There are essentially two kinds of Acid Mothers Temple records. There are the hippy-jam ones and there are the transcend-the-hippy-jam ones. When they transcend, it is either through their use of humor and noise or through the sheer velocity of their playing. When they don't, they still make wicked soundtrack for latter day Deadheads.

The pairing of AMT (in this instance a quintet with Higashi Hiroshi on synth, Tsuyama Atsushi on bass and guiding force Kawabata Makoto on guitar) with guitarist Yamamato Seiichi could fall on either side of the freak fence. Yamamoto was an instrumental part of the bulk of the Boredoms' records, extended that pop mania with Omoida Hatoba, and found his own trip with Rovo, one of the few Japanese groups that can rival the AMT's capacity to induce trance. But the title of Giant Psychedelia suggests (as much as AMT titles ever do) the m.o. The two discs, recorded live in Nagoya on Dec. 8, 2007, are filled with bright, thick groove, which is to say, for better or worse, that the challenges they're all capable of producing aren't to be heard here. Instead, it's a brick of sound soaked in reverb and set a-quiver, with a pool of vocals Kuriyama Jun (of '60s rockers Ox) suspended somewhere in the middle. Yamamoto''s strong, clear guitar lines consistently dart through the electric haze, and if the music is more than a little familiar, it's played with gusto.