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In Tower Records...
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...and in Tsutaya.
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All photos shot by Cayce on a flip-phone, using no filters nor any Photoshop effects whatsoever. Literally all of Shibuya is showing up in de-saturated high-contrast monochrome with high-saturated red accents under intense pin spots right now. This, my friends, is the pervasive effect Mr. Sakurai has on his environment.
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Update: The Mortal will appear on the cover of the magazine PHY volume 5, due out on November 11th. In addition, Mr. Sakurai will be interviewed for the November issue of Rolling Stone Japan, due out on November 10th. Mr. Sakurai will also be appearing as a live guest on the Dave Fromm show on InterFM radio this Friday at 6PM. If one of you lovely readers can record the broadcast and send it to us, then Satan bless you, because at that time of day we will be tied up in our Satanic day job.
Also, if you'd like to order copies of either of the new magazines, write to us asap.
Still can't get over how perfect Cities in Dust is. The whole album is. Cayce, please, could you tell something about the video for Pain Drop? The link they posted on facebook is blocked in my country.
ReplyDeleteThe Pain Drop spot is only on Gyao. But who cares, it's just a short clip. The real thing will be out soon and you'll be able to watch it as many times as you want.
DeleteAh, so it's just a spot like Yume. I can live with that ^^ Can't wait for translations (and notes?)
DeleteHere's a tiny present form magical Russian pirates https://yadi.sk/i/YQxwCU7WjjCjw (cr: pikopiko.diary.ru)
ReplyDeleteAgree 100%.Cayce doubted that Sakurai would make a sultrier version of Cities in Dust, but imo he did it. As for the Pain Drop vid you can try on the site VK. It's just a 2 min video though, similar to Yume.
ReplyDeleteOh sure, Mr. Sakurai did a great job. But then again, y'all would think Mr. Sakurai's version was sexier if he were playing a kazoo while smoking a cigar and gargling at the same time, so I think the only people who are really qualified to make a judgment call on this one are the straight-for-Sakurai lesbians...and I know you straight-for-Sakurai lesbians are surprisingly numerous, so if you've got an opinion, please weigh in.
DeleteStraight-for-Sakurai lesbians? I don't belive it 'till I see it.
DeleteAs a non-biased bi-sexual (or possibly equal-opportunity bias), I'd say it's a tie. I don't think a man could have sung it better than Sakurai, anyway.
DeleteThe only way to be sure would be a duet. (A woman can dream, right?)
And yet you're willing to believe in gay-for-Sakurai straight men? I recommend you spend some more time getting Buck-Tick fans shamefully drunk. By the bottom of a few bottles you will have learned all about their desires, and then, perhaps, you will believe.
DeleteHahahah jk. I totally believe it.
DeleteGonna buy this. So, how are the sales?
ReplyDeleteSales data won't be released till next week, but the Ai no Wakusei Collector's Box was number 7 on the Oricon Charts Blu-Ray ranking for the week of October 8th.
DeletePain Drop clip is being shared on Buck-tick Ecuador fan page and on Wonderunderground fan page, both on Facebook. It is only a short clip.
ReplyDeleteI love, love Cities in Dust and Yume! At least through fan shares I heard a few of the songs, till my CD arrives :-)
Since someone shared the songs on VK I was able to listen to them fully before my copy of "Spirit" arrives and what can I say?
ReplyDeleteI'm deeply in love with "Yume"!
And I still stand by my opinion that Mr. Sakurai improved his english very much which can be heard on "Spirit". Wonderful!
Big thanks to everyone who took time to point to the Pain Drop clip ^^ By the way, Sakurai is gorgeous and all, but can we take a break to note how freaking amazing the whole band sounds? I can't be the only one to think the way they are combining the clear guitar sound with all the noise and distortion, while still allowing for moments of silence, is divine? (Hahah, I hope I'm getting the terms right, because I know null about guitars, but you know what I mean, right?)
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean, and I agree. There's some complex old school melodic noise going on and the technical execution is excellent.
DeleteShoegaze and no-wave style is actually really big in Tokyo right now, and I think it's very clever of them to channel that while also channeling old school goth. I keep hearing echoes of Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, and Jesus and Mary Chain. It makes me hope that this album will reach the ears of shoegaze kids who are not Buck-Tick fans, as I can't believe they wouldn't like it.
DeleteGod, Sonic Youth? I'm eager to check this out, but my order will take so long to arrive :( And I don't want to spoil the experience by downloading the whole thing haha
DeleteYeah a lot of it is really heavy on the shoegaze no-wave noise groove. And I bet at least half the fangirls have no idea what I'm talking about when I say "shoegaze no wave" so in my opinion, that's great...teach your old fans something new or get new fans, either way you're making new blood flow. If you love noise stuff you will love The Mortal.
DeleteAnd this fangirl will have to dig deeper into no wave, because yeah, I have no idea what you're talking about, and I find this music absolutely fascinating ^^
DeleteOk so here is Juli ruining the party again~
ReplyDeleteFrankly said, I expected more of this project.
Yume sounds promissing until the chorus starts. The aggressive beat totally ruins the whole song.
Pain Drop is not only nothing but noise but also sort of unexpressive and inharmonic.
Well actually, the entire stuff I heard so far just seems to be noisy in a negative way -__-
Honestly, whining "it's too noisy" is exactly how I expected most Buck-Tick fangirls to respond...seeing as, based on the comments y'all made about Ai no Wakusei, it seems that while you always love Sakurai's face, you only love the rest of him when he's playing First Lady to President Imai, not doing his own thing. Which means y'all are Imai fans - admit it!
DeleteBut either way, there's a haterade vending machine in the corner. So all you haters, put in your coins, drink up, and keep whining, while the rest of us proceed to ignore the living goth out of you and enjoy ourselves.
P.S. I hear haterade tastes exactly like Pocari Sweat.
I listen to "noisy music" very often, Sonic Youth is one of my favorite bands, but I can understand why people usually dislike it, it can be hard to dig sometimes. I'm happy Sakurai is looking for a different style, I hate when a band member (I'm talking about everyone, not just BT) allegedly goes solo and end up doing exactly the same kind of music that his/her band would do.
DeleteCayce, it is so strange when you accuse people of being Imai fans... because they don't like noisy music? I mean, I guess you're right and there are people who really love B-T for the odd pop sensibilities, and Imai's a king of that, but it is still surreal to me - because he is *the* person who taught me to see beauty in noise. Shippuu no Blade Runner was a revelation. Just had to get this out.
DeleteYou're not ruining the party for anyone. You were expecting another thing, that's fine. I for example, was expecting for him to do what he really wants and likes to and I'm happy with it.
DeleteI "accuse" people of being Imai fans when they like Sakurai's work when he's singing Imai's melodies, but not when he's singing melodies written by someone else. If you only like him when he's singing Imai's music, then what you really like is Imai's music, not Mr. Sakurai. If you were really a fan of Mr. Sakurai, you'd like him on his own, too.
DeleteAgree. Well said.
DeleteTrue, I don't know what's the point in starting a solo project when the stuff ends up sounding like Buck-Tick (like the very few B-T songs I don't enjoy, as a matter of fact)
DeleteYou might be amused to know that I like Ai No Wakusei a lot as it's very calm, harmonic and it really does feel like a reflection of Sakurai's soul/thoughts/attitude.
But this doesn't have any soul at all, I can't help thinking about it this way.
Also, what does not liking this project have to do wih not being a fan of Sakurai as a person?
DeleteYes, I admit that Sakurai and Imai (and perhaps Hoshino) are a dream team and I love the way Sakurai interprets Imai's and Hoshino's songs.
But when I say that Sakurai sings a song that I consider to be less good just means that I dislike the song he's singing, not him as a person.
I'm talking about being a fan of Mr. Sakurai as an artist. I don't see how you can be a fan of him as a person without knowing him as a person - at most, you can be a fan of his persona, nothing more.
DeleteBut on an artistic level, the point is, the whole reason for the existence of The Mortal is that it's a chance for Mr. Sakurai to indulge in making exactly the kind of music he personally wants to make, without having to adapt to the desires of Imai and Hide who want to take the music in different directions.
Many of the songs on Ai no Wakusei were not even originally written for Mr. Sakurai and in fact had already been recorded with different lyrics by their original respective artists (Yellow Pig, I Hate You All, Hallelujah, Explosion, and possibly others.) In the case of Yokan, it was a recycling of a project Sakurai did in the early 90's, so it didn't represent new work for him. Beyond that, many of the songwriters didn't even know Mr. Sakurai and never even met him or went in the studio with him. Even many the artists who did write music specifically for Sakurai were still working well within the confines of their own artistic preferences, and I think it's safe to assume that whatever they did to tailor their songs specifically for Mr. Sakurai was pretty minimal (e.g. Cube Juice, Bryan Black and Satou Taiji.) The result was that Ai no Wakusei, while a brilliant album, is very much a compilation made up of more-or-less disconnected elements. It gave Mr. Sakurai a chance to showcase his talent and of course he cast his own typically dark shadow over the whole thing, but ultimately, there was a limit to how much creative control he could have over the project as a whole.
On the other hand, with The Mortal, Sakurai's got a set lineup made of of band members he's had a long working relationship with. Jake Cloudchair's claim to fame is Guniw Tools, and the Buck-Tick members have been friends with the Guniw Tools members for a long time - remember how Imai wrote the music for the Guniw Tools song Grazing and Full directed the PV for Buck-Tick's Candy. Yukio Murata, the other main songwriter for The Mortal, is a local Tokyo musician similar in age to Mr. Sakurai and he was already heavily involved in Ai no Wakusei, for which he provided two songs - Hallelujah and Explosion. Both of those were songs he originally recorded with his own band, my way my love, but now that he's writing specifically for Sakurai, they are surely sharing ideas, since they already had a working relationship. Ken Miyo played guitar in Sakurai's band for the Ai no Wakusei Explosion tour last time, so he's also worked with Sakurai before.
In short, the other members know exactly what Mr. Sakurai is about, and furthermore that Mr. Sakurai is the only reason that they're in the same room together. Beyond that, Sakurai is now eleven years older and wiser and also several years out from under the thumb of major label executives. As such, it seems unthinkable that Mr. Sakurai himself doesn't have a whole lot more creative control this time than last time. The other members are people he knows and trusts and if they made something he didn't like, he'd surely be able to nudge them back in his preferred direction. Therefore, the logical conclusion to draw is that The Mortal's sound represents something that Mr. Sakurai loves and feels enthusiastic about.
If you don't like it, that's your opinion...but you're also kind of saying that you only like him when he conforms to your image of what you think he should do. Otherwise, he might have been able to open your mind to a new genre. That's the job of an artist, after all - to challenge you and open your mind to something new.
They are great! I'm sorry for only "breathing" Sakurai, you guys.I'm trash. *sigh*
ReplyDeleteI'm infinitely sorry for my super rare appearance here and for the very long post, but I really can't stay silent. Because The Mortal has taken over me) My favourites are Shadow of Love, Cities in Dust and Yume. But I'll get to them later. I didn't really like Pain Drop at first. But I gave it a chance and it grew up on me aftera few more rounds. The music here reminded me Cream Soda a little.
ReplyDeleteI,m not really acquainted with Bauhaus, but I've listened to the original Spirit when I found out that The Mortal will make it's cover. The song didn't strike any particular emotions in me even performed by The Mortal. Though I must admit, Sakurai-san did a great job mimicing Murphy while staying true to himself.
I liked Shadows of Love a lot more. The song seem a little more lightweight than the rest of the mini-album. Though knowing Sakurai-san it really isn't... Love his vocals here.
And there is Cities in Dust. And God, it's so beautiful, it makes me wanna die. With tears in my eyes and a blissful smile on my face. the music and Sakurai-san's voice are just so intense. His voice is like melting into your blood through your ears. It flows into your heart and you die over and over again. And you enjoy it, kile some sort of perverted masochist. Funny thing though, I didn't know what the original song was about, but I kept imagining a fire and a burning man at the end of the song. And then I read that the original refers to the distuction of Pompeii. Just wow. Though again Sakurai-san has put a lot of himself into this song, I feel.
I don't really know what to say about Yume. I'm simply enchanted by this song. Shamefully, I don't understand most of it, due to my poor Japanese..
Well, I am - as expected from the previews before the release - totally sold on The Mortal based on this mini-album. I absolutely love how the spectrum of old school goth and alt music has been woven into this without ever overdoing one element or another or becoming anything other than original in its own right.
ReplyDeleteSakurai's getting to showcase the breadth of his vocal styles and abilities, no doubt with much glee, and the music is technically precise in its references in so many ways that it almost brings me to tears with nostalgia. I could be a teen again and listening to a home-made mix tape before venturing out to some back-of-a-pub alt night or another! (And that's not just because there are covers involved, it's far more to do with the vocal/musical/effect styles in play).
Clearly I am going to have to up my game of wardrobe plans for these gigs to do proper homage to the music of their forbears in exactly the way The Mortal have here. I really can't wait for the full album. It's going to feel like a long three weeks.