raspberrynilla

DEXCORE first full album (title not yet finalized) will be released at 2020

Buck-Tick new album will be released at 2020 summer, details TBA.
Imai described it as "a clean break with the image and sound that the band has accustomed fans to until now",  the keywords of this new style of music will be "minimalism and electronic"

マザー MOTHER
Digital Single「ソメニ」(Someni) 31.01.2020
iTunes, Spotify
 
https://linkco.re/amp/UqMrHAQX?__twitter_impression=true
 

 

Woah. This is such a pleasant surprise. Considering their...marketing strategies I wasn’t expecting them to be this good.
 
Edit: After giving it a few more listens, they really give me ACME vibes. But I’m not complaining!

At this point idgaf about Dimlim as a band or Retsu, I’m in it for the telenovela realness. 

that's already double the followers -OZ- had in japan, good for him

My heart and what little I have seen of his youtube channel tells me he's (FFXIII) Lightning kin

I just want a single release already

Wow this is better and more than what america got I'm jealous 

This is not bad, something energetic like this is good for them right now I think
 
That place they are filming in looks great I hope there's more shots like the one over the railing!

HOLD UP!!!
 


 
Are these fuckers just burning files onto a CD-R?!

A easy example about how the looks don't necessarily reflect the person of a visual kei artist is the usage of the hakenkreuz by the earliests bands. We don’t see as much nowadays, but the SS caps always appears, sooner or later.
Of course that there was some classic japanese punk nationalism in some bands here and there, but core of V系 was about shocking after all. So, the imaginary of the nazism is aesthetic, therefore should be used. 
 
As @薔薇の末裔 pointed out, understanding Kabuki is a good way to understand this theatrical musical scene. 
 
Kabuki in its first days was a female theater, a more accessible branch of Noh. But it was just too sexy for that confucian society. “A woman's place is in the kitchen”, said the Shogun (or it was my dad last night?). And then, the boys took the place of the woman, doing woman roles. But the boys turned out into fuckboys. “Notto disu shitto agen”, said the Shogun. And then, old man were doing woman roles. “Hmm”, long and deeply said the Shogun. Keep in mind that everyone was killing everyone in the past sengoku century, so the Shoguns could not fuck around (ha).
 
“Ok, ok, And so what?”. Well, since being really sexy was not an option, the onnagata dudes started doing their own shit to emulate the woman sexyness. First come the fancy wig, then they started showing some little skin and so on. Little by little there was no more “man” or “woman”, but onnagata. A woman that no other woman could be. 
 
At that point, Kabuki without man doing female roles is not Kabuki. Visual kei without man doing female roles is not visual kei? I don’t think so, exist†trace showed their shit and we digged it hard. But I would say that is highly expected to see a man doing female roles in the visual rock scene. D’s “Ouka saki some ni keri” is my pick for today. The contrast of Asagi manly vocals with his woman clothing is a perfectly example of why we love it the way it is. They do it with passion (or for money), and we love them for it, not because their sexual preference.
 
The whole pv setting is a love letter for their culture. And it is just one example, there is so many other bands with pvs with that scenary (and probably there is a “something-kei” for it too). The pompous and bold Glam Rock found it’s home in the japanese costumes and evolved into the coolest thing.
 
To be deeper into to sexuallity stuff we could talk about how Japan society potentially repress the sexual preference of their people in order to have things working “in the right way” and how the west really needs to “talk about it” and not let the individuals be themselves without pushing some agenda into your fuckin throat so it’s fuckin hard to understand these japs using lipsticks just because they like it, but that stress me too much so fuck it.

I think the reason the musicians don't talk about it much is because they're not thinking about their sexuality. Their look is a costume, just like other performance arts have costumes. Through western perspective it's easy to analyse and put gender roles and other analytical concepts to it, but I don't think the majority of vk performers thinks about what wearing make up and feminine clothes means to them on a gender transgression level/ as an extension of their sexuality. It's simple as "as a chef I put on my white apron" "and as a member of kiryu I wear full make up and sometimes a skirt. " of course there are queer members out there who probably enjoy the freedom of visual expression in the scene but we don't know for a fact who and how many, after all, sexuality in Japan is a taboo subject that can only be broken for the sake of fanservice bucks, horny fujoshi and temporary high school exploration storylines (hello shoujo ai). 
 

It might sound weird from a western perspective, but visual kei is like the straightest and most homophobic music scene in Japan. We tend to look at visual kei with western eyes and mix its cultural aspects with things that belong to the western culture. Fanservice and provocations used for shock value put aside, the androgynous aesthetics of visual kei band rarely expressed anything related to gender identity and especially sexual orientation. 
After all, it started with people like X Japan who admittedly were inspired by glam rock bands and way of life, which I would find hard to connect to sexual orientation. Visual kei early bandomen were mostly chinpiras, bosozokus (bikers) and the likes. They really incarnated the somewhat glamrock aesthetic of riding bikes getting drunk, banging girls, etc. Of course X had their own decadent/romantic taste that made them different, and a lot of influences changed the scene over time. However, visual kei is still remains 99% driven by social outcasts looking for pussy and very rarely by something else.
In Japan we also have onnagatas, who are kabuki actors specialized in female roles that are again 99% straight. Bandoman with feminine looks call themselves onnagata, not josou (crossdresser), implying that the cultural source behind their looks is not connected with crossdressing but just playing a female role in a band,  but again this something that might be hard to completely understand it taken outside of Japanese culture. For example Izam, the king of all onnagatas, married more than once and has more tha one child, and outside of his role in Shazna he rarely did anything ambiguous, just like the kabuki onnagatas out of stage. Both media and fans are everything but respectful of privacy, but I've rarely seen Japanese articles or message board questioning bandomen sexual orientation. That's because the number 1 reason people do visual kei is because the girls like it (well, liked it, I am not sure this is the trend with young girls anymore). 
Soft Ballet/Ken Morioka are closer to Soft Cell/Marc Almond so I would not even count them as visual kei even though they had some influence on it. And of course, there are exceptions as you mentioned. The chinpira bandomen of the 90's almost extincted and younger generations bandomans are usually anime/game otakus. They grew up with different influences and values, and it would make sense if the current incarnation of visual kei instinctively appealed to more people with sexual orientation/gender identity concerns, especially after Japan started talking about these issues in a less obsolete viewpoint.

Talking about another interest of mine, while looking up for old VK dedicated web sites, I've found a translation done for an interview with SOFT BALLET. Here's a quotation that put me into deep-thinking, in which Ken Morioka (their keyboardist/guitarist and, I suppose, their leader), when asked about his thoughts over his flamboyant looks and stage performances, talks about his interest in gender-trascending aesthetics in spite of him "not being gay". 
 
When I saw the stage I thought of how you were the weirdest one Ken. Is that because you were thinking of that visual aspect?
Ken: Ah, well...(laughs). A large part of that comes from where I'm a narcissist and I'm all like "Lookie, lookie! Look at Meee!". And then there's the part of me that really loves and adores appearing to move in a state that's transcended gender, so I suppose that's where I'm coming from....
 
Meaning?
Ken: It's that I've gotten a lot of influence from various people, but I've been like this from a long time ago. I really wanted to become a woman, and I never really thought to deny that feeling. It doesn't mean I'm gay though. There's a sense that I was building up and developing my own preferences.
 
(If you don't know who Ken Morioka or SOFT BALLET is, next I'll leave a video of them performing live:)
 
 
This quotation made me revive an old interest of mine on how gender or sexual orientation identities circulate particularly within the people of the VK scene. Till today, there's enough been written about that topic, but taking Japanese society as a whole or some of their products (as anime/manga) as the unit of analysis, but I've never came across something related to VK although I've defintely did a specific search. What always triggered me is that, if we keep in mind the obvious fact that VK aesthetics rely essentially over challenging gender/sexual orientation performances, then it can't not come weird or suspicious that 99% of band members since VK was born --that 1% goes for Kaya and Ao Sakurai-  don't actually talk about the matter, while at the same time they are always straight-supposed within the logic of selling out as idols for their gya. And the few times they do so they have the urgence of make clear that they are actually "not gay" -and then in the commentary section fans support this statements by remebering the doubting fans that said bandoman actually has a kid "so he is definitely not gay!!!". Actually, I've read very, very few comments of Japanese fans supposing/acknowledging the LGBTness of their favorite bandoman and nontheless supporting them as artists, but maybe that's because I have a hard time looking up into Japanese web sites and translating. (Also, perhaps many bandoman actually talked enough about the fact in a serious way, but I  still don't have the chance to read them since only 5% of the interviews made up being translated).
 
Of course, I've been aware since the beggining of my stay in the weeb fandom that Japan, while not having serious persecussion issues towards LGBT people -at least in their last 50 years of history-, definitely don't finish to get politically open about it, and that's why society decided to treat the matter in a don't-ask-don't-tell fashion. I'm also aware that this fact takes place in a more general tendency of Japanese people to obssesively keep their lives and relationships actually very private, too.  But I can't not ask myself if it isn't at least a bit fool of someone, fan or not, to assume that naturally that every bandoman is "not-gay", in a scene where artistic creativity emerges from fantasies of "men" transforming into "women", or even into un-gendered beautiful creatures, even involving into sex with/as them?  (On a personal note, although I don't actually know their reasons behind, I always liked @nekkichi and other users attempt here to call every bandoman by "her").
 
What are your thoughts on this topics?

I dunno guize, to me it's still the same band that just decided to go in the indie rock dezert direction but just math'd up the song structure and riffs and jammed as much material in the four odd minutes as possible. I think in this case all this talk about whether it feels like its all there or that it's a mess or whether it has soul or not is just nonsense. I understand if someone thinks all the time signature shit and transitions are in bad taste, but at least in vk that's pretty novel. The chorus still 100% carries in the entire thing and that could've been in their old songs just as well as in this one. 

Not really sure how y'all could enjoy tracks like Rijin and Vanitas but somehow hate this. Sure they're emphasising the mathy elements more while downplaying the heavier side somewhat, but it's hardly a complete 180 from their last couple of releases or anything.
 
Anyway I'm basically a math slut so I'll let this song have its way with me. All hail visual math kei etcetc.

It's fine.
 
Dimlim have beepbooping and doing weird time signatures//structures for a while now so I don't get the complaints. It's what they do. There's a method to their chaotic songwriting imo, it doesn't sound incoherent. 

If it's written miscellaneous I pronounce it as that. If it's abbreviated to Misc. I always pronounce it as 'misk' 😅 I'm sure I'm not alone on this one. 

The entire "marketing" of this new album is atrocious. It really feels like they want to fail. I love these guys to death but seriously... they need to know what they want. They post a one second preview, then they decide it will be a digital only release. They want to charge full price for a digital release, but later on make the physical cd an amazon exclusive but post no details. The release is in a week and this is a trainwreck. All we can do is speculate but I honestly don't see this benefiting them in anyway. Even if this becomes a banger of an album no ones going to hear it... the promotion is non existent and i dont see them making any money on this. People will pirate this album. 

Important things to take from this:
1. Die shares that his fav fast riffs are from deg's debut album gauze
2. Toshiya describes their current sound as "psychobilly" lmao

I just want a single release already

I don't necessarily mind if they change their sound to something more akin to ONE OK ROCK or whatever, cuz I can appreciate some of that stuff, and I can live without all the boogeyman vocals and pig squeals. I just hope that they go hard and really knock this shit out of the park, whatever it is.
 
That said, the promotion for this album thus far has been utterly unappealing.