2015
To commemorate the 25th anniversary of the album Aku No Hana, a memorial box set entitled Aku No Hana -Completeworks- was released on February 1. It included a new high-resolution mix (96kHz/24bit) of the album and single that were made for this special release. The box set contained a platinum SHM CD of the 2015 mix of the album, a platinum SHM CD of the 2015 mix of the "Aku No Hana" single, 2 discs on video (Blu-ray or DVD) of the music videos for the entire album set to the new 2015 mix, a vinyl version of the original 1990 mix of the album, portrait cards, and the option to download a hi-res version of 1 song for a limited period. Each box had a serial number. Previously, a vinyl version of the album was only available as a promo copy. To showcase JVC's high-resolution technology, the slogan "Hi-Res ga bakuchiku suru" was used. ("The high resolution will firecracker" or "The high resolution will Buck-Tick.") This was a play off of the 1988 slogan when Buck-Tick endorsed a JVC stereo. In advance of the box set release, 25 fans were invited to a listening party on January 23 at the Victor Studio where the album was recorded. There were some ads connecting the high resolution of Buck-Tick to the JVC Kenwood wood cone stereo systems (EX-N70 and EX-N50) and related products (SU-AX7 headphone amp) but I do not think a television commercial was made, only print ads. The memorial box set release was also promoted with its own website, its own Facebook page, and a Nico Nico streaming special held on January 31.
On February 25, the live video Tour 2014 Arui Wa Anarchy -Final- was released. It was recorded on the final date of the tour on September 26, 2014 at NHK Hall.
Buck-Tick was one of the bands that made an appearance at Luna Sea's Lunatic Fest, which was held on June 27 and 28 at Makuhari Messe in Chiba. Buck-Tick played on the second day. J from Luna Sea joined the band when they played "Iconoclasm." Besides Luna Sea, other bands on the first day included X Japan, Dead End, Dir En Grey, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Siam Shade, Ladies Room, Coldrain, Tokyo Yankees, The Telephones, 9mm Parabellum Bullet, and Lunacy (Luna Sea playing their early stuff under their original name). For the second day, besides Buck-Tick and Luna Sea, other bands that appeared included D'erlanger, Glay, [Alexandros], Mucc, KA.F.KA, Aion, minus(-), Rottengraffty, Ling Tosite Sigure, and Lunacy (Luna Sea playing their early stuff under their original name). Luna Sea performed one song each night with members of all the other bands as guests. Some members sang, some played, some air drummed, and some just bounced around like rock cheerleaders. On the night that Buck-Tick played, the Luna Sea song where everyone was invited to join was "Believe" and U-ta was one of the supportive cheerleaders, clapping and waving to the audience.
As the world shifts from analog to digital, 20 albums from Buck-Tick's back catalogue were also given the high resolution remastering treatment, but no special box editions. This combined with the Aku No Hana -Completeworks- release earlier in the year means that a total of 21 Buck-Tick albums (266 songs!) were released in high resolution in 2015. If you are finicky over audio quality, then the 2015 versions are the ones you seek, though I think the 20 albums were digital releases only (AAC, FLAC). Naoki Yokota from Victor originally came up with the idea to remaster Aku No Hana and the other Victor albums in high resolution but then the band said they wanted the recent albums to also be remastered and so the project blossomed from there. This required the collaboration of multiple major labels as Buck-Tick changed labels over their career. This was an arduous process as the source tapes contained between 80-240 takes of a song. It took around 4 months to compare all the takes to match them to the version released on CD, then remaster each song one by one. At the time, this was the most amount of songs to be distributed at once in hi res by a Japanese artist.
Hi res versions released on June 26 from Victor Entertainment: Sexual XXXXX!, Seventh Heaven, Taboo, Hurry Up Mode (1990 Mix), Kurutta Taiyo, Koroshi No Shirabe ~This is NOT Greatest Hits~, Darker Than Darkness -Style 93-, Six/Nine, Catalogue 1987-1995, and Cosmos. Victor decided to use their K2HD mastering technique and adopted the 2002 digital remaster versions of the albums as the master copy to work from.
Hi res versions released on June 26 from Lingua Sounda and Tokuma Japan Communications: Yume Miru Uchuu and Arui Wa Anarchy. Tokuma Japan imported the 48kHz/24bit masters into Pyramix to do the hi res mastering. Perhaps these albums were the greatest challenge as they were the most recent releases so what could possibly be done to tantalize the ears of fans who just bought these albums? The engineer commented it was particularly difficult to create hi res versions of sounds that purposely recorded to sound lo-fi.
Hi res versions released on July 29 from Universal Music: Sexy Stream Liner. Universal took the DAT master, converted it to WAV format, then mastered in Pro Tools.
Hi res versions released on July 29 from Ariola Japan: One Life, One Death, Kyokutou I Love You, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Juusankai Wa Gekkou, Tenshi No Revolver, Memento Mori, and Razzle Dazzle. Ariola was working with half-inch analog tape masters and 96kHz/24bit digital data that were imported into a digital audio workstation. (Exact one not mentioned.)
In August, Toll performed his annual birthday gigs It's A Now! with his band, now simply called Blue Sky. (The 2004 album was credited to Yagami Toll and the Blue Sky and the 2012 and 2013 gigs were credited to Yagami Toll and New Blue Sky.) Once again they were joined by Shime on vocals/guitar. They performed on August 15 at Club Alive! in Osaka, on August 19 at Shimokitazawa Garden in Tokyo, and on August 22 at Takasaki Club Fleez in Gunma. Each show started with a drum solo, followed by a set of Carol covers then a set of classic rock song covers in English. They performed 20 cover songs in Tokyo and 19 cover songs in the other 2 cities. The artists covered included Carol, The Beatles, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Steppenwolf, Neil Young, Elvis Presley, and the Eagles. The extra song sung in Tokyo was "Akuma No Okurimono" by Carol. The gig in Tokyo included guests Toshikatsu Uchiumi (Carol) on 1 song and Masafumi Minato (Dead End) on 2 songs.
On September 19, U-ta was a guest performer at the "Ongaku To Hito" magazine sponsored live event Freaks Circus where he played with Merry. Other bands that performed include Goatbed and Bellring Shojo Heart. Tatsurou from Mucc was also a guest performer. The event was held at the Tokyo Kinema Club. During the main set, Merry covered Buck-Tick's "Aku No Hana." U-ta joined the stage for the entire encore and Merry played a cover of Buck-Tick's "MAD," "Zombie Paradise ~Jigoku No Butou Kyoku~," and "Fukinkou Kinema."
On September 30, Atsushi's solo album from 2004 was given the re-mastering re-release treatment as Ai No Wakusei -Collector's Box-. The box set included the original album, singles and B-sides, the original 1992 version of "Yokan" that was released on the compilation album Dance 2 Noise 002, CD version of one of Atsushi's live shows, and Blu-ray disc of the live video -Explosion- Ai No Wakusei Live 2004 and the 3 music videos from the solo album that Atsushi had released. In short, it was almost every audio-visual item one could want from Atsushi's solo career. The key things missing were the 2 books Atsushi released at that time and the short film Longinus that he starred in. As a promotional item, those who purchased the box set at Tower Records received a file folder with artwork from the solo album.
Upon the advice of Buck-Tick's manager, Atsushi formed The Mortal, a gothic inspired side project. Since Buck-Tick wasn't really doing anything new this year, it was a good time to squeeze in a side project. Record label director Junichi Tanaka called around to different musicians to form the band. The members included Jake Cloudchair (ex-Guniw Tools) on guitar, Yukio Murata (My Way My Love) on guitar, Ken Miyo (ex-M-Age) on bass, and Takahiko Akiyama (Downy) on drums. Both Jake and Ken had previously performed with Atsushi during his solo project live shows in 2004.
It is interesting to note that the website for The Mortal had some details in English. Taken directly from their website:
"Atsushi Sakurai from BUCK-TICK was [sic] founded THE MORTAL in 2015.
The members of the band are vocalist Atsushi Sakurai (BUCK-TICK), guitarist Jake Cloudchair, guitarist Yukio Murata (my way my love), bassist Ken Miyo (ex. M-AGE) and drummer Takahiko Akiyama (downy).
Sakurai writes most of the lyrics in BUCK-TICK based on his unique lyrical world. His words cover various themes from life and death, the essential human nature of hatred and malice, conflicts between the head and heart, the reality of society and organization, friction and isolation from the outside world, self-discipline and the darkness of the human mind.
For this album, Sakurai wrote lyrics and the band who understands Sakurai the most and who he trusts musically, worked on the music. All of the members contributed to the album production.
There is growing expectation for THE MORTAL’s beautiful, dark and frantic world."
The Mortal released the mini album Spirit on October 14. It included 2 original songs and 3 cover songs. They covered "Spirit" by Bauhaus in its original English but Atsushi created new lyrics mostly in Japanese for "Shadow of Love" by The Damned and "Cities In Dust" by Siouxsie & the Banshees. The album I am Mortal was released on November 11 and had 12 original songs, including the 2 original songs previous released on Spirit. Atsushi wrote all the lyrics and the songwriting duties were evenly shared by Jake, Yukio, and Ken with 4 songs each. A special edition of the album included music videos for the songs "Mortal," "Pain Drop," "Tenshi," "Guignol," and "Yume." Their song "Mortal" was used in the Japanese trailer for the movie The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death. Fans who purchased both releases at Tower Records were entered into a lottery to see the band perform at the Shibuya store. 359 winners were announced on November 18 and the in store performance was held on November 23.
On October 16, Atsushi appeared on the radio as a guest on "The Dave Fromm Show" on Inter FM.
In November, The Mortal held a tour entitled Tour The Mortal 2015 for 5 dates: starting on the 16th at Osaka Namba Hatch, 17th at Osaka Orix Gekijo (often written as Orix Theatre), 19th at Shinkiba Studio Coast in Tokyo, and finally closing on the 25th and 26th at NHK Hall in Tokyo. The last show was recorded and released as the live video Immortal the following year. Fans who attended the shows were in for a treat as the setlist included several songs from Atsushi's solo album.
In December, it was announced that Hisashi was one of the Japanese musicians who collaborated with Leica to release a digital camera. There were 10 musicians in total with each having only 20 of their collaboration cameras for sale. These cameras were released for a few months with Hisashi's model being made available on December 20. The Leica D-Lux RSJ Edition is a compact digital camera that featured musician branding, such as Hisashi's signature. It also included a signed print. Considering that these musician editions were simply the D-Lux model with a different outer case that featured musician brands, the retail price of ¥226,800 was quite hefty for fans willing to collect this limited edition camera. (Financially challenged DIY fans could buy the D-Lux and use some paint or a B-T sticker.)
The annual end of year shows The Day In Question were held for 5 dates in December. It began on the 13th in Nagano and ended on the 29th at the Budokan in Tokyo. This was the first time that The Day In Question show was held in 5 different cities. Previously the maximum was 4.
Also happening at the end of the year was another Buck-Tick side project re-appearing in magazines. Some issues featured both The Mortal and the return of...Schaft! There was also an announcement that their imprint Lingua Sounda is moving to Victor and the first single through Victor would be released in September, commemorating their return to Victor after they first signed to Victor in 1987. See 2016 for full details.