So, first off: anyone hoping for a direct sequel to the herculean noise-rock edifice of Mainliner’s rightly revered ‘Mellow Out’ (1996) will be setting themselves up for an instant disappointment with this one. Not that ‘Revelation Space’ is a disappointing record in and of itself – far from it. But enjoyment of it hinges upon the realisation that Mainliner 2013 is a very different beast from Mainliner 199X… and an understanding that the fact it’s credited on the sleeve to “Kawabata Makoto’s Mainliner” is no accident.

Much as I love Kawabata (and I love him lots), I often get a bit frustrated with projects that see him collaborating with players outside his usual Acid Mothers Temple orbit, simply because of the extent to which his 24/7 maniac guitar skree and maximalist production aesthetic tends to completely dominate any given recording, burying the contribution of whoever’s gallantly trying to interact with him beneath a storm of mentalist cosmic goo.

One of the things that makes ‘Mellow Out’ such a classic within its field is the fact that bassist/bellower Nanjo Asahito and drummer Koizumi Hajime were tough enough bastards to compete with Kawabata’s maelstrom, leading to the creation of a more genuine (if admittedly insane) group dynamic. Such is sadly not the case with ‘Revelation Space’, as the replacement of Asahito with Bo Ningen frontman Kawabe Taigen shifts the power balance, allowing Kawabata to dominate completely, his never-ending mega-shred standing way out front in the mix, with bass & drums sounding distant and confused, only occasionally managing to hear each other well enough to lock down the kind of groove a band like this needs to properly raise its sails, whilst Taigen’s rather fey unearthly wailing often sounds more like a guy holding his hands over his ears than a mighty warrior screaming into the galactic void.

If we put expectations aside and accept ‘Revelation Space’ purely as a Kawabata Makoto album though, it’s actually pretty good - the best blast I’ve heard from the guy in an age, in fact. Imagine an AMT album with all of their kitschy psyche trappings, prog meanderings and wibbly-wobbly synths stripped away, zeroing straight-in on the bullseye of feedback-belching, diesel-huffing formless biker-rock delirium; Blue Cheer fed through an alien mincer-ray, magnified through moon-sized compound-eye mega-amps, and all that stuff we know Kawabata can knock out before breakfast. That’s what you get here, pretty much, only spiced up with some sequences of startlingly vicious free-improv playing that really push things beyond the stoner-rock comfort zone. I swear, some bits of this sound like Derek Bailey playing through Bardo Pond’s pedal boards, or Michael Karoli completely losing his shit during a heavily medicated Can session that they all decided they’d rather forget the next morning… and it would be pretty churlish of us freak-rock fans to complain when that sort of grub’s on the table, let’s face it.

Listen & buy via Riot Season’s Bandcamp.

Labels: best of 2013, Kawabata Makoto, Mainliner