Japanese Bands' Archives


Night Mirage / Ippu-do, 1983

“Night Mirage” was released from Epic/Sony on July 21st, 1983 as Ippu-do’s last album.

Masami Tsuchiya, Vo/Gt of the band had already started his solo career and released an album when this album was released, therefore the album became closer to his solo works rather than this band’s former post-punk/new wave albums.

As Tsuchiya joined Japan, a British New Wave band as a support guitarist on behalf of the original guitarist Rob Dean for their “Oil on Canvas” tour in early 80’s, Ippu-do had been forced stopping its work temporally. While Tsuchiya playing with Japan, the drummer Shoji Fujii left the band. This album was created by the left members of Ippu-do, Masami Tsuchiya and Keyboard player Akira Mitake with guest members such as Percy Jones(fret-less bass), Steve Jansen(drummer from Japan), Richard Barbieri(Keyboard player from Japan), Yann Tomita(Steelpan) etc…

The original release includes 10 tracks, there’s the reissue version with 7 extra ambient tracks which is much more worthy to listen to. Tracks from original release are mostly colored with oriental, otherwise middle-eastern melodies and ambience, and it oriented the Tsuchiya’s later sounds for his solo career. Dancing steelpan played by Yann Tomita, floating feeling of rhythm played by Steve Jansen and Percy Jones, and the overhanging synth sound played by Richard Barbieri and Akira Mitake directed the vision pictured by Masami Tsuchiya.


NIGHT MIRAGE +7