Buck-Tick PV Filming

And now, an on-the-ground report from a Blog-Tick correspondent who was lucky enough to be invited to last night's PV filming!  For those of you who weren't aware, this PV filming was part of a promotional campaign encouraging fans to buy Buck-Tick's two most recent singles, "Elise no Tame ni" and "Boku wa Miss Take."  Application tickets printed with a "B" were included in the "Elise" packaging, and application tickets printed with a "T" were included in the packaging for "Miss Take."  Fans who bought both singles (and thus who amassed both B and T...get it?) could send in both tickets and be entered into a lottery for a chance to win a coveted ticket to Buck-Tick's PV filming, to be held at an undisclosed location in the Tokyo area on August 5th.

Speculation abounded as to what the PV filming would consist of.  Some Japanese fans insisted that fans would be selected by age, and thus only the very youngest fans would be allowed in, but since the only information necessary for entry into the lottery was your name, address, phone number, occupation, and the name of the store where you bought each single, it's hard to tell how they would have divined the ages of the fans who entered.  Other fans, on the other hand, were convinced that the PV would consist of each fan taking a turn to sit on Toll's lap for two seconds each, as in the PV for "21st Cherry Boy," while still others believed that one stipulation of participation would be that everyone would have to show up dressed as Imai, and anyone without the letters "B-T" painted on their cheeks wouldn't be allowed in.

Cayce, however, predicted that this PV filming would simply take the form of a very small concert, shot in a small live house, and that the fans would be the audience.  Cayce furthermore predicted that the PV in Question would be the PV for Buck-Tick's new feel-good crowd-pleaser song "Climax Together."  Guys, this is why you are reading Blog-Tick: I was right on both calls.  Blog-Tick has Buck-Tick so pegged (and no, that wasn't intended to be a dirty joke.)  

The postcards fans received as invitations to the event contained no information other than that the shooting would be held at Shinjuku Loft, and the time of the filming.  Loft is sort of like two live houses in one, with a larger auditorium and a smaller bar attached.  Though Loft is one of the oldest and most famous live houses in Tokyo, it switched location after the die-down of the Band Boom era, and now occupies a sub-basement beneath a host club with very low ceilings.  The low ceilings and the strange triangular shape may have posed some difficulties where the filming was concerned, but there's no denying that Loft is a historic location, and a much, much smaller venue than Buck-Tick ever normally gets to play.

Reportedly, filming took a little while to get started.  At first, fans were left to their own devices to hang out in the Loft bar, which was serving special Buck-Tick themed cocktails, while the band themselves presumably holed up backstage.  To get the fans pumped and ready for the show, the studio recording of "Climax Together" played on repeat over the speakers.  This is the song with the singalong chorus, and they wanted to be sure the fans had the melody and the words down before the band came out onstage.  Then, at last, it was showtime, and there was another surprise--some of these clips will be on the special extra DVD that comes with the limited edition of the new album.  Buck-Tick didn't just perform "Climax Together" with crowd participation, they also performed "Elise no Tame ni," "Dokudanjou Beauty," "Memento Mori," and finally, "Climax Together" one more time.

While our correspondent never got within buttocks-groping distance of the band members, his final words on the matter were: "so hot."  Though perhaps in the end this PV filming wasn't all that different from a live show or live TV appearance, seeing Buck-Tick perform at Shinjuku Loft at this stage in their career is certainly a special treasure.

Parade Tour Live Report

My live report of the Parade Tour 2012 is now up on Not Greatest Site.  Sorry it took so long.  Go have a read!  Feel free to post your comments here, but as always, keep them concise and constructive.

Also, it has been announced that Buck-Tick's fall hall tour with be called "Tour Yumemiru Uchuu."  The first round of fan club ticket reservations has already finished, but advanced reservations through the official site are now open.

At the Night Side Live Report

Cayce's live report of At the Night Side 2012 is now up over at Not Greatest Site, so what are you waiting for, go read it!

Also, some videos from the livestream broadcast are also up, at least for now.  Not to rain on y'alls parade (hah hah hah I'm going to make that joke as many times as I possibly can), but after watching a few of them I can say that sadly, they don't capture the reality of the experience at all.  For one thing, Imai's suit was waaay more purple than that in real life.  Whoops, I mean "eggplant."  For another thing, Mr. Sakurai didn't look nearly so heroine-angel dust mixed-out in real life as he does in this video.

The moral of the story?  Technology is not a replacement for real life.  Put down your phones and walk around the world, people.  What makes for great livejournal entries is Real Life.  End of story.  Perhaps you can't make it to Japan, in which case, it's wonderful that you were able to see Buck-Tick's webcast.  But lots of people in Japan can't make it to your country either, and your country surely has lovely rainstorms and beautiful flowers aplenty.  So go outside and feel grateful to be alive.  Smell, taste, listen.  And put down the phone.

Elise translations and review

I have posted translations of "Elise no Tame ni" and "Yumemiru Uchuu" over at Not Greatest Site, along with fairly extensive translation notes, so what are you waiting for, go read them.  And here's my review of the single for you.

Elise no Tame ni Review

First of all, in establishing their own label, Buck-Tick have taken a step in the right direction with presentation and art direction, if nothing else.  The special edition comes in a slipcase printed on sturdy, glossy paper much harder to tear or soil than the materials typically used by BMG/Ariola, and features simple, arresting stills of the various band members taken from the PV on the outside covers and behind each disc.  The whole thing is easy to put in and take out of the slipcase, easy to open up, and beautiful to look at.  Think I'm shallow for focusing on the packaging too much?  Go back and look at the booklets for Tenshi no Revolver or Kyokutou I Love You, then come back and talk to me again.  Since Buck-Tick are selling this thing for a whopping 2500 yen in an age where apparently lots of youngsters don't listen to "albums," let alone "singles," and buy virtually all of their music on iPeens, they have the right idea about making this maxi-single so physically appealing that it's worth the waste of meatspace to actually drag yourself to a record store and buy it, rather than just steal it off the maxi-cloudpad or something.

However, if we shouldn't judge a vocalist by what his face looked like in a PV from 20 years ago, we also shouldn't judge a single by its slipcase...though in the case of Elise no Tame ni, the atmosphere of the jacket design echoes the themes of the songs so well it must be a deliberate choice.  Just as the case features simple, repeated, largely monochromatic photos, all three songs feature simple, repeated guitar and vocal hooks layered over basslines that are more rhythm than melody, with deliberately stripped-down lyrics.  The theme here is existential truth; fitting for the band's 25th anniversary single, and full of references to the band's previous works.  The single guitar riff of "Elise no Tame ni" contains hints of "Mienai Mono," just as the monochrome palate  and creative use of negative space in the deceptively simple "Elise" PV hearken back to the brilliant series of videos the band made for each song on the Six/Nine album, which similarly relied more on lighting and camerawork than gussied-up models to get their message across.  

The lyrics to "Elise" take the phoniness of contemporary Japanese pop head-on.  Turn on the radio or music TV in Japan these days, and you'll be assaulted with an endless string of trite anthems about eternal love.  The lyrics to most of the chart-topping songs are so similar it would be easy to come up with most of them out of a 100-word magnetic poetry kit, and they're all about the same thing: I love you forever, you are the only one I will ever love, you are the sweetest, thank you from my heart.  In "Elise," Imai calls bullshit.  Time passes quickly, he says.  Love and gentleness are all well and good, but can't you think of anything deeper and more real to say?  There is no such thing as forever, and that spark between two people, or indeed between Buck-Tick and their listeners, doesn't have anything to do with sweet talk or empty promises--it's something ineffable, tied up in the very frailty of existence, full of wounds, and storms, and demons.  Love hurts, and we crave the pain.  Listening to these lyrics, it's particularly impressive how Imai's and Sakurai's styles have merged over the years.  Imai is working with all of Sakurai's favorite themes and pet words here.  If this song is partly about the relationship between Buck-Tick and their fans, perhaps it's also secretly a little tribute by Buck-Tick's main songwriter to their main lyricist.

"Yumemiru Uchuu" also recalls some of Buck-Tick's past work, especially the dreamy, layered chords of "Trans," and perhaps even Cube Juice's song "Tensei," written for Sakurai's solo project, though this is probably the first time Buck-Tick has done anything quite so definitively shoegaze.  While failing to match the catchiness of "Elise," or break into new territory for the band, the song feels like a memory, with both drum and melody lines seeming to drag behind the guitar, and so many vocal tracks it's hard to tell which line is the lead in some places.  In the lyrics, Sakurai deliberately retraces fragments of many earlier songs (including "Tensei"), while still managing to arrive at something new.  He's been chewing over the meaning of life and death in his lyrics for twenty years now, but in this song, more than any other, the fear and despair that pervaded earlier albums like Darker Than Darkness, Six/Nine and Sexy Stream Liner has been replaced with a sort of serene enlightenment; drifting without struggling.  Thematically, this might be "Solaris, Part II."

And while the choice to put rearranged versions of "My Eyes & Your Eyes" and "Tight Rope" on the Rendezvous and Alice in Wonder Underground singles seemed more or less arbitrary, "SANE -type II-" rounds out the triptych of Elise no Tame ni very well.  While purists may reject out of hand Buck-Tick's experiments in reworking old songs, both the originality and cohesiveness of the reworked versions is a testament to the band's extreme versatility, which has always been one of their greatest strengths.  In "SANE -type II-," what was previously a mysterious and sinister monologue by Sakurai becomes an upbeat dialogue a la "Tango Swanka" between Imai's monotone spoken-word and Sakurai's melodic chorus.  The line "Now I'm insane, but I must go when I go," which was the de-facto thesis statement of the original song, becomes almost an afterthought in this version - if this is still insanity, the whole band is insane now, and they seem to be enjoying it, too.  Yes, this new arrangement owes a whole lot to Bauhaus - but then, Buck-Tick as a band owe a whole lot to Bauhaus, and they certainly haven't forgotten their roots.  The climax of this song happens to be the exact same chord progression as the climax (no pun intended) of "Sexual XXXXX!" and no one could possibly think that's a coincidence.

While song for song, this single may not be quite as innovative as the band's previous single Kuchizuke, after the heavy glossiness of Razzle Dazzle, it feels like a breath of fresh air.  It hangs together tightly as a complete unit, a work of art all on its own.  Whether its cohesiveness and general lack of schlock, sap, fluff, or cheese has anything to do with not having to please executive producers, I cannot say, but I can say I like it.

Perfect Day Elise

Modest display on the second floor of Tower Records Shibuya, because I guess the ground floor is now reserved for AKB48 (though My Bloody Valentine was there too.)

Accurate lyric translations coming soon.


Also, if you were that young guy in the black leather jacket and biker boots buying all the Buck-Tick limited editions, including the special boxes, I saw you waiting in line behind all the people buying AKB48 crap, and I have your number.

For Elise PV

For those of you who haven't seen this already, here it is.

This, I think, demonstrates quite well why Buck-Tick made the decision to start their own label. Amazing, how as soon as they break out on their own the unrelated story lines and inexplicable white girls vanish, to be replaced by simple dark interiors, interesting lighting, and artsy camera angles, all which serve to enhance rather than detract from the band members themselves, who are, after all, what we came to see. Is this a good thing? In a word, yes.

Also Imai and Sakurai seem to have melded over the years to the point that Imai is now writing lyrics that really sound like Sakurai should have written them (though I can't translate them yet because I need the official lyric sheet for that.) As for the music, we've got hints of Buck-Tick's dark late 90's period, stuff like "love letter," "heroin" and "Maria," run through the clean straight rock filter of their later sound. The fluff has been trimmed, and so has the sentimentality. Banzai.

More on For Elise

From Kanemitsu Hirofumi's article in the latest issue of Ongaku to Hito (released today!) we have learned the following:

The de-facto theme of the new single is Buck-Tick's 25th anniversary, much as the de-facto theme of Rendezvous was their 20th annivesary.

The lyrics and music to "Eriize no tame ni" were written by Imai, and "Yumemiru Uchuu" has music by Imai and lyrics by Sakurai, so I was right on three out of four predictions for the writing credits this time around.

Mr. Kanemitsu (who has know Buck-Tick a long time) describes "Eriize" as "nineties electronic rock with a simple band sound." He goes on to say that the simplicity and straightforwardness of the arrangement could have so easily devolved into something trite and overdone in the hands of another artist, but Imai proves the flawlessness of his artistic sense once more by stopping just one step short of going too far, resulting in a perfect balance. In the lyrics, the line "We loved, we were lonely too/But that's not what you and I were after" hint at something much deeper than the saccharine platitudes delivered by most popular Japanese musicians these days.

"Yumemiru Uchuu" is also described as a simple song, with simple words: "For an instant, or for forever/Will we go back? Never/Dance with me." It could be a love song for Buck-Tick's fanbase, many of whom have loved the band for 25 whole years now.

The third track is a self-cover of "SANE," which reportedly comes across a lot darker than the original version. I get a feeling we got a taste of this new version on the Razzle Dazzle tour, but this looks exciting.

And which bands will be appearing on Buck-Tick's new tribute album and at the next Parade festival? Mr. Kanemitsu can't tell us yet but he claims that he wishes he could...it's that good! Suffice to say they're bands from diverse genres, but they all love Buck-Tick.

Is Soil & "Pimp" Sessions one of them? That remains to be seen. But it appears that Mr. Soil and Mr. Pimp brought their jazzy horns into Imai's studio yesterday. To what effect, we can only speculate, but Imai says it's a "killer tune." I've gotta say, I love me a good horn section. Bead and feather 'em, baby.

Will the Dead Weather also be on Buck-Tick's tribute album? I suppose not, but in the meantime I'm going to have a glass of Jack Daniels while imagining what Allison Mosshart would sound like singing "Motel 13." As Tower Records and Suntory Whiskey so astutely pointed out in their joint ad campaign, "No Music, No Whiskey."

Which artists would you guys like to hear cover which Buck-Tick songs? I'll award cookie points to creative ideas.