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Izora Track By Track

Screw it folks, I'm bored.

Watching the New World documentaries gave me such amazing Izora nostalgia (it was the first B-T release that I was a fan through) that I have decided to do a track-by-track blog of it.

Unfortunately, I don't have the same resources in terms of Yokoyama's production notes and recording interviews, so it's just going to have to go by what I hear.

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Fujii Maki Flirting

Thinking about how someone told me that Fujii Maki took Subrosa and stuck it in his DAW and disassembled it and tried to recreate the stems to figure out how Imai made all the sounds and bugged Imai to tell him how he did the effects he couldn't figure out because this is Maki's way of flirting

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Imai, OTOH simply has no conception of masculinity at all. (Honestly I think he wants to be all the genders at once.)

Interviewer: By the way, I've been told that you liked putting on skirts when you were little.

Imai: Oh, there was such a thing. There was a girl the same age as my cousin, and when we went to play at her place I'd be interested towards skirts and I'd put them on. And then, when I was 18 or 19, we'd have skirts in our clothings while on stage. And then I'd remember that, and I'd think, 'wha, was that wrong?'... to have such a peculiar interest as a kid *laughs*.

Interviewer: *laughs*. But haven't your parents ever find out about that?

Imai: Nobody said anything while I was at the girl's house. But once, when I got home and told my parents about the skirt play, I remember they got terribly angry with me *laughs*, and shouted something like, 'cut it out!'. I didn't really understand what made them that upset though.

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Sakurai Atsushi on Gender and Sexuality

A highly-edited version of this interview has been all over Tumblr for ages, but I wanted to know the context of the quotes. So I emailed Cayce (who was the un-credited translator) and this is the rest of the interview showing the context:

Ongaku to Hito March 2018 Sakurai Atsushi No. 0 Interview translated by Cayce

OtH: We finally get to hear the real version of the single. (Note: this is a discussion of Moon Sayonara wo Oshiete)

Sakurai: The “real” version? (laughs) Was there a fake version?

OtH: No, but this song was first released as a remix by Mr. Takkyuu.

Sakurai: That's also the real version (laughs). But, I guess you're right. You wouldn't know the original song from Takkyuu's version.

OtH: It was quite a tease! (laughs) It's a nice song.

Sakurai: It is. This was the first or second song that we wrote for this album.

OtH: Was “Moon” part of the working title?

Sakurai: No, not at all. The working title was a much vaguer word that I'd never heard before.

OtH: Never heard before? Please, tell us. (laughs)

Sakurai: Please ask Imai.

OtH: So you were the one who chose the title “Moon – Tell Me Goodbye.” What kinds of feelings were you having when you wrote the lyrics to this song?

Sakurai: Well, the song has a gentle melody and chord progression. So I started there, and then there were various situations on the days when I was writing, and information I'd absorbed, and all of that informed the lyrics I wrote.

OtH: The moon is a motif you've worked with again and again over the years.

Sakurai: It is… maybe this is obvious, but it's the opposite of the sun. Shadows exist precisely because there is light and brightness. Somehow, that's where my sensibility always ends up. I think I find it calming. When the sun is shining bright, I always feel like I have to begin something, like a new year… a new semester...

OtH: Hahaha. Just because of the sun?

Sakurai: I just feel that way compulsively. But on the flip side, the moon always calms me. In the evening, when I see the moon come out at twilight, I feel like I can finally relax.

OtH: Like it's “your” time of day.

Sakurai: That's right.

OtH: These lyrics are written in women's speech. Does that mean this is more of a story than a song about you, personally?

Sakurai: That's right. Yes. You could say I'm fully performing a role, but the gender doesn't matter. It could be a woman, or it could be a man. But I felt that women's speech was gentler and softer and fit more easily into the song. So I decided I would play the role. It has nothing to do with gender.

OtH: I get the sense you've been using women's speech more and more in recent years.

Sakurai: ...doesn't it? I feel like I did it earlier, too, though.

OtH: You definitely did it earlier. But now you're able to get all pumped up to sing the role of the entirely fictional image of a woman in Imai's “The Seaside Story.” I think that kind of style has made more of an impression lately.

Sakurai: Uh… well, I guess I want to transcend gender. It's part of the job. I think it's more interesting for the audience if I have fun trying out different sorts of things. The moment I get embarrassed about this kind of thing, I'm finished.

OtH: True. You getting embarrassed would be a turn-off!

Sakurai: Yeah. But I think it's only recently that I've really become able to get pumped up about it like I do now. It's become more fun for me, too. I feel like I'm transforming into something else.

OtH: I suppose your image is similar to David Bowie's pansexuality. Or maybe it's a more Japanese image of femininity.

Sakurai: Yeah. ...I think it's more Japanese style. Bowie's calculated androgyny was certainly surprising as a work of art, but when I act a role for myself, it's the refined femininity of ancient Japan, but with power. That's what I become. In fact, I have a number of friends and acquaintances like that. Men, but with women's souls, something like that. When I look at people like them, I think… “it suits them so naturally,” or “I quite like this.” They also seem very gentle to me… what we were talking about, again? (laughs)

OtH: Hahaha. This is interesting. Please continue.

Sakurai: I suppose I have a bit of that element or quality myself. When I was a child, I felt more comfortable playing with girls. Even now I sometimes get told that I'm “feminine.”

OtH: If you went down that path, do you think you could love a man?

Sakurai: Yes.

OtH: ...what kind of interview is this, anyway? (laughs)

Sakurai: Of course, it's a bit different from sexual romantic love. But when I look at someone like Issay, he doesn't have exactly the same aesthetic as I do, but when I talk with people like him I think, “oh, I love this person!” I think that's fine. I think we should be free of the “men should be manly!” line of thinking.

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雷神 風神 - レゾナンス #rising / Raijin Fujin – Resonance #rising

Looking back through this blog, I realise that I never actually wrote a full Track-by-Track for the album version of this song! I certainly wrote about the lyrics, about the Primal Scream reference of ‘Higher Than The Sun’, about both the Earthly and the Spiritual meaning of Resonance, but not the actual music.

In early interviews. Imai reckoned this had a BritPop / Oasis feel. I can see where he’s going with that - it definitely has an early 90s British Guitar Rock sound. But to me, Oasis always sounded unpleasantly thick, almost treacly. They had a sluggish, rather ungainly sound which could only drive ahead at speed, but couldn’t take corners. I can hear a definite Stone Roses / Madchester influence to the drumbeat on the chorus. (The ‘down, down, you bring me down’ intro to I Am The Resurrection, a venerable drum pattern which dates all the way back to the Stones.)

But these guitars are far lighter, more streamlined, beautifully weightless like a glider riding a thermal in the sun. It owes far more to early shoegaze than britpop. The chiming guitar chords and slightly choirboy open fifths on the vocal harmonies are very reminiscent of early Ride, while the chugging, wide open road breeziness of the distortion sounds like something off the first Swervedriver album.

But I’m really showing my age here when I say that the song it reminds me most of, with its handclaps and cheerful blasts of noise and upbeat harmony vocals is actually The Dandy Warhols TV Theme Song:

I think that impression may be down to the big, fat synth-bass sound that kicks off the song. When the guitars kick in, they gleam like a  bright blast of sunlight after a too-long stretch of bad weather. The high, yearning lead riff is so light, so breezy, as it soars above the rhythm section’s poppy groove like a seagull. Is it ironic that the album’s sunniest track is named after the two Japanese storm gods? No, I think that’s actually the whole point. The song is not about perfect weather, but about choosing to transcend your troubles - a sentiment in Imai’s lyrics that dates back as far as ‘all hail psycho bitch rise above yourself.’ (The lyrics ‘behind the clouds, it’s lovely’ always spring to mind.)

The soaring guitar drops out when the vocals first come in, but on the second half of the verse, Hide’s gorgeous high vocal harmony occupies the same sonic territory. In the background, B-T’s trademark electronic insect noises chatter and buzz, bubbling around the vocals like swifts chasing insects high up into the atmosphere. Hide takes lead vocals on the second verse, leaving me wondering who sings the high harmony behind his verse - surely it’s not Imai?

The chorus is so insistent, so stompy and cheerful it’s like something out of Slade. Haha, OK, maybe this is a little Oasis-like after all. (The joke in UK music journalist circles back in the 90s was that Oasis were constantly aiming at the Beatles but achieving only the heights of Slade.) But Slade’s relentless joy and positivity in the face of soggy British 70s Christmases is surely a good comparison point for Imai’s defiant cheerfulness on this track.

Imai’s scrappy punk voice fits the tone of the chorus so perfectly - the little Johnny Rotten curls he does at the end of the phrase ‘ハートに火をつけろ’ - ‘tsukerrrrrrrroooooo!’ are just classic Imai cool. It’s not quite howling, but it’s still a raised fist of defiance, a refusal to be beaten down by tragic events. I love the little laser-blast pulses that punctuate the end of each bar! And the swagger of the bass as it does a quick run down the scale before returning to the pedal point. So glam-punk! A little bit Trevor Bolder, a little bit Sid Vicious.

Immediately after the first chorus, the breakdown. Oh man, the electronic chaos of the break! Yes, I have been mourning the lack of theremin on this album, but it’s clear from the wibbling insectoid buzz of this break that the new Buck-Tick are progressing from spooky electronic theremin-noises to the complete panoply of strange slithery sounds that a full analogue synthesiser offers. Those little squiggles of sound and filter sweeps drive me wild with delight! There are those chattering nanorobot sounds that I associate with Yokoyama’s ‘manipulation’ and it seems that the idea of the long double interlude was down to him. 

The Hooverphonic sweeps are like a palate-cleanser, blowing the cobwebs away, and then we’re back to the Lange Gerade motorik rhythm, and a troglodyte 2-note repeating guitar ‘solo’ (I think it’s a guitar? It’s so heavily treated with a heavy chorus and wobbly echo that it could be anything TBH.) This is a real trick of Imai’s, to combine melodic simplicity with textural complexity. It’s just an itchy, 2-note scratch, but the shifting timbre of the effects makes it so compelling, satisfying the neurodivergent brain’s need for sameness and novelty at the same time.

One more triumphant verse, this time with the high harmony vocals all the way through - as sweet as anything the Beach Boys dreamed up - and then it’s Chorus all the way to the fade. There’s a neat trick at the very end - at 4:20 the bass suddenly goes double time (I think from eighth notes to sixteenth notes?) hurling the song forwards so propulsively that it *sounds* like it speeds up even as it stays at the same BPM. The backing vocals reach a fever pitch in a kind of football chant, completely taking over when the main vocals drop out about 4:33. The space noises snap into focus like a giant engine warming up. A very slow rising phaser effect on the guitars creates a sense of intense movement as the bass starts to climb the scale - honestly it feels like the song takes off and blasts into orbit during the last 10 seconds. Truly an explosive ending to a propulsive song!

Best Bit: Come on, am I really going to pick anything except Yokoyama’s first extended noise break? At 2:46 one gigantic filter sweep seems to glide right across the stereo field, crash-landing about 2:50 and immediately exploding into a cloud of busy, termite-like robots chattering among themselves, followed by the gear-change turnabout at 2:55. You can tell they had so much fun in the studio, mucking about with the synths to create these sounds.

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This was surprisingly difficult (most of the songs on this record are about the same quality) but now I really wish I'd gone for One Night Ballet, which was my original pick before swerving.

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This was a really interesting read! Very well researched and beautifull expressed. Definitely learned new things from it. I always appreciate long-form B-T blogging!

Years ago when I was first getting into B-T someone asked me what their songs were about and I struggled to come up with 'Sex, angels and astronomy?' - so I think that 'Sex Death and Futurism' is a much better way of expressing it.

It is done!! This beast of an essay is out!!It's about what makes Buck-Tick special by exploring some aspects of their artistry, particularly their most common topics and tropes. The article has no pictures as such, but you can see all the pics and some videos on the article notes 🫶

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Well, it took a year and a half, but I did finally get a definitive answer.

Imai did indeed say 'Yes, I like human beings' and yes, he did mean 'I am attracted to human beings.'

Driving myself crazy over this interview with Imai Hisashi.

The question is quite ambiguous, "Have you ever liked someone of the same sex" - I've seen three translations of the word used for "like" here: a) be in love with b) liking (as in friendship) c) liking (as in fancying)

Atsushi's answer is absolutely unambiguous; he starts gushing about how much he loves Issay and how cool he thinks Issay is

Hide, Yuta and Toll's answers are equally unambiguous. All of them specify, "romantic love?" and answer "No!"

Imai, in very neurodivergent fashion, responds to an ambiguous question with an equally ambiguous answer. "I have! As a human being."

And I don't know how to translate that.

Because in English, "I like you... as a person" has strong connotations of "...but I'm not physically attracted to you and don't want to date / have sex with you."

But "I like you... as a human being" has strong connotations of "I am so strongly attracted to your whole personality that the details of your physical sex are simply irrelevant."

And in Japanese, I don't know if either of those connotations exist.

However, the latter interpretation is so common among neurodivergent folks that there's a whole term for it: Neuroqueer (in a nutshell, the idea that the whole concepts of binary gender and fixed orientation are so heavily dependent on the exact types of social conventions that ND folks struggle with, as to render them meaningless to us.)

I love that Imai leaves it so ambiguous. There's one interpretation that leaves this at "I love men, but only platonically" and there's another that is "I love... humans!" And given my headcanon of Imai as Neurodivergent, I know which interpretation I'm going with.

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黄昏のハウリング / Tasogare no Howling

It starts, fittingly, with the slam of a door. A cold, hollow, echoing sound of utter finality. Something has ended. A portal closed for the very last time. And then nearly 10 seconds of silence, as the echoes fade away. It strikes me again: the use of silence on this album is masterful. And yet it’s not total silence. Out of the echoes arises a faint hum, maybe an orchestral pad, with the hint of angelic sighs - a thousand breaths being held at once.

When the first echoey guitar chimes at 0:10, it is the weariest exhale, caught and strung out with an endless delay. Bass and drums kick in at the same time, a stately funeral pace, minimal to the point almost of bleakness. By comparison, even the funereal arrangement of Ai no Soretsu sounds like a costume-party carnival. Tasogare no Howling opens on a barren, windswept tundra. The gleaming guitars are as corruscating as the ice of freezing rain. In the background, a staccato synth-bass drives the procession forward, while all about, tiny squalls of static and electronic noise nip at the ears like gusts of drifting snow.

In an odd way, the orchestration mimics the opening track, Hyakumannayuta no Chiri SCUM, but instead of warmth and welcome, the impeccable sound design creates a cold, cavernous space of loss and emptiness. The only relief from the arctic wind are the tiny, echoing notes of piano off in the distance - I think Yokoyama-san added them simply to provide some warmth and humanity, like a sparkle of sunlight glinting off all the forbidding icy grandeur.

But as on the opening track, the surprise is the deep, tender humanity of Imai’s voice. His lower register, when he sings from his chest tone, is so beautiful, so expressive - you can feel the weary weight of loss, his voice as raw as if he has been up all night crying. Imai has never been a particularly emotionally expressive man; he keeps his cards close to his chest. But as his voice creaks and frays, it’s apparent that still waters run deep. (This is probably projection, but I’ve always detected a touch of alexithymia in Imai. It’s not that he doesn’t have deep emotions, but he seems to struggle to even process the shape of them, let alone express them.)

The arrangement builds slowly. The details are so exquisite: sighed scraps of backwards-masked vocals (0:37); the repeated clang of a metal icepick in the background (0:43); a weird rubber-band distortion (0:55). Shards of jangly guitars drift in about 1:12, wrapping Imai’s voice in angel wings, then around 1:40, haunting electronic sighs like a rising wind seem to lift the song up into the chorus. Chugging rhythm guitars build up the tone in the mid-range, while a charming clinking sound like a marimba made of bones dances in the treble.

Imai’s voice wavers tremulously on the chorus, an unforced vibrato. The contrast between the icy grandeur of the arrangement and the bewildered humanity of the singer gives the song its great power - like an explorer cresting icy snowdrifts, this is a man struggling through an emotional landscape that seems wholly unfamiliar to him. I don’t know why it’s so unexpected - after all, Imai wrote the music for all those dark, tortured gothic anthems, from Taiyou ni Korosareta to Romance. It’s easy to think of Imai as the upbeat, cyberpunk dance-lover, and forget that he sculpted the epic underground caverns where Acchan, Prince of Darkness played.

After the chorus, a piano solo - again, I think this is Yokoyama-san’s work? But the lovely fluid melody creates such a sweet respite of hope, echoing the echoey strums of the guitars, lifting the listener up like the beating wings of some giant beast. The second verse has lush vocal harmonies adding warmth and humanity. The backing vocals are oddly sweet: Imai’s deep spoken intonation of ‘Howling’ mixes with gasps and little exhalations of ‘hoo!’ as if he’s reached the top of a long, exhausting flight of steps. But these extra vocals convey the odd sense that Imai is no longer alone on his journey through the wastelands. The beasts have gathered; the angels are flocking. By the second chorus, Imai’s voice has changed - he has gathered strength from his ghostly companions, as if he is persevering, rather than simply resigned.

And at 4:46, the whole song cracks and breaks open. Do you see what I mean about the use of silence? The guitar feedback rings out at the end of the chorus, then abruptly everything totally cuts out for a split second - like the whole world holding its breath! The calm before the storm, The eye of the hurricane. Christ, he makes us wait for the best bit. Then oh my god, what a guitar solo! A rising squall of feedback, then the pummel of Toll’s drums - and the heavens break open and the storm lets loose.

For two whole chord progressions, Imai just hangs there, on one single note, like a bird of prey on a thermal (I counted it, it’s 20 full beats!) before the note frays, breaks up, that distinctive electronic shriek that means he’s using the sustainer on the Stabilizer Guitar. The tone swoops, shudders, warps and bends - honestly the first time I heard this solo, I actually thought it was theremin, it’s so liquid and quicksilver - before dropping out of the sky. Wait, no, it soars back up, it cries, it wails, a storm of fury and loss and devastation and triumph, a single man howling against nature, howling at god about the unfairness of fate. 

Imai is not a particularly technical guitar player (though he has certainly demonstrated over the years, that he can play elaborate riffs and solos, he just chooses not to) - but the intense emotion of his squalling atonal noise solos leaves me gasping at his sheer expressiveness. The chaotic simplicity of it is devastating. There’s a whole cathartic emotional journey expressed through guitar noise - he falls down, drags himself back up, claws at his hair, spins around, turns himself inside out, then finally, as the drums come to their cataclysmic conclusion, he lets the mood waver and echo away. Still hanging on to the last drops of sound, he swings back and forth over the brink a few times, sawing away at the tremolo arm until the actual note is gone, there’s only echo, delay, reverb, a stretched-out ghost of a guitar sound drifting off into eternity in the silence of the tomb.

It is not a light or easy listen - it’s not a tune you can just have on in the background. It grabs your emotions by the neck and takes them on a terrifying ride through the rawness and bleakness of loss before coming to the peace of acceptance. But the more extreme the human experience, the more extreme the music. This band’s members went through an inexpressibly extreme experience in losing Sakurai; as did the band’s fans. There is no greater gift from a musician to a listener than to express the inexpressible with the rawness of sound. It somehow feels right to listen to sad music when you’re sad, angry music when you’re angry, grieving music when you’re sad and devastated and reeling and grieving.

Music is healing.

Exorcism.

Catharsis.

The whole album of SUBROSA, but in particular this song, is such a gift to the fans - giving us a place to experience, and work through our grief. Thank you, B-T.

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FML

It turns out, after buying a new, region free DVD drive - the problem wasn’t the optical drive. The problem is, despite I SWEAR I ORDERED THE DVD - they sent me a freaking BLU RAY

A new DVD player was £30 and I needed one anyway. A new BLU RAY player is £100 and I’ll never use it for anything else

Honestly does anyone in the UK want to buy an unplayed 4 disc New World set?

Well, that’s one way to find out that the optical drive on your long disused MacBook Pro has died 😭

Oh well, at least I have lyrics now (until I can get to Argos to buy a new DVD player)

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Well, that’s one way to find out that the optical drive on your long disused MacBook Pro has died 😭

Oh well, at least I have lyrics now (until I can get to Argos to buy a new DVD player)

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Apparently it is a work by Takeshi Uchibayashi (the artist who gave Imai the concept for Izora)

Pyrite is of course the scientific name for FOOL’S GOLD - a warning against being distracted by pretty shiny things (even shiny things too bright to see?) And also of course a massive Madchester reference - Imai is back on his Stone Roses kick perhaps

Imai has a TESSERACT on the wall of his studio!

Honestly, I want to cry. 😭 Truly he is my soulmate on the other side of the earth 🌏

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Imai has a TESSERACT on the wall of his studio!

Honestly, I want to cry. 😭 Truly he is my soulmate on the other side of the earth 🌏

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Mabushikute mienai

I went looking for the lyrics and found this?

Acchan?!? ...Imai-san?!?!?

It's on the Internet Achive if anyone can read Japanese.

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Summer is almost here, so tell us the one song that evokes summer for you.

Acchan you gigantic f*cling goth you 🤣

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(Sorry to keep going on about this, I know very few people are interested in these kinds of sonic details, but they fascinate me!)

Anyway, from another interview with Imai and Yokoyama, it seems that the song was designed with a specific eye to the staging:

横山「ステージングをイメージして音を足したのも初めてですよね。ヒデさんから “これ以上、もう音足さないの？って言われて、”どうしました？”って聞いたら、ライブで演奏する時のヒデさんの役割的なものの話になって」 ーーそれでどうなったんですか？ 横山「キーンっていう金属音をメタルパーカッションで。それは音源として入れずにライブでやればいいっていう話でもあるんですけど、ヒデさんの発想で、今井さんの曲に音を足すっていうのも今までにない感じだったから、それも新しい試みだなと。音を作りながらも、視覚的なことも意識したような曲です」 Yokoyama: "It was the first time we added sounds with a staging image in mind. Hide asked me, "Aren't you going to add any more sounds?" and when I asked him, "What's wrong?" it turned into a conversation about Hide's role when performing live." --So what happened? Yokoyama: "The high-pitched metallic sound was made with metal percussion. It was also something we could do live without adding it as a sound source, but Hide's idea of ​​adding sounds to Imai's song was something we'd never done before, so I thought that was also a new attempt. It's a song where we were conscious of visuals while creating the sounds."

Haha, so Yokoyama specifically added in the metal-banging samples in order to give Hide something to do onstage!

The Mystery of The Drumsticks is Solved!

The Subrosa tour preview reveals all, with regards to Hide's mysterious drumsticks!

As shown at about 1:34, they are indeed for hitting the small sample pad affixed above Hide's keyboards.