Buck-Tick Zone

Original Titles in Japanese

Kurutta Taiyo(u)

Speed

Henshin

Angel Fish

Sakura

Chikashitsu No Melody

Taiyo Ni Korosareta

Titles Translated

Kurutta Taiyo - "The Sun Went Insane" (I believe this is how they translate it the Picture Product documentary but "Mad Sun" also works)

Henshin (Reborn) - "Metamorphosis (Reborn)"

Sakura - "Cherry Blossom"

Chikashitsu No Melody - "Basement Melody"

Taiyo Ni Korosareta - "Killed by the Sun"

Notes

Ranked #2 on the album chart. 320,000 copies sold.

This was the first Buck-Tick album to have multiple singles. In fact, a record of 3 singles were released. ("Speed", "MAD", and "Jupiter"). This is the most amount of singles Buck-Tick has ever released from a single album. Music videos were made for each single, including a video single that was released for "MAD" which also contained a music video for the B-side. Subsequently, 3 singles were also released from Six/Nine.

This album took around 900 hours to record, which is about double the normal time to record an album. Atsushi's parts were recorded relatively quickly with a total time of roughly 2 weeks and the pace was about 1 song per day. Whereas, it took Hisashi about three times longer to record his parts due to all the effects he wanted to use. Also, after 2 albums in a row engineered by a foreigner, Hisashi was able to talk in very fine details what he wanted for this album. There were also a lot of tracks per song to produce the results. "Brain, Whisper, Head, Hate is Noise" having the most tracks at about 84.

This album features 11 songs, which is more than usual as up to now, Buck-Tick had been releasing only 10 songs per album (with the exception of the indies Hurry Up Mode and the 1990 re-release which contains 11 songs).

One of Hisashi's demo songs that did not make it to the album was titled "Ton-chan Ikka" (Ton-chan's Family).

Hide wrote 4 songs for the album. 3 are on the album and the 4th is "Narcissus", b-side to the first single "Speed".

This is the first Buck-Tick album to have songs whose titles were written in katakana instead of English: "Speed" and "Angel Fish".

The word "taiyo(u)" means sun and is spelled as "taiyou" in Japanese but since Buck-Tick were on the Indies label Taiyo Records, which omits the "u" in romaji as is standard practice, I have chosen to use "taiyo" as the spelling throughout most of this site.

This is the first album where Buck-Tick did not have a song with the same title as the album, nor is the phrase in any of the lyrics. Atsushi wanted "Kurutta Taiyo" to be a song title but ultimately felt that it encapsulates the entire image of the album. It should be noted that "Kurutta Taiyo" means "mad sun" or "crazy sun" and in the song "MAD", the sun is mentioned. "My Funny Valentine" also mentions both crazy and the sun in the lyrics but separately in different lines. "Taiyo Ni Korosareta" obviously mentions the sun but the word crazy is not in the lyrics. It's true that "kurutta" can mean some other things, but in the "Picture Product" documentary, the English narration uses the mad/crazy translation. Atsushi mentioned in an interview that the sun was a theme word but as he developed the lyrics, a story started to emerge. The sun can stand for himself or the mentality of everything. The sun is something so big that it illuminates everything, appears insane, and we can't live without it. It's something that we are the most scared of, even if we don't normally pay attention to it. He was trying to convey that sense of hopelessness. There have been a few works in Japanese pop culture that uses 'kurutta something or other' but this is the only 'kurutta taiyo' that I know of. Examples include the films Kurutta Kajitsu (Crazed Fruit) (1956) and Kurutta Yajuu (Crazy Beast) (1976).

It was originally intended that Atsushi would write all the lyrics for this album but both he and Hisashi felt that Hisashi was more suited to write the lyrics for "Brain, Whisper, Head, Hate is Noise". Hence, it is the only song on the album with lyrics by Hisashi.

The title for "Taiyo Ni Korosareta" notably uses kanji and katakana instead of the current norm which is kanji and hiragana. This could be for various reasons. In recent times, katakana is reserved for foreign words (hence "Speed" and "Angel Fish" are written in katakana) but it also used for emphasis, much like italics in English. However, I do not think that is the reason in this case as even the particle "ni" is in katakana. Rather, I think the title using katakana is a throwback to slightly older times when katakana was the norm. This was as recent as pre-World War II. With the previous album, Aku No Hana, the artwork was purposely trying to invoke the feeling of 1920s Japan. That is one such time, for example, when katakana would have been more prevalent than today.

The songs in this album use less English in the lyrics than previous efforts. Of note, the titles for the songs "Speed" and "Angel Fish" are written in katakana though they could have been written in English. Also, there were interviewers who asked Atsushi why did he sing "onna no ko, otoko no ko" in the song "Speed" when he very well could have sang "girls, boys". (To put these simple words in English is much more the style of Japanese pop music.) Atsushi responded that it would not have fit the melody. Even the band thought it was really Japanese-heavy at first and wasn't sure it would work. It may sound strange that a Japanese band was surprised they were using Japanese lyrics but this viewpoint is because Japanese pop and rock music is heavily sprinkled with English, whether it makes sense or not to do so, because English is viewed as cool as well as the natural language of rock music.

Atsushi sings in a noticeably lower register throughout most of the album than in previous albums. After this release, he does not return to the high-pitched singing of the early days.

The original title of "Speed" was going to be "Acid" but the band decided that was too "yabai" (risky) since Hisashi was arrested for that drug two years prior. In the lyrics there is an unknown written as "XXXX". During the song it sounds like Atsushi is singing "ii ashido" (good acid) but it is a backmasking of "jouzai" (tablet/pill). On a live performance on the show "Music Station", Atsushi did not sing that word but rather let down his microphone and mouthed to the camera what appears to be "kokain" (cocaine) to fans at the time but now knowing the censored word, I see that his lips form "jouzai" much more plausibly than "kokain". During most concerts, he appears to sing "jouzai" rather than censor himself.

Hisashi was listening to a lot of Jesus Jones around the time of recording and feels that "Speed" is in the vein of Jesus Jones. He thinks that "Chikashitsu No Melody" is more in the vein of DAF and the motorik beat.

The original title of "Henshin (Reborn)" was "Reason".

"Sakura" is the first song in which Atsushi deals with his mother's illness and death. Sakura being the first kanji in his last name Sakurai. In no way does the song "Sakura" take melodic inspiration from the traditional song about cherry blossoms, although at the time Hisashi would play a bit of the traditional song live.

Yukihiko Sugimoto was the drum tuner for this album and would work on the next couple of albums. When Toll met him, it really changed his whole mentality on how to tune the drums.

This is the last album with the band's stylist since business relations were marred by personal relations. (Married and divorced from Atsushi.)

Buck-Tick re-recorded the tracks "MAD", "Speed", and "Jupiter" for the album Koroshi No Shirabe ~ This is NOT Greatest Hits.

The songs "Jupiter," "Brain, Whisper, Head, Hate is Noise," and "Taiyo Ni Korosareta" were remixed for the Buck-Tick remix album Shapeless (1994). Another remix of "Taiyo Ni Korosareta" appeared on the compilation album Real Techno Intelligence Chapter 1 (1994).

The title "Chikatetsu No Melody" may have been inspired by the French film Mélodie en sous-sol (1963) which was released in Japan under the title Chikashitsu No Melody and in some English markets as Any Number Can Win.

The first copies of the CD were limited edition with a clear case and album cover was comprised of 6 transparencies. 5 transparencies had the image of one member and the 6th transparency was a design that looks like the letter X. (The webmaster's copy had the members in the front and the X transparency in the back. I have kept it that way when storing the CD on the shelf.)

This album was recorded at a Victor studio, most likely Aoyama as the band has recorded there many times. If so, then this is the 3rd album Buck-Tick recorded at Victor Aoyama Studio.

The was the 1st album to be engineered by Hitoshi Hiruma, who would go on to work with Buck-Tick for many years.

This was the 2nd album to be engineered by Yasuaki "V" Shindoh.

The 2007 reissue was packaged like the original 1991 limited edition release.

Transparencies

Atsushi

Hisashi

Hide

U-ta

Toll

design

Music Video Stills

Speed, directed by Wataru Hayashi

Jupiter, directed by Korehisa Fukuda

MAD, directed by Yuichi Araya