Q020:
Acid Mothers Temple have been playing for 5 years now. Do you regard this as your most central project? I ask this because you continue to make music with a range of collaborators in different 'side-projects'. You also have had a very rich musical history to draw experience from. Has AMT therefore come to be the closest to your vision of 'absolute music' or is it that the philosophy of the band best captures your own personal philosophy?
A020:
I think of my work as existing in two broad areas. The first is solo stuff like the guitar improvs or INUI, the second is AMT. It's fair to say that AMT exists for me as a kind of ideal rock band. So, there's no sense in which I apply my own musical limitations to the group. If there is any concept behind the group it's more like trying to revive the power that rock once possessed. All we want to do is play music that rocks and is cool.
I think that rock is different from all other musics because it's impossible to classify it into a simple musical genre. Rock is a way of life, a belief, a way of thinking. In that sense AMT is my ideal group because it's a gathering together of people who share the same values and beliefs.
All the music I play is an attempt to recreate the sounds I hear from the cosmos (by which I DON'T mean God), but with AMT there's something more - some kind of special power that always exists in the group itself. Everything, from our own limitations to everything beyond them, gets pulled along by this power. But I have no idea what this power is.