Buck-Tick Zone
1994
Buck-Tick member's tour costumes from "Climax Together" and "Darker Than Darkness" were on display for roughly from April 30 through May 5 in a department store in Oota City in Gunma prefecture. Next to each set of clothes was a picture of the member wearing that particular outfit. On the final day, Toll made an apperance to answer questions from fans. There were two sessions where he was on stage and the fan club described it as a "talk show". Buck-Tick has done this several times since then, with clothes and sometimes instruments on display in a public area. A few days later on May 8, Toll held a drum clinic. At the clinic he stated that a Japanese band has not continued together for 10 years, 20 years and that Buck-Tick would like to do so.
On July 31 and August 7, Buck-Tick held two concerts called "Shapeless" at Fuji-kyu Highland Conifer Forest. They had Soft Ballet and The Mad Capsule Market's join them as guests. One might call this a warm-up show for the next series of shows that Buck-Tick did, which was a five date tour called "LSB". The main bands featured were Luna Sea, Soft Ballet, Buck-Tick, and sometimes Schaft. There were different opening bands on different nights. This might be the first time in Japan that major bands toured together. The first "LSB" gig was on August 9.
On August 24, the remix album Shapeless was released. It featured such famed remixers from abroad as Aphex Twin, Autechre, Cabaret Voltaire, Spice Lab, and Hard Floor. It came in a book packaging with recent photos of Buck-Tick in Turkey, however most of the photos are of Turkey and not the band. While the band was in Turkey for the photo shoot, they also apparently played a small gig as evidenced by the historical footage in Picture Product. The exact details of this show are unknown but the fan club newsletter explains it like this: on June 5, the last night of the band in Turkey, they went to a small place to watch live music. Their interpreter started talking with people and the band performing invited Atsushi to join in for a session, just one song. It was terribly hard to find a left-handed guitar for Hisashi but they ended up playing "Speed" and there were even some other Japanese in the audience.
Around this time there was also a compilation of techno songs called Real Techno Intelligence Chapter 1 that was released. A remix of "Taiyo Ni Korosareta" called "Killing (Whisper Mix)" was featured on it.
On September 21, Issay, the former vocalist of Der Zebit, released his solo album Flowers. Hide plays guitar on the following tracks: "Koi No Hallelujah", "Asa Made Matenai", "Seaside Bound". Atsushi also sings on the chorus of "Koi No Hallelujah".
Meanwhile, Hisashi's side project Schaft released a full-length album entitled Switchblade on September 21. Hisashi's partner in Schaft was Maki Fujii from Soft Ballet, whom they had worked together as Schaft previously for the Dance 2 Noise 001 compilation. The Schaft album featured many guest musicians, including a heavy amount from Raymond Watts (Pig). Part of the album was recorded in London so this would be the second time Hisashi has recorded in London. He and Maki stayed in separate apartments. A remix album entitled Switch Remix was released on October 21, 1994. Schaft also did four shows in the Tokyo-Osaka area. Raymond joined Schaft for these shows. One of the shows was filmed and released on December 16 as Switchblade Visual Mix.
On October 5, the book Shapeless was released. It contains 'best of' photos originally published in "Pati-Pati" magazine.
[this page was last updated on 2010.08.18 @ 21:45:13 PDT]
