Bellaphon

The roots of Belaphon date back to 1982 in Kyoto, Japan, when Taiqui Tomiie and Mitsutaka Kaki joined Starless. After six months the group broke up and Tomiie and Kaki hooked up with Toshihiro Tanaka and Isamu Kakitani to form Bellaphon. It was not long before Kakitani left the group. Taking his place was Yuji Ono. When Ono left in 1984, the group decided not to replace him. Instead, Tanaka and Kaki took up the missing bass, with Kaki playing synth bass and Tanaka adding bass work to his guitar chores. The group released a single called Labyrinth in 1985. Their CD, Firefly, was released in April of 1987. They did a tour for the album, but shortly afterwards went through a fairly dramatic personnel change. Out was Tanaka and in as his replacement was Toru Ota. The group broke up in 1988. However, 1995 saw the release of Delphi, a disc of Bellaphon rarities. The following year saw a reissue of Firefly on Musea Records. In 1997 Kaki and Tomiie began efforts to reunite Bellaphon, but Tanaka was unavailable due to personal reasons. They recruited Masahiro Torigaki to fill out the lineup. By 1998, Yozox Yamamoto was added to the group and they were once again a four-piece. However, Yamamoto did not stay with the group long and they went inactive until 1999. In that year, Kakuhiro Nishimura was added to the lineup as a second keyboardist.