Buck-Tick Zone

Notes

Ranked #1 on the album chart. 210,000 copies sold.

This album is a remixed (remastered) version of Buck-Tick's first album released during their indies days on Taiyo Records in 1987 with the exclusion of the original CD bonus songs ("Vacuum Dream" and "No No Boy"). There is a slight difference in the mastering, especially noticeable on the level of the vocals, than the Taiyo Records version. Or part of that could be the difference in mastering between vinyl and CD.

The record company initially came upon the idea to re-release this. Once they asked the members, they thought if it's possible then they would like to see it get released again. Fans had been sharing dubbed copies or paying upwards of ¥100,000 to get an original copy. Hisashi had joked that they re-released the album because they weren't receiving any of the tens of thousands of yen used copies of the album had been fetching.

As always, the cassette came in a slipcase. The first CDs to be released were packaged with a slipcase and additional booklet of photos. Later versions did not include the slipcase and extra booklet. The booklet contains: photos of the members from the original Hurry Up Mode altered with colors to give a 3-D without the viewing glasses feel. Following that is a two-page layout of a proofsheet of photos taken from a gig at Yaneura Shinjuku Loft. Next are unaltered photos of the members (two each). Finally there is a discography of all works at the time (save Aku No Hana) in almost chronological order.

The 2007 reissue CD had the same cover artwork as the 1987 LP.

As I wrote in the notes for the indies release of this album...
Please note that I have credited the songs as printed in the CD version of this release and also based on my interpretation of multiple sources. There has been confusion caused over the years with an inconsistency in the credits. In the liner notes for the original 1987 release on LP, it credits Imai/Sakurai for "Prologue" and Imai/Imai for "Plastic Syndrome Type II". In the 1990 mix, it credits Imai/Sakurai for writing both "Prologue" and "Plastic Syndrome Type II". In the official tab book for the 1990 mix, it credits Imai for writing the music for "Prologue" and Sakurai for writing the music for "Plastic Syndrome Type II". In the discography section of Buck-Tick's official website, it lists both songs as being composed by Sakurai/Imai, causing confusion as to who are the actual songwriters for each. In the book Buck-Tick, Hisashi says that Atsushi wrote the music for "Plastic Syndrome Type II" and then Hisashi later wrote the lyrics. Hence, I believe those to be the true songwriting credits. Now that I finally own both the original LP and CD, I think I may have found the source of the confusion. The tracklisting for the LP includes "Prologue" but the CD version does not include it, however the song is in the CD, just not credited. There are some minor typographical differences due to the two formats, mostly in the numbering of the tracks, as well as the "Prologue" issue. However, I believe they did not change the songwriting credit text, which makes a huge difference if one track actually contains two songs. CD states: "1 melodys [sic] by Atsushi: 8 Lylics [sic] Atsushi/Other lylics [sic] & Melodys [sic] by Imai Hisashi." (1 refers to "Plastic Syndrome Type II" but recall that "Prologue" is the first part of that track; 8 refers to "Moon Light".) Whereas the LP states: "A1 melodys [sic] by Atsushi/B1 Lylics [sic] Atsushi. Other lylics [sic] & Melodys [sic] by Imai Hisashi." (A1 refers to "Prologue" only in this format; B1 refers to "Moon Light.") If the LP version corrected the tracklisting by including "Prologue", then the songwriting credit text should have changed as well to note that Atsushi wrote the melodies for both "Prologue" and "Plastic Syndrome Type II." Please note that Buck-Tick's website was updated around 2019 (or earlier) and they updated the credits for the album so that "Prologue" is an instrumental written by Atsushi and "Plastic Syndrome Type II" has lyrics by Hisashi and music by Atsushi. I take this most recent version to the credits to be the corrected and true music writing credits.

This is the only album with a song in which Atsushi wrote all the music.

"Prologue" is the shortest song that is not an instrumental that Buck-Tick has ever released on a studio album.

This is probably not related but it is worth noting for that around this time in Japan, there was a jewelry campaign whose catch phrase was "stay gold".

Buck-Tick re-recorded the track "Moon Light" for the album Koroshi No Shirabe ~ This is NOT Greatest Hits.

Booklet Images

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Atsushi

Hisashi

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Extra Booklet Images

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Atsushi

Hisashi

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Promo Vinyl

front