Sugizo originally rose to fame as the guitarist and occasional violinist of ’90s visual kei legend Luna Sea, and beside still being active in that reformed group, he is also part of two other bands: in the also reformed X Japan he took over the guitarist duties of his old friend hide, who died shortly after X disbanded in ’97 and he is a member of UK’s tribal trance pioneers, Juno Reactor. And besides all this, he has an extremely interesting solo career as well, where he experienced with a pretty wide selection of electronic music genres including drum’n’bass, psy-trance, downtempo and so on. For the last couple of years, he gave his solo career a rest, but now he is back, preparing for the 20th anniversary with several new releases… starting today.

The first of these is a track released digitally today on iTunes on his newly relaunched label Sephirot, and it is also a tribute to his recently passed childhood hero, as it is a cover of the David Bowie classic, Life On Mars?. It’s a special, orchestral cover, recorded with the help of jazz pianist Takana Miyamoto which reportedly turned out quite emotional. He will follow this with two other tracks due out in September and October and finally he’s gonna release Oto, his first solo album in five years this November. There is no preview yet from the new song, however there is an English subbed video message from him, talking about Bowie’s influence on him, his upcoming releases… and about how damn hot it is outside. So, check that out below.

Life On Mars? is available on iTunes.