f you like deafening sirens, whisper-laughing in another language, and a continuously panning rhythm section, you’ll love this release by the Acid Mothers Temple. If these things bother you, or don’t seem like music at all to you, steer clear. You see, from the album’s opener, “I am St. Captain Freakout” to the thirteen minutes of “Sweet Lucille,” this album is screeches (screeches that have little in the way of energy, in my opinion), endless and worthless guitar solos, and jokey spoken vocals.

There’s nothing particularly innovative about the Mothers, at least as far as this recording is concerned. When I picked this up, I figured it would be something like the Boredoms, or if not as mind-bogglingly explosive, at least have some bombast. There is no bombast. It is seventy minutes of your hippie neighbor down the hall soloing on a guitar, but playing the same thing over and over. How about this- you know the part in those psychedelic songs where you think, "this has gone on for about three minutes too long?", multiply that realization by seventy minutes and you get St. Captain Freakout and the Magic Bamboo Request.

And there’s another problem, you see, the "freakout" part of this album’s title is inaccurate. I seriously doubt that anybody who was truly "freaking out" would be able to make this kind of dull, repetitive music, let alone listen to it. I would imagine one that was "freaking out" would rather be listening to Napalm Death and smashing their mother’s couch up with a baseball bat than sitting and listening to this album (which was clearly designed for close listening, with all of the panning and effects).

The album isn’t all awful, though. “Cosmic Magic of Love Pt. 1” is very much like the Shins' “New Slang,” only instead of invoking childhood memories it invokes Mercer and co. and instead of being New Mexican they are Japanese. And instead of playing the whole song they just play the first part over and over. And instead of the cool, cryptic lyrics we get unsatisfying, cryptic whistles. The one interesting thing about the song is that it is phrased slightly differently; it feels like a showtune with the hurried conclusion of the verse.

If this is one of those albums that drugs can help, you will need a lot of them. And if you are under the influence of that many drugs, why not go hang out in a supermarket, rather than blow the money on this CD? I’ll bet you anything the produce aisle will seem more exciting than ever.