New York, as recorded by NYC Taper: