The Embodiment of No.0’s Cycle of “Love & Death” on a Simple Stage
BUCK-TICK Tour No.0 -Guernican Moon-
Standing Tour @ Toyosu
Excite News
20 November 2018
photo by Seitaro Tanaka
text by Yuka Okubo
BUCK-TICK’s nationwide tour, TOUR No.0 – Guernican Moon -, which began on October 13, stopped over at Toyosu PIT for their Tokyo show on Saturday, the November 10, the night of the crescent moon.
They will perform at 19 different locations nationwide, with a total of 21 shows for this standing tour, which includes songs from their album, No.0. In their hall tour, BUCK-TICK 2018 TOUR No.0, which ran from March to July earlier this year, the band used an impressive stage set along with videos that brought colours into the songs to draw the audiences’ hearts into the story of No.0. But this time, in this standing tour, although the theme has not changed, a witty set list and spacious staging has turned this into something that allows the audience to experience this world together with the band.
The synchronisation of clapping in “Hikari no Teikoku” and the frenzy of the cat paw dance in “GUSTAVE” were further intensified, for example, and even though I, as a reporter, remain calm, as the audiences’ cheers grow ever louder with each of the band members’ movements, I can’t help but feel thrilled. As the cadent drumming of Yagami Toll (drums), the song-like bass lines by Higuchi Yutaka (bass) that brings such a groove, the edgy guitar riffs from Hoshino Hidehiko (guitar), and the noisy yet emotional guitar sound of Imai Hisashi’s (guitar) meld together, the euphoria in the venue gets raised even higher. The expressiveness of Sakurai Atsushi (vocalist), who sang in the spotlight and performed as if he was a part of the videos in the hall tour, has become even more refined and with just his emotional vocals and more aggressive performance, they have shown us the embodiment of the iconic world of No.0 on this simple stage.
As the tour is still ongoing, details will be withheld, but like the name of this tour, the setlist, which was put together with a focus on No.0’s songs, appears to revolve around the keyword “moon”. As if watching over them, the “moon” was present in both their performance of the cries of a high-minded fool in “BABEL”, and their expression of an ephemeral life that seems as if it was about to disappear before our eyes in “Moon Sayonara wo Oshiete”. Since ancient times, the waxing and waning of the moon along with life and death have been associated with each other and expressed in a variety of ways. That was exactly how they were linked, beginning with the feeling of life coming into existence to the dynamic sound of “Reishiki Juusan-Gata ‘Ai’ ”, and ending with the calls of love filled with open emotion during a person’s final days in “Tainai Kaiki”. Yet, without leaning towards the serious, it appears that the sublimation of the “joy of life” is the heart of this tour. Although his words may differ, here and there, at different points in time during this tour, Sakurai appears to be implying “I wish everyone happiness”, and those feelings of his are, once again, unforgettable.
This tour will continue on until their performance at Kyoto’s KBS Hall on December 22 (Saturday), followed by their performance under the waning moon on December 29 (Saturday), entitled “TOUR No.0 -FINAL-” at Tokyo’s Nippon Budokan. I do hope that we will be able to experience this exceptional, jubilant time together.