Kinski

The Seattle quartet Kinski has friends in high places. Not just any American band can pluck a legend like Acid Mothers Temple main man Kawabata Makoto to join it on tour and lend guitar supernovas to its outward-bound instrumental rock. Opening the tour in Seattle on July 31, this Japanese-American alliance elicited both the roar of asteroid belts and the tender translucence of Sterling Morrison's six-string serenade in Velvet Underground's "Pale Blue Eyes." Makoto -- who plays a comically small guitar with no headstock -- strokes out chords as unruly as his flowing mass of curly locks. When the whim strikes, he scrapes a screwdriver over his strings to conjure ghostly tones that add otherworldly shading to Kinski's tumultuous rock. This is music of the spheres -- with acid afterburners.