Buck-Tick Zone

Original Titles in Japanese

Aku No Hana

Maboroshi No Miyako

Titles Translated

Aku No Hana - "The Flowers of Evil". This is the title for both a Buck-Tick song and album. The title comes from "Les Fleurs du Mal" by Charles Baudelaire, a favorite poet of Atsushi. In the remix album Shapeless, the title is translated as "Evil Flowers" but most translations of Baudelaire phrase it as "The Flowers of Evil" so that is what I prefer.

Maboroshi No Miyako - "Capital of Illusions" or "Capital of Mirages"

Notes

Ranked #1 on the album chart. 440,000 copies sold. This has been Buck-Tick's most successful album to date.

The single released from this album was "Aku No Hana".

This was a highly anticipated album at the time of its release due to Hisashi's arrest for narcotics on April 21, 1989 (in the middle of the tour for Taboo) and subsequent Buck-Tick inactivity.

The album took around 500 hours to record.

This is the first album by Buck-Tick where the title is in Japanese. This is also the first album to contain songs where the title is in Japanese ("Maboroshi No Miyako" and "Aku No Hana"). The band was contemplating titles in English but Atsushi felt that "Aku No Hana" fit best for the overall theme of the album.

Hisashi wrote 15-16 songs and only half made it to the album. Hide wrote about 5 or 6 songs but only 3 made it to the album.

This is the only album to feature a song composed entirely by Hide. This is the second and last album that contains a song Toll wrote lyrics for.

The album cover was supposed to be in the style of 1920s Japan.

This was the first time Hisashi enjoyed the studio recording process. Past attempts had been grueling sessions.

The cassette packaging is typical of Buck-Tick cassettes at the time: slipcase with the album cover on the front.

"National Media Boys" makes reference to Adolf (Hitler) in the lyrics. The last name is not mentioned but during the subsequent supporting tour, the band would broadcast a speech given by Hitler and Hisashi also mentioned in interviews the song is about Adolf Hitler and fascism using children in advertising.

Buck-Tick were so pleased with the work Will Gosling did while recording the Taboo album in London that they flew him to Japan to engineer this album as well. (Perhaps a condition of Imai's arrest was that he could not leave Japan?)

This is the 2nd album Buck-Tick recorded at Victor Aoyama Studio.

Buck-Tick re-recorded the tracks "Aku No Hana" and "Love Me" for the album Koroshi No Shirabe ~ This is NOT Greatest Hits.

The song "Aku No Hana" was remixed for the Buck-Tick remix album Shapeless (1994).

The promo vinyl is the last album put onto vinyl by the band until this album was re-released in 2015 with a new mix.

The remastered 2015 box set has some of the original studio track sheets as artwork and it notes the working title of some songs were "Tango," "Cutting," and "Slow." There are not much details to guess which songs these are. Each of these songs have the same skeletel notes for any song recording, such as bass drum, snare, cymbals. "Tango" has a violin and a guitar solo, "Cutting" has a Hammond organ, and "Slow" doesn't have anything distinguishing in the notes.

Booklet Images

Atsushi

Hisashi

Hide

U-ta

Toll

Promo Vinyl Images

front

label, Side A

label, Side B

Music Video Stills

National Media Boys, directed by Haruji Nakamori and Fumihide Anami

Maboroshi No Miyako, directed by Yuichi Araya

Love Me, directed by Masaya Yamamoto

Pleasure Land, directed by Wataru Hayashi

Misty Blue, directed by Yuichi Araya

Dizzy Moon, directed by Suguru Takeuchi

Sabbat, directed by Tomoko Fujikane

The World is Yours, directed by Tomomi Iriya

Aku No Hana, directed by Wataru Hayashi

Kiss Me Good-Bye, directed by Tomomi Iriya