VESSMIER

Their best work!


 
The Pillows
Little Busters
Runner's High
Happy Bivouac

It's been a minute since I took pics of my DIR EN GREY collection, so here it is.
 
Cassette tapes:
 
VHS tapes:
 
Abums:
 
EPs/Best-ofs:
 
DVDs:
 
Singles:
 
Promos:
 

So this originated in a news post and I didn't want to respond there and then I figured that at one point we spoke about this in a general thread so here we are now.

I've never been physical CD listener of VK, the amount of music I listen to would amount to an insanely large assortment of jewel cases and it just was never a logical decision, especially considering shipping prices and it just became a joke. I started out originally having a collection on my computer and then would put my favourite few songs on my phone and then I upgraded to an MP3 player that housed my entire collection, removing everything off the computer. Though, the small size of this MP3 player and the following iPod forced me to instead of keeping entire albums to just quickly go through, find which songs I liked and then delete the rest.

I started being a shut-in and listening to music on the go wasn't necessary so I started keeping music on my PC again. I now also use Spotify because copying and pasting every new CD to an MP3 player was just excessive hassle and unnecessary wasting of time. 

I stuck with Windows Media Player for way too long before shortly moving to iTunes and now I'm stuck firmly in MusicBee. 

Now, I get the appeal of having CDs and a large physical collection for collection's sake but I can't fathom actually having it that way with function. Maybe I have music playing way too much compared to others or I spend too much time on the computer where my music's stored and easily accessed but having to deal with all the faff in regards to actually playing CDs, going from one artist to another artist or even from one album to another is just easier with a digital library.

With physical media you also don't get tags and metadata. For the past few years I've gotten stupid when it comes to my library and have begun tagging to all hell, trying to make things as organized as it can be. 



This is a screenshot of the first page of tags in MusicBee. If I wanted to listen to rock music then I'd go up to the top and type in rock, voila: automatically get a rock playlist. Release date isn't just by year but now includes month and day in the correct order(Lookin' at you, America) which means when artists are sorted by release then it's actually ordered properly. Composer credits so that if I found a song I liked I can find songs by the same song writer. The grouping section is home to my Visual Kei tag which makes it super easy to isolate just the Visual Kei parts of my collection.



Using both the artist and album artist tags I can have artists sorted alphabetically but still have them displayed with their Japanese names. I originally had both genres and composer/arranger credits listing using commas but that ran into issues when names kept reappearing because if you typed "Writer A, Writer B" and then "Writer B, Writer A" those two whole bands are two separate tags. With the semi-colon it actually stores each one separately.



So each genre will now properly list here isolated instead of being long chains of repeating genres.



This is page two of the Tags, this is Gackt's Ai Senshi, because it covers a lot of the unique tags. Original artist is for covers, it's an original tag for MusicBee and you can see my custom cover tag which I realized was superfluous. The tie-in tags are for when a song is used in a piece of media, it names the media and categorizes it along with it's usage. If you wanted to listen to anime openings then you could just go to the search bar, type in anime opening and voila. The language is self explanatory and it shocks me that it's not used officially. Romaji and translation are just for Japanese songs because I like having an song presented with it's proper title in Japanese characters but for searching it's hard if you don't remember the kanji, etc. I often see people have the song name in english with either the romaji or Japanese title in brackets and it just looks horrible, this way all that information is kept out of the way so you get a clean library but that information is still there if you need it.



This is my main page/layout for MusicBee when I'm using it day-to-day. The artist column is ridiculously wide because I hate how names display when they're longer than the column and you have to account for those stupidly long Visual Kei band names. Underneath the album art you can see it displays relevant information like genre, publisher/label and language along with release date and title of the disc. Composer and arranger credits are also visible to help you see which songs were by who. Here's another example with Dir en grey's GAUZE:



Another interesting thing can be done here using those tie-in tags and also the cover tags. MusicBee and I assume other programs have it too, but you can make automated playlists. The criteria which it can sort and filter by is amazing, so for covers I can just set it to look at the original artist tag and if it's not empty then it'll throw the song into the playlist. Same with the tie-in tag.



MusicBee allows you to have multiple tabs like a browser and in these I have different playlists open and locked, with these tabs you can even change the layout so in my cover tab for instance, I've taken out the composer and arranger credits and instead have the original artist tab displayed and then sorted it by said tab.



The anime tab is similar but instead of original artist I have the series name(which it's then sorted by) and usage displayed. This is great because despite songs for a show being from different artists this way it'll group them together and if you look above at the criteria screenshot there's a partially hidden checkbox that if you click filters out duplicate songs so if you have a song on a single and then the same song on an album it'll only keep one in the playlist.





(I'm a big fan of Gundam.)

So yeah, just the extent of what I can do with my collection digitally will never be even closely met by physical media, outside of novelty I just don't see the value in a physical collection. 

And yes, most of the reason why I posted all this is because I wanted people to see the effort and time I've wasted.

EDIT: Oh, I suppose adding this would be a nice way to cap this off:

Two paintings from Karma are up for sales on their official webshop for 300,000yen each (~$2800)
 
 

A bit of "new" music to play during quarantine.
 
KAMIJO - Temple Blood sucking for praying lim ed.
KAMIJO - Documentary of Epic Rock Orchestra (promo cd)
KAMIJO - Castrato lim. ed.
KAMIJO - Kamijo World Tour 2015
LAREINE - Fleur (pink & blue disc)
Bonus Raphael and Gackt singles I'm keeping because I like both editions and the songs too.
Various Versailles promo message DVDs

Two lovely Ghibli soundtracks <3 
 

Boris - Feedbacker (tour edition)
 

 
Gotta be one of my favorite variants for a record.

I haven't used a forum like this so long and nostalgia is just rushing through me.
 
Hi! My name's Jake, if we're doing that kind of introduction. I build car washes and, at night, dry my tears with my bachelor's degree in writing while bingewatching horror franchises; in case you're curious, Nightmare on Elm Street is by far the best franchise to watch front-to-back. Pleased to meet y'all.
 
I've been lurking here for a little while because I'm a big fan of Sukekiyo and there's very little discussion of them on the English-speaking web. I'm also a big fan of Dir En Grey (SO GOOD when I saw them in December,) Envy (@my username - seen them twice & their new album is shockingly good,) plus a bunch of different stuff primarily in the indie, emo, and metal orbit. My VK/J-Rock cred is pretty low, but I used to be obsessed with Deluhi years ago because I was majorly into Galneryus so... There's that at least.
 
Another reason I joined was because I've been learning Bass recently and - while getting into bands like MUCC, Kannivalism, Suspended 4th, Tricot, and 9GOATS BLACK OUT - I've realized how much more interesting Bass in J-Rock is than it typically is in the West. Listening to stuff like this is really inspiring while struggling to learn an instrument, so I'm trying to see what other bands are out there. This seems like a good place to browse for that purpose, so... Hi!

shalom ✌️

updated: 02/06/2020
GREAT
(stuff that I TRULY enjoy listening to, and that truly moves me. the question here would be "which tracks DON'T stand out?".)
 
★★★★★★★★★★ ---> ★★★★★★★★★★

 
downy - 砂上、燃ユ。残像
single | 2020.02.05
This is not the greatest downy track in existence, but dayum, this band's sound just speaks to my very soul! It's almost like it gets better with each listen. The remix is dope too. Looking forward to the album next month!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
DECENT
(stuff that I consider listenable, but not particularly compelling. may have potential to grow on me. could have a few of standout tracks)
★★★★★★★★★★ ---> ★★★★★★★★★★

 
DIMLIM - MISC.
album | 2020.01.28
I had very high hopes for this after hearing "what's up", but those hopes were quickly dashed. I honestly can't decide if I want to file this one under "Decent" or "bad". "What's up" is still a great track, and I like "For the future", too. And there are some nice ideas here and there, but everything about this album was handled in such a tacky fashion that it's almost embarrassing.
-
sleepy.ab - fractal
album | 2020.01.29
Stellar production and beautiful soundscapes that are, unfortunately, restrained by boring songwriting. Given their last few albums, I expected this turnout tho. Despite the snoozefest, there are a few wonderfully written tracks here that are well worth it.
-
tricot - 真っ黒
album | 2020.01.29
I haven't really been into tricot since their early, EARLY material, so I was pleasantly surprised at just how listenable this album is. In fact, this is definitely the best stuff I've heard from them in ages, plus their musicianship is has grown exponentially. Still, they're just missing something. Maybe this one will grow on me?
-
envy - The Fallen Crimson
album | 2020.02.05
I'm a sucker for envy's sound in general, but the excessive, airy post-rock elements here just get really old really quickly. It's like they were playing straight from the post-rock handbook on some songs. That said, I do appreciate the more hardcore moments on the album. "Fingerprint mark" in particular is amazing. Shoutout to Achico for being featured on track 4!!!
-
羊文学 - ざわめき
ep | 2020.02.05
Typical, run-of-the-mill indie-rock with female vocals. Pleasant, but completely lacking in character.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
BAD
(stuff that doesn't do a thing for me/stuff that I have no desire to listen to again. may have one or two  standout tracks, but is irredeemable otherwise.)
★★★★★★★★★★ ---> ★★★★★★★★★★

 

kein - 朦朧の実 😍
 
Thank you again, @ghost!

【downy New Album Release in March 18th, 2020】
https://friendship.lnk.to/DuneScatterPersistenceOfVision
 
Our 7th album "Untitled" will be released on the coming March 18th from our new label "rhenium records".Check out our new song "Dune, Scatter. Persistence Of Vision" on streaming services now! You can listen to Yutaka Aoki's guitar playing in this track.
Also, SUNNOVA(Sampler/Synth) is joining downy from this new album.You can listen to his remix of "Dune, Scatter. Persistence Of Vision" as well!
 

 
▼リリース情報
downy
フル・アルバム
『第七作品集『無題』』
2020.03.18 ON SALE
[rhenium records]
　
1. コントラポスト
2. 視界不良
3. 36.2°
4. good news
5. 角砂糖
6. ゼラニウム
7. 砂上、燃ユ。残像
8. pianoid
9. 鮮やぐ視点
10. adaptation
11. stand alone
 
 
LET'S GOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

蘭図 (Rands) will release their 3rd single in 2020/05. Details to be announced.
 
 

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?

love the two photos posted for 9gbo too! i went through my folder and dug out some favorites. unfortunately i didn't save everything, it's hard to find good quality pics of some of them now....
 

i think this is mostly the cover for their ep What is "Plastic Tree", but what the hey i love it. probably one of their most iconic photos. wish i could find it in better quality....
 

my favorite when i first got into them. the flowers add such a nice touch.
 

sou just looks too adorable here and i love his scarf ;u;
 

SCISSOR did the spooky theme so much better than Candy Spooky Theater music wise imho, and they got peculiar looks that wasn't just halloween-y
 

Guniw Tools have a number of weird photos but i love the composition in this one
 

so simple but very iconic at the time, i would say
 
i'm noticing that most people are posting older photos so here's a few from more recent bands

 

a real hard pick from the two, i had them both as my desktop wallpaper
 

 

 

a bit too much editing on this one but still a great photo
 

and one non-vk, from THE TEENAGE KISSERS
 
feel like i spammed a bit too much here, haha. might post more later~

I have tons of faves just from BUCK-TICK, but here are only a few:
 

 

 

Psysalia psysalis psyche

What are some of your favorite Band/Artist promotional pictures?
 
At one point in my life, I'd damn near made a career out of sharing and uploading music (in addition to uploading artist photos to last.fm), so I basically have a lot of artist pics and album art saved that I just never got rid of. Here are a few of my favorites!
 
 
THE NOVEMBERS

 
i think i like this pic so much because it reminds me of when THE NOVEMBERS dropped "zeitgeist" and just blew all of our damn minds! Plus Kobayashi is just oozing a kind of dark, cool confidence here...it's like from this point he became an entirely new person...miles away from the average bowl-cut indie rocker he started as, haha.
 
9GOATS BLACK OUT

Even tho I never got super deep into their music, these guys were CLASS and their aesthetics were always on point!!
 
D'espairsRay
 
One of my fav. Despa pics. I was with the mallgoff shitz, ahaha
 
downy

I love this pic because it speaks to their dark, sophisticated sound, but I also love it simply for the fact they actually bothered to take some nice promo pics for once in their career!
 
J.A.M

Probably not the kind of pic you'd expect from a Jazz band!
 
コトリンゴ (Kotoringo)

Suuuper pretty pic, that's as pretty as the music she makes!
 
赤い公園 (Akai Ko-en)

Chiaki lookin all tall and sexy   It's hard to go wrong with nature-dense photos, but I loove the colors here!
 
EGO-WRAPPIN'

There's a lot going on here, but this pic fit their sound so well for the time. It kinda has a cartoony/animated vibe to it.
 
TK from 凛として時雨 (ling tosite sigure)

Simple, but effective.
 
トクマルシューゴ (Shugo Tokumaru)

 
青葉市子 (Ichiko Aoba)

 
That's all for now! What are some of your favs???

I haven't been able to post what I have purchased recently because I've been working 12 hours/7 days a week since November.  Too lazy to post exactly what I got.  The Dog in the PWO single is extra copy of one that I already owned, but I haven't opened it to see which bonus cover was included.

 
Also, here's my recent KPOP trash haul just because no one asked for it.

This is my current living room setup. I updated my speakers and amp in October of last year and so far I'm pretty happy with everything. The turntable will probably need some upgrading soon to get it on par with the rest of the components but it's alright. I mainly listen to vinyl and digital music which I stream from TIDAL or directly from my music library which is located on my PC.
I'm very happy with how the speakers sound in my living room, they are by nature very revealing / analytical but the amp (thanks to the tube) kinda softens that edge a bit and makes them more palatable. The tape deck is mainly for VK demo tapes 😅
 
Here's a list of the components:
Amp: Vincent SV-500 Hybrid Integrated Amplifier Speakers: ATC SCM 11 Streamer: Bluesound Node 2i Tape deck: Yamaha KX-200 Turntable: Project Debut III (with an Ortofon OM 5E cartridge and a HAMA PA 506 phono preamp)

I put the first image as my phone's wallpaper, it looks incredible.
 
All credit for the images goes to https://yridenergyridenergy.tumblr.com/
 

Finally had time to catch up on some metal releases.
 
Nile - Vile Nilotic Rites: Pretty massive album, for me it was a step up from their previous one (which I didn't hate but didn't love either). Solid stuff.
Blood Incantation - Hidden History of the Human Race: Just overall amazing and intricate. If you want more proggy death, this is the way to go.
Cattle Decapitation - Death Atlas: Their most ambitious release yet. The songs kinda blur into each other for me, but it's one giant slab of awesome.
Cradle of Filth - Cruelty and the Beast (Re-Mistressed): It's okay. That's it.
 
Still have to check out the latest Mayhem and Obsequiae...