![]() ![]() 9 tour in Japan was to feel overwhelmed by a gorgeous tide of gripping visuals and hip-shaking, gut-wrenching music, yet alone in a sea of people who, to a great extent, seemed to have no idea what the fuck was going on. ![]() ![]() That way, at least, they'd be able to perform at Wave Gotik Treffen! As it was, to attend the Atom Miraiha No. Yet beyond that, it seemed that on this tour, more than ever before, Buck-Tick's fanbase are completely mismatched from Buck-Tick's music, and that Buck-Tick themselves might have done better to move to Berlin (where people actually know how to dance to EBM), change their names to something Latinate (to avoid being targeted as undesirable refugees from a culturally repressive country), and start their career all over again calling themselves Das Buchbauten-Tikwerk. But gone are the danceable days of Mona Lisa Overdrive Xanadu, and apparently, the fans from those days are gone too.Ĭould this be a hangover from The Mortal? Were the all fangirls who balked at the darkness and violence of Sakurai's solo work continuing to balk at the darkness and violence of Atom Miraiha? It certainly doesn't help that the fussy and restrictive atmosphere of concert hall tours is directly at odds with the needs of dance music, which calls for an open floor and the possibility of getting down. “Universe” is a dance track, and a good one. Nobody seemed to know how to dance to “ Pinoa Icchio” or “ Septem Peccata Mortalia,” let alone “ Bi Neo Universe,” which the crowd uniformly treated as a “no dancing allowed” ballad. Given the catchy EBM beats throughout Atom Miraiha, I wouldn't have expected this. For every show where the crowd demonstrated wild excitement, there were two shows where crowd response hovered between tepid and lukewarm, except for a few tired crowd-pleaser numbers. Many of the venues were places where Buck-Tick have performed countless times, and most were sold out, yet at nearly every show, the crowd displayed a hesitance to fully engage. 9 tour spanned the entire fall season, including about 30 shows in cities all over Japan. Like most of Buck-Tick's recent hall tours, the Atom Miraiha No. Let's hope the trend continues.Īnd yet, despite the fact that Atom Miraiha is not only a bold new artistic step for Buck-Tick, but also a homecoming after a year of separation, fan enthusiasm for the Atom Miraiha No. Does that mean that Atom Miraiha marks the beginning of a new epoch for Buck-Tick yet again? It would certainly seem so. Sakurai asserted his creative authority this dramatically was in the making of Kurutta Taiyou, and that was the defining moment when Buck-Tick left their dandelion-headed childhood behind and came into their adulthood as a band. Every second of Atom Miraiha makes it clear that Sakurai has continued to exert his newfound artistic authority, and is now much less likely to compromise in the themes he tackles, which seems to have reminded Imai of all the reasons why Sakurai was his muse in the first place. The Mortal was clearly a massively cathartic, self-finding experience for him, to the extent that after it was over, he told FT that he felt “completely empty” and had “no idea what to do next.” You can't come back from an experience like that. No more would he pander to fan expectations, Imai's wishes, or Buck-Tick's “image” – he was going to say exactly what he meant, and if listeners couldn't handle it, then they could suck it up. For The Mortal, Sakurai explained that he'd decided not to censor himself anymore. We wondered what effect The Mortal would have on Buck-Tick – well, this is it. Though Buck-Tick no longer receive mainstream airplay, the massive contrast between the cynical darkness of Atom Miraiha and the platitude-ridden pop-schlock of the rest of what passes for “music” from major labels in Japan these days just makes Atom Miraiha all the more meaningful by comparison. It's profoundly dishonest and it just gets worse every year, which only serves to highlight the invisible elephant of people's growing desperation. Everything has to be white, bright and sparkly, with no sadness, anger, frustration, or criticism to be found. And yet, the current trend in the Japanese music industry is to deny anything remotely negative. Look at the latest data on climate change, let alone recent political events, and the punk slogan “No Future” never seemed so mainstream. ![]() Dark tortured youth may not come back, but welcome dark tortured middle age! Nothing like a half century on earth to point your eyes in the direction of the Abyss again, and looking at the state of the world these days, that Abyss is seeming rather closer than ever before. ![]()
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