Acid Mothers Temple

As befits the band name chosen by founder and guitarist Kawabata Makoto, the ways of Acid Mothers Temple are as mysterious and profound as that of a shadowy religious sect. Even the Japanese group’s title and membership can be murky, with the original moniker of Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso U.F.O.—also the name of the band’s first album in 1996—giving way to a fluctuating variety of parallel guises and offshoots. If there’s a constant element, it is Makoto’s eagerness to revisit the furthest extremes of '60s psychedelia and '70s experimental rock and jazz in freewheeling, expansive music that alternates between serene and ferocious. On albums such as 2002’s Electric Heavyland and 2012’s Son of a Bitches Brew, Makoto and his bandmates fearlessly set the controls for the heart of the sun and reach the same astral plane occupied by heroes like Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, and Captain Beefheart.