diryangrey

oh hey, someone mentioned ナイトメア on here and i get to be relevant again~

i'm taking a guess and assuming your copy of ジャイアニズム is the 2006 VAP remaster, which in my opinion sounds absolutely terrible.

通常版 is two jewel cases w/ tan booklets (& separate catalog #s) [VPCC-84156 & VPCC-84157]
初回版 is one jewel case w/ the same tan-coloured booklet in a black jacket w/ gold trim [VPCC-84155]
They're the same audio/tracklist, only difference afaik is packaging & booklet contents.

i don't know why they thought this was a good idea but this release was remastered to have a similar sound quality to メア's upcoming VAP albums, which i really don't think these songs sound nice with.

i'm not 100% on where this PV actually comes from but i'm taking a guess & saying it was included w/ the first press of 自由奔放天真爛漫 [SDR-021], since that's the first release where the track shows up.
So as far as getting the ~exact same~ audio that's on the PV, check out that disc.

One thing you might want to look into is the 2003 Speed Disk 'original' ジャイアニズム [SDR-049 & SDR-050] (only 1 ver. of release across two jewel cases).
I say 'original' bc every track that's on this disc is ALSO a remaster (except for 華談 & love tripper; they're new recordings here) but imho this master is miles better for every single track, compared to both their  first appearances on various speed disk singles/omnibus and any later remaster/retakes.
I'm a bit biased here but this is definitely my favourite release of メア's catalog, if you call it one release.

I think the sound guy took every instrument's track & slammed a hard compressor on it & drowned Yomi's voice in a stupid amount of reverb, putting it kinda low down in the mix. Both the kind of decisions that should ruin a release but somehow it worked super well here, which is why i'm so pissed the later release went for such a 'normal' approach instead.

in 2014 i saw Royz (for their 7hrs live) in beppu & Mejibray in nagoya -

Royz's audience was like 10% male but w/ the exception of i think one dude all the other guys who showed up went as fancy w/ their clothes/hairmake as any young indiez band's members look. Some gya also dressed up that much & some didn't but for the guys in particular, seems like everyone who went looked unmistakably 'into vkei' enough that they looked like members mid-photoshoot from another band.

Meji's show was a lot more balanced (maybe bc it was a more normal show not in a tiny city?) and i'd guess like 70% girls 30% guys. people still dressed up but it was a smaller percent of the audience that did that i think. Aside from the gender ratio & the maybe 30% of the fans that went full vk with their look, i feel like the audience of that meji show would be a lot easier to confuse w/ the crowd at a punk or metal, non-vk show.

I & my two friends were (i'm pretty sure) the only foreigners at the Royz show (of ~400 people); there were maybe 15-20 overseas girls at Meji's show (decently full ELL if that makes for a # for reference to anybody), but to the best of my knowledge i was the only foreign guy at either.

Oh, maybe worth noting i went to see Sadie's instore/CD-signing at Tower Shinjuku & off the top of my head it was a pretty similar ratio to Meji, maybe a bit less even though? & looked like the ages of people had a good deal more in their late 20s / early 30s. Meji's live seemed like mostly people in their 20s, Royz's felt similar but younger overall.

Out of the shows i saw here at cons (Naitomea, Meteoroid, Pentagon), seemed 50/50 as far as i could tell. but at The GazettE's oneman (as in, no anime-con attached) that was almost as 90/10 girls to guys as the Royz show. i even saw like at least three sets of a teenager who'd brought along their clearly uninterested parents.

I also showed up to Revine & Dixdriver's instores just bc they were near my hostel & why the hell not if i'm already in Japan, and i was definitely the only guy & the only foreigner at both. I'm sure i looked even more out of place than i felt.

On 7/15/2017 at 6:12 PM, TheZigzagoon said:

Namaatatakai ame to zaratsuita jounetsu' is the best song on the album

this & ganges ni akai bara are the two best songs The GazettE's ever done & nobody will convince me otherwise

metal wa hajimemashita, just for the nostalgia of watching that beautiful mess of a PV with friends
though Gei School Otokogumi deserves a special shoutout just for that godawful bit where Chiba pops into frame & does the horse sound

ofc okuru kotoba's the only album where what they do sounds vaguely like music so kinda hard not to call that one my fav

all the #drama going around w/ this tag made me think, there's a lot of people who'd be cool w/ at least the idea of visual kei from outside Japan, but those five scandanavian bands aren't really it & the other bands don't get much attention.

So, i'm not the most knowledgeable about this or anything but i thought i'd throw together a quick list of some bands i've heard of, and write them a quick tagline. they're super #basic, but i had like...... 100 letters to work with.

hope this doesn't seem like self-promo, but here's that list, in twitter convo form, if any of y'all are interested in checking it out.

Spoiler alert, i think some of the bands from Indonesia are my favs.

i saw that one 7+hr live Royz did where they played every one of their songs, so i've basically accepted my life peaked at that point
only other thing i can kinda brag about; my first live i ever saw was Naitomea when they left Japan for the second time in their career to play a con that was 4hrs from my house - i'll never in my life be that lucky again .-.

i say this as someone who likes meji a lot - best outcome imo would be all four members starting/joining new projects that sound nothing like eachother, & keeping the band Mejibray alive for the occasional single/EP or reunion sorta tour.
kinda feel like 420 was the summation of Meji's sound, Nepenthes/Eiki/Venoms were some nice epilogues, & everything since is just bonus tracks.
Seems like each individual member has a lot more of an 'artistic vison' or w/e than really fits under the mejibray brand.

being a fan of vk for a while, you get used to disbandments being a possibility for everyone but i guess it never occurred to me Boris is a band of people, too
after 25 years they're like, a staple of music, an institution
glad they decided to stay around hearing they just considered disbandment was enough to have me shook

honest question - bc BatAAr & Disreign are brought up a lot here, what do y'all think of Die/May's latest track?
i thought the vocal melody of the chorus was pretty impressive & wouldn't sound out of place from some recent indiez band from japan, but am i the only one who thinks that?

i'm really not /as/ into the heavier side of vk so a lot of these western bands aren't aiming for the kind of sound that's my fav to begin with, but i thought that track's chorus at least is moving the band in a good direction.

there's a practical reason for using japanese anyway, imho
those melodic, vibrato-y, interval-jumping vocal lines vkei is known for are a lot easier to manage in a language where half the sounds are what english calls consonants & half are vowels, and where emphases aren't intrinsic to words/phrases
that's why Kyo singing in english just sounds /different/ compared to him singing the same lines in japanese; i say Kyo bc glass skin & dozing green are recorded in both versions and make for great comparisons like that.

Not to say one language is better than the other - i think on those two diru songs english actually suits them way better and i'm def not saying that bc i can understand Kyo's english better.
There's just different sounds/techniques/styles some languages have less difficulties in expressing than others, so i think there's reason for overseas bands to sing in japanese beyond just the ~aesthetic~ of it.

not that this is meant to change anyone's opinions but the "vkei dead in japan" is 100% bullshit for clicks/plays; just a couple minutes in he says no ofc it's not
clickbait's still clickbait but he's not saying the things you think he's saying.

Editing to add;
I don't care if Endigo/BatAAr/whoever's music or personality or style isn't something you're into at the end of the day he's a dude & his band doing the sort of stuff they want to do & as far as i can tell this video and the other, while they can be misleading or awkward, whatever, in tone - sounds to me like he's trying to promo & encourage junior musicians in his scene who don't have much exposure of their own.

not that anybody asked for my opinion, and as a disclaimer i never listened to londboy & have no feelings either way about Rio.
But if the dude's 24 and the girl said she was 18, best case scenario that's still a 6-year age difference between people when there's already the artist-fan dynamic of imbalance.
Just bc someone's 18 doesn't mean they're immune to manipulation, even if the other party doesn't think what they're doing is manipulation.
Seems like sketchy and suspect is the best the situation could possibly hope to be, but that's just my thoughts.

4 hours ago, nekkichi said:

their contract likely implies a fixed number of new albums, not the calendar years before they can switch their label w/o paying breach fees.

my thoughts were... that'd explain the three best-ofs & two singles w/ no album to go on, plus the usual album + live recorded CDs, all released in something like a year. Possibly a contract may have been for a certain number of albums over a length of time, and the band pushed those releases more quickly to be able to have the remaining time off.
but yeah that's the limits of my """proof"""

3 hours ago, madygrain said:

Their CD credits have not changed all that much since the VAP days and the most key positions in regards to them in their management agency, C-BLOCK are the same too. 

that's an good point, thanks! i wish i could make more sense of CD credits bc all that label/management stuff of who's working with who is somehow real interesting to me.

honest question, am i the only one who thinks part of this hiatus is mea's way of doing like lycaon or alice nine & trying to get out of their label? i mean that's 100% just me with a tinfoil hat jumping to conclusions w/o anything to back it but i dunno, it seems possible to me.

Also for the record i'm i guess one of the other naitomea fans on here; my favourite stuff all comes either from anima or before ultimate circus but i never had a moment or a certain release where i lost interest. World Ruler thru their self-titled is probably my least favourite part of their catalogue but their ballad game was always strong.

this is really just a drag @ myself but back in middleschool when i was first getting into vk, i accidentally followed a roleplay-blog of Nightmare's Hitsugi, somehow thinking it was the real thing.
I guess i was just totally ready to accept hitsu spoke fluent english and also had the exact personality of a teenage girl?

Also there was a good chunk of time when i was convinced that line in L'Arc~en~Ciel's Taste of Love was "You treat me like a DUCK"

in all honesty though - it's a song, everything's subjective, most japanese-speaking people probably wouldn't agree on the meanings of every line, i'd assume, cuz everything's made of ambiguity anyway. imho that's what separates prose/poetry from factual statements.

if you get a 'wrong' translation who honestly gives a fuck, as long as you're not putting it forwards as though it was something the artist actually said, if you get some meaning out of the lyrics that interpretation's valid to you however you came across it, imho at least.

not like i remember this 100% correctly but i remember the vocalist from deafheaven saying something about him not having any 'meaning' in mind when he writes his songs' lyrics, he's just putting together phrases he likes, and if the listener gets something out of hearing them that's on the listener for getting to that meaning, & it's not gonna be 'right' or 'wrong' cuz there was nothing to start with.
I'm sure that's not every single lyricist's approach but i still think song lyrics aren't the place to look for an objectively 'correct' interpretation.

TL;DR i wouldn't worry about screwing up translations unless you're trying to pass a poor translation off as their words rather than yours.
If you're just translating for fun / practice / to get a general idea it's reaallly not that big a deal if you flip the tenses or tag some verbs to the wrong subject.
i think things like the moods/atmospheres of a song can still land if bits get confused, & even if higher-level things go right over your head (as i'm sure they do mine) part of learning to translate is you're always pushing your comprehension slightly further & reinforcing what you already know, so more advanced parts of the language are just things you'll get to understanding later.

hey - i'm like, the farthest thing from an 'advanced' translator but i thought i'd try to give my thoughts anyway -

one thing that helps me a lot (cuz i'm still just starting out) is going to jpopasia, finding a track that's already got the kanji written in romaji & translated into english already.
Then i'll try not to look at the english and, using the romaji as furigana if i don't know the kanji's reading, i'll type each 'word' i don't already understand into google translate one by one and then try to use what i know abt grammar and shit to make some sense of the line.
Then i'll compare it to the already translated english and see how close i got and if it's reasonable cool if not, then i can try to match the translator's clauses/phrases to those parts of the jp line, and usually that gives me a better idea of how the parts of the sentence work.

It doesn't feel as productive as taking a new song and coming up w/ an ~original~ translation but as far as something to do when i'm trying to increase my knowledge/fluency i think that approach helps a lot!
Especially bc even if your vocabulary is exactly the same as another person's, you'll probably interpret the grammar differently cuz it's all subjective anyway but imo reconstructing sentences in english is as much a skill as understanding them in japanese.

hope that wasn't like suuuper basic but that's about as much as i'm qualified to offer lmao

huh, fuck.
any word on if this policy applies only to firsthand retailers, or does it extend to secondhand shops like closetchild & individuals selling their old discs on amazon?

Depending on how #basic you're fine with you can always try sites like sexpot.jp or algonquins.jp.  SPR ships all their items overseas with cdjapan.co.jp and i'm pretty sure algonquins does too.
You could also try closetchildonlineshop.com - they've got a huge variety at really nice prices, but they're all used so you've got to be okay with checking pretty often to find a certain type of thing. They also ship overseas, from their own site, but i'm pretty sure they've written instructions in english.
ofc if you're broke as i am and want to get creative to make things work, someone i follow on tumblr made this really helpful post

But this is all a non-answer ofc, bc i'm pretty sure bands as funded/famous as Versailles  just have private designers on hand.
closet-child might be your best bet though - i've definitely seen some stuff that at least looks like a cheap imitation of tambi-ish style.
hope at least one of those links helps!

inb4 Ryu stays on as Scapegoat's second vocalist
(i'd be totally down for this)

so the first press CD is like.....a compilation of their lives' SEs?
...........interesting

not like i have any perspective to actually back up this statement but i've always felt like Mea's one of those bands like cali≠gari that the western fandom doesn't really follow as much as the japanese scene

i'm glad i'm not the only one who eventually came to think.......valentin's look is tbh kinda cool

420's one of my fav post-2010 albums but i agree with @orange SM's a way better record to start w/
then if u like the album and feel like listening to that but with hella more ballads i think you'll def enjoy it.

>implying i'm ever anything but