(Part 1) If you like Buck-Tick, you might also like...

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If you like "Elise no Tame ni," you might also like...







If you like "Yumemiru Uchuu," you might also like...





If you like "SANE -type II-", you might also like...





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Stay tuned for "if you like Buck-Tick, you might also like" part 2.


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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.

Too Much Buck-Tick News!

This week has brought us just about too much Buck-Tick news to post about on Blog-Tick!  But since the numerous magazine and radio appearances are fairly explicit on the Buck-Tick homepage even to people who don't speak much Japanese, I'm going to just let y'all go check that small news for yourselves, so I can focus on the BIG news, which is: Buck-Tick has announced the track list for their first tribute album, as well as the guests for the Parade Tour 2012, who will also all be performing at the Festival Tick-Buck Parade On 2012.  And for those of you who got interested in Buck-Tick because you were/are visual kei fangirls, rejoice and throw your hats in the air, because this guest list reads like Visual Kei's last cry of "I'm not dead yet!" as time drags it off to the black plague corpse cart.

First, we have D'ERLANGER!  One of the first visual kei bands ever, and we thought they were gone for good but it turns out they're BACK!  D'ERLANGER is not dead yet!  They'll be playing with Buck-Tick on July 7th at Zepp GundamCity Tokyo, and they'll be covering "Iconoclasm," just like J did last time.  Get a new idea guys.

Next, we have Cali-Gari!  Admit it, you really, REALLY thought that Cali-Gari, as a band, was dead forever...splat, kaput, just like maguro on the train tracks!  But no!   And on June 17th at Zepp Sendai you can see the Sakurai cousins onstage together for the first time ever (fun fact, Sakurai Ao is Sakurai Atsushi's cousin.  Really.  They have the same name and everything.)  Cali-Gari will also be covering "Misty Zone" for the tribute album...which I warrant can only be a good thing.

Visual kei artists who haven't yet become zombie bands include Merry and Mucc, who will doubtless be fanboying themselves out of their trousers, seeing as some of their members were at one point also members of a Buck-Tick copyband.  If you want to see Mucc, go to Zepp Fukuoka on June 24th, and if you want to see Merry, hit Zepp Nagoya on June 30th.  But even if you can't make it, you will still be able to listen to Merry's cover of "Aku no Hana" and Mucc's cover of "Jupiter."  I am currently taking bets on whether you think Tatsurou can beat Takanori at taking a formerly subdued Hide ballad and blowing it up into a big, huge, emo, screamo epic of Acchan-sensei fanboy homage.

Non-visual artists on the lineup include shameless American late-90's nu-metal imitators Pay Money to My Pain (July 6th at Zepp Gundam, covering "love letter"...because they are waaay too cool to sing songs with lyrics in Japanese), that rascal drinking buddy of Sakurai's DJ OZMA and his band Kishidan (covering "Machine," and playing on June 26th at Namba Hatch, where else?), and The Lowbrows (July 4th at Yokohama Blitz, and as an electronic unit, they're not doing a cover, they're remixing "For Elise.")

Other covers on the tribute album include Nshukugawa BOYS with "Empty Girl," AA= with "Mad," Polysics with "Sid Vicious on the Beach," and BREAKERZ with "Just One More Kiss"...I'm not even going to bother taking bets on whether you think this will top Kiyoharu's version, because I already know it doesn't stand a chance.  Will these artists also be playing at the Parade Festival?  It remains to be seen.  But if Pay Money to My Pain was only installed because Dir en grey had to decline due to Kyo having flayed his voice to within an inch of his life...well, then visual kei just may be dead after all.

Miss Take

To set the record straight.

Buck-Tick's "huge announcement" on NicoNico last night was that they are releasing another maxi-single this summer, in addition to "Eriize no Tame ni." This second single will be released on July 4th and will be entitled "Miss Take ~boku wa misu teiku~", meaning "Miss Take ~I'm a miss take~". This title is a pun, of course, on the English word "mistake," and the English phrase "mis-take," (as in, if they messed up in the studio while recording their single and had to do another take, the first take would be a mis-take.) The third element of the pun is Imai's idea that there might be a lady out there named Little Miss Take. How do I know it's Imai? I don't, not for sure, but I bet you guys five sets of Dokudanjou voodoo dolls that this one is Imai's doing. And FYI this pun has nothing to do with mystics or mysticals or mysteries or Japanese honorifics. Only with Imai Miss Spelling English words.

Anyhow, Miss Take will also come in two editions, a regular edition with no cool shit and a limited edition with a special package, and two discs. The first disc will contain three songs: "Miss Take," "Only You," and "My Baby Japanese -type II-". The second disc will be a DVD featuring the PV for Miss Take. AND it includes a photobook full of pictures of Toll looking awesome.

In other news, the track list has been announced for the live CD that will be included with the limited edition of "Eriize no tame ni." Recorded during the 2011 DIQ at Zepp Sendai, the CD will include the following songs:

1. Theme of B-T

2. Hurry Up Mode

3. Jupiter

4. Sakura

5. Baby, I want you

6. Alice in Wonder Underground

7. Dokudanjou Beauty

BUT!

As if that weren't enough, the really special announcement is that if you buy both these singles (limited or regular edition, it doesn't matter), you can send in the pair of coupons, one from each single, to enter a lottery for a chance to witness Buck-Tick's first ever PV filming open to the public.

Does this mean that if you win, your little Dokudanjou Beauty self will be featured as the star of the video, grinding your little mystical buns all over Toll's firm drumsticks? I have no proof, but I do have a strong suspicion that it doesn't. In all likelihood the PV filming will involve one of two scenarios: a group of fans stand behind a railing and squee their hearts out while Buck-Tick films a PV in a soundstage, or more likely, the PV will be filmed in a concert setting, in an intimate venue, and the lucky lottery winners will be the audience. Will the winners get to meet the band? Who knows, but frankly, I doubt it. So remember that before you spend your life's savings buying a zillion copies of each single. Just sayin'.

But if you want to buy a zillion copies of the mistake single just so that you can have a zillion CDs containing a re-recorded version of "My Baby Japanese," please email me so I don't feel so alone.

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.

Zepp DiverCity Tokyo

Looks like Zepp DiverCity is actually a new Zepp Tokyo that just opened, a few hundred meters away from the original Zepp Tokyo. I guess now we know that Zepp brand live houses reproduce through parthenogenesis. DiverCity is slightly bigger, and slightly farther away from the nearest train station.

I'm kind of tempted to hate on this new upstart of a venue, just because it doesn't have a Ferris wheel built on top of it. I mean, come on.

Sorry for being too lazy to look this up until now, so sue me. It must mean I'm getting old.

Also I see from Blogger.com's statistics monitor that Blog-Tick readers are much more interested in reading about Acchan-chan's nickname than about the details of Buck-Tick's new single. Clearly you have all your priorities right in line.