Released five years after its recording,
Not One Star Will Stand the Night makes for an intriguing document of various
Acid Mothers Temple personages in a studio encounter with musician/writer David Keenan. Keenan's days leading the
Telstar Ponies were starting to wrap up but his impulses for psych- and Krautrock-related efforts were already clear, so it's no surprise that such a collaboration, done at the time of
Acid Mothers' first U.K. tour, would occur. Certainly Kawabata Makoto is never averse to working with other musicians, and this particular set of two extended improvisations is fine enough. That said, it's more accurate to call this enjoyable rather than revelatory -- it has so much of what can be called Makoto's standard warm sound with the occasional tweak that it fits perhaps too readily into the slew of other work he's done over time. Admittedly part of that was by intent -- while engineer Toby Hrycek-Robinson has his credentials from work with
Stockhausen and
Derek Bailey, among others, this could just as easily be a Makoto self-production thanks to his work mixing it. That caveat noted, it's still a fine record for what it is, the four performers -- Cotton Casino and original
Acid Mothers drummer Koizumi Hajime make up the quartet's population -- creating first a more noisily intense and then a more relaxed effort. The interplay of Keenan and Makoto's guitars on the second song, "Our God Is a Mighty Fortress," is perhaps the best work on the album, allowing both texture and a steady, understated rhythm chug to shape the song. Opening number "We Are for the Dark" is, in contrast, a touch more psych/noise by rote but does have the occasional wordless swoops of Casino to recommend it, flitting in and out of the mix like a disembodied spirit. ~ Ned Raggett