Before you listen to "Acid Eater," you might want to gather a few fetish items; this experience is worth externalizing. Start with a surfboard, a spacesuit and a videocassette of Barbarella.
The world of "Acid Eater" was imagined by the refreshingly warped minds of Christine 23 Onna. This Osaka-based duo features Fusao Toda on electric guitar and Maso Yamazaki on drum programming, analog synthesizers and an echo machine. They refer to themselves as a "space mondo psychedelic group."
Toda is best-known for her work with the all-female psychedelic rock band Angel in Heavy Syrup, which has opened for such space-psychedelic heavyweights as Hawkwind and Gong. Yamazaki is a major figure in Japan's noise scene, and counts Beck and Sonic Youth among his many fans. He first became known around 1987 in Osaka, from where he built his reputation, as the one-man show of Masonna, a bizarre distillation of grind-core, death metal, '60s psychedelia and serious electronics. Starting in 1991, Masonna found its expression in intensely violent gigs during which Yamazaki invariably inflicted "damage to both equipment and flesh." Apparently, performances were regularly curtailed minutes after they began.