Yuki Sakurai: all vocals and lyrics, electric and acoustic guitars, synthesizers, drum machine programming/// Harry F. Dalrymple,Jr.: electric bass guitar and all around good vibes.
Influences
everything! a strong and sometimes shocking tribute to the great post-war Japanese writer Yukio Mishima. he was a writer and artist of unrivaled beauty and compassion the aesthetics of beautiful poetic and historical genius the likes of which we will never, ever see again in this lifetime. Yukio Mishima explaining his thoughts and philosophies in the English language. his pronounciation is not perfect, but you can understand his honorable manifesto of modern samurai spiritual elegance and brutality. there is a very deeeeeep reason we used the title of his last book for our name and aesthetics!!!
DECAY OF THE ANGEL.a name taken from the ultimately last book in the final tetralogy of novels (the Sea of Fertility series) by the late, great post-war Japanese writer, Yukio Mishima. Mishima completed his very last book and upon hand delivering the manuscript to his publishers, subsequently occupied the headquarters of the Imperial Japanese Defense Ministry and committed ritual suicide in the honorable way of the SAMURAI,by self-inflicted disembowelment (known in the modern English lexicon as "harakiri"; literally to cut open ones' own stomach).truly Japans' LAST SAMURAI.
i shall now attempt to explain the enigma that is Yuki Sakurai: she was born on May 20th, 1969 in Katsushika-ku in downtown Tokyo, not too far from the popular tourist-friendly and historical area known as Asakusa. she is the only child of Takao Sakurai and Kazuko Sekiguchi. her father is a very strict and serious man who earned his living in the construction business and was not very musically inclined, so-to-speak. Yuki grew up listening to the popular music of her childhood, which was at the time very big in Japan. such bands as Culture Club and Duran Duran. bands that nowadays would conjour images of ridiculousness as far as serious minded musicians were concerned. but she liked these bands very much as she had no older siblings to guide her in a more artistic direction and to a path of musical diversity. her father was so strict that he forbade her to listen to such foreign trash in their house so she had to endure a solitary and often lonely childhood existence without the necessary knowledge of real and earnest music that is a blueprint for the blossoming of artistic and creative study. she studied music in school, just as all Japanese students do when involved with the process of the average school boy or girl in the quest for education and enlightenment. she never really seriously learned an instrument up until this point in her life, per se, although she dabbled with the thought of playing the drums for a short while. she also learned to play the electric piano for a period of time during her high school days. she started to play the electric guitar at the age of 30, after seeing and hearing John Frusciante of the Red Hot Chili Peppers play his guitar. she was inspired by his fragile and damaged artistic beauty and pureness of soul and his general naivete as an artist and musician. she has since studied and practiced daily for more than 10 hours to be able to recreate the sounds that she heard in her head and to create the music she had envisioned. consequently, she could be as effective an artist whether she was painting a picture or writing poetry or short stories or any other form of artistic expression of the human experience and soul, she just decided at the time to pick up the guitar to express her inner feelings and artistic spirit for which she had envisioned for so long as it was surpressed during her formative years as a young and impressionable teenager. she continues to create music and expand her knowledge of herself in her quest to discover who she is and why she was put here to create her art and music. she is more than likely more influenced by great writers such as Yukio Mishima, H.P. Lovecraft and Aleister Crowley and great painters and artists such as Salvador Dali and Taro Okamoto than she is directly influenced by musicians past, present or future. for this gift she thanks all who came before her and influenced her in this regard. and to all of you who took the time to read this from beginning to end and to find out more about the person who created DECAYof theANGEL and the genius behind the music we say from the depths of our souls-"thank you very much!". peace and respect to all who seek knowledge, truth and spiritual enlightenment.*** Harry F. Dalrymple, Jr. ***
Public Image LTD.(PiL)/SWANS/Black Flag/Brian Wilson
