Buck-Tick Zone

1991

The next album, Kurutta Taiyo was released on February 21 and saw Hisashi embrace more experimentation with sound by using MIDI and again bowing the guitar. The first single off the album was called "Speed" and released on January 21. Atsushi's vocals were noticeably lower in range than previous new-wave-ish efforts. This album featured songs whose titles were written in katakana instead of English for the first time, ("Speed" and "Angel Fish").

Throughout the month of February but mostly during the first part of the month, there were a series of "Buck-Tick Special" video concerts AKA "Captagon Vol. 45". The Captagon company held these video concerts for various bands and Buck-Tick was the main band for this edition. Vol. 45 featured footage of Buck-Tick recording the new album as well as footage of their December 1990 concerts at Nippon Budokan.

Kurutta Taiyo was the first Buck-Tick album to not contain a title track as well as the first album to release multiple singles. Subsequent singles were: "MAD" on June 5 (also released as a video single; both single and album were coupled with a re-recorded version of "Angelic Conversation") and "Jupiter" on October 30.

To promote the new material, Buck-Tick performed "Speed" on "Music Station" on February 1. The "Kurutta Taiyo Tour" began on March 6 and lasted for 49 dates. The band once again tried to play locations they had not played at previously and played in Fukui and Wakayama for the first time.

On February 24, there was an event called "Satellite Circuit". Buck-Tick recorded a concert in full (no one was in the audience) and one could view this by either paying to watching it on the cable television channel Wowow, (cable tv in Japan was still fledging at the time and I believe this was the first pay per view type channel), or around the country by going to various venues that were broadcasting it. (here is the venue schedule)

[Notice that at this point Hide has let down his hair and it is also a rare of photo of Toll with his hair down, as he continues to be the only member who retains the firecracker look, if you will. Or as I like to call it, the 'Tollhawk'.]

Just as Buck-Tick had endorsed a portable stereo by JVC in 1988, so did Atsushi in 1991. He endorsed the 7-speaker CDioss and was featured in commercials and print ads.

Around this time Atsushi changed the kanji of his last name and began using the old version of "sakura". (Personally, I still use the standard kanji the Sakurai family used to write their name, because it's easier to write and it's unlikely that Atsushi legally changed his kanji as it's a hard thing to do in Japan. Unless per chance his entire family changed kanji, unusual but not setting a precedent. Of course, the record companies and magazines usually print the kanji Atsushi prefers and it's been so many years now that I'm probably the only one writing it the old way.) Lyrically, there was a change in Atsushi too. He began to use less English and focus on Japanese. To this day he uses a minimum of English. I believe that changing his kanji was part of his maturing, if you will. His lyrics are almost poetry now. They are very beautiful and sometimes the meanings are so complex that I can not even begin to translate them. These changes could have occurred in Atsushi because his mother died and he also married the band's stylist and had a child with her. (They divorced a year later after an affair was publicized.)

On October 21, an album of various artists entitled Dance 2 Noise 001 was released. It featured Hide doing a solo song, "Jarring Voice" and Hisashi in a side project called Schaft with Maki Fujii of Soft Ballet. Their song was called "Nicht-Titel". There was also a "Dance 2 Noise 001" concert on December 16 at Club Yellow in Nishi Azabu. Schaft performed "Nicht-Titel" and at least one other song.

Also on October 21, Der Zebit released Shishunki II. Hisashi plays guitar on the track "4-D Vision No Rasen Kaidan". Atsushi provides guest vocals on the track "Masquerade".

If one could divide Buck-Tick into two separate eras, I would have to pick the album Kurutta Taiyo as the ending of the first era. The album after that, Koroshi No Shirabe ~This is NOT Greatest Hits~, released the following year, is the fuzzy gray line that divides the eras. Buck-Tick's sound and image definitely underwent a metamorphosis with and since those two albums. Until then, Buck-Tick had been more of a pop band but in those two albums there was the beginning of a seriousness in the lyrics (by focusing on writing in Japanese instead of trying to be cool by cramming in as much English as possible) and more of a Western approach to distortion rock while retaining their alternative and European influences. As different as they are, the albums released after Koroshi No Shirabe still contain a certain sensibility that makes it undeniably Buck-Tick.

To get a glimpse of the band's evolution, I recommend the video compilation that was released on November 21 entitled Buck-Tick. It contains all the promotional music videos at the time. Yes, even before they were releasing singles, Buck-Tick were making videos to promote their music that would air on television.

On November 27, the band began playing 3 shows at various Club Quattros in the country and the shows were simply entitled "Club Quattro Buck-Tick".

On December 10, Atsushi and Hisashi made a guest appearance at Der Zibet's concert at the Kudan Kaikan in Tokyo. On December 13, the band performed "Jupiter" on "Music Station".

[this page was last updated on Saturday, 19-Jul-2008 21:24:00 PDT]