ghost

A whole lotl axolotl. This is a continuation of my planet series. The sprouty pink planet represents my love for Japanese sweet potatoes. And also in my love an axolotl there is too 🍠
 

[mode of Grab The Fan's Wealth]

A whole lotl axolotl. This is a continuation of my planet series. The sprouty pink planet represents my love for Japanese sweet potatoes. And also in my love an axolotl there is too 🍠
 

Here's a card I made for my co-worker who is leaving this week. 
 

 

Heartaches suck
 

(The image flips too)

Back with another drawing. I've always wanted to draw a desert landscape so this is my take on it. I started this one last year and then went into a slump. Finally overcame my laziness and finished it.

A whole lotl axolotl. This is a continuation of my planet series. The sprouty pink planet represents my love for Japanese sweet potatoes. And also in my love an axolotl there is too 🍠
 

[mode of Grab The Fan's Wealth]

This is an interesting topic and is being discussed more maturely than I had anticipated.
From my experience and interests, I used to despise K-Pop. But it is a lot of fun if you like it for your own reasons. 
I would even go as far to say as the Visual Kei fandom is quite similar but on a smaller scale due to how large or small the communities are. 
Both focus around liking sub-cultures and, while not all of them,  most listen exclusively to groups that fall with in those sub-cultures. 
I, myself, listen to a lot of different things as of late. Not just Japanese or Korean music. As for the fandoms, toxicity is not unique to the kpop culture, it exists just as prominently in the visual kei fan base as well as any other other fan base.  Kpop groups charge high prices for meet and greets and concert tickets, while Visual Kei groups host in store events that require you to also spend a lot of money to get a ticket or to be able to meet/have a photo with all the members. In Visual Kei there are fans who follow exclusively one band, and in Kpop there are fans who follow exclusively one group. There are crazy obsessive fans in VK and in Kpop but both also have communities in which people have met really close friends and made memories together that are priceless. As for the music, that's really left to the individual. One may say all kpop sounds the same while another says all visual kei sounds the same. As much as we'd all like to defend our favorites and say that Dir en grey or BTS are so original, it's just not that true. In todays day and age and how people really learn music through the influence of other musicians, there is no one artist who simply picked up an instrument and made something that wasn't at least similarly done by someone on this earth filled with approximately 7.5 billion people. It's more so about being genuine with how you use music as a universal language. That's just me. But I'm sure if i had the time, I could find a lot more lesser known garage bands or bedroom DJs who make more genuine music than a most of massively known artists, but it would be impossible for one person to find them all. So instead of thinking of originality maybe just look at it as "Does this speak to me? Do I vibe with this? Is it genuine?" and just follow what makes you feel good. Do I think people just like Kpop groups for the hot boys? Absolutely, but I also think the same about some fans of visual kei bands. For some people, the music does come first. I'm quite picky when it comes to either side. I have an acquired taste and I know what sort of feeling or vibes I like. Mejibray was really popular, but I just couldn't get in to them musically. TXT is really popular, but their music didn't really vibe with me. It just depends on the person.
 
My last final opinion, based on my own mistakes, denying yourself from listening to something because of the other people who like it... I don't think that's a true opinion of your thoughts on the music regardless of the genre. If you like something, you don't need to partake in the culture of it to enjoy it. 

I stay as far away from the culture and music of Kpop as I can (difficult considering my circle of friends right now are all Korean and listen to it). It's just never appealed to me and the perception that I get is that it's done more harm to the Korean music industry than good. It hasn't allowed there to be space for different genres of music. Like, where are the hard rock bands and experimental electronic artists?
 
I think the burgeoning K-indie scene has created a more open space for actual artists to write and produce their own music and it's great to see some individual creativity. But even so, there's a certain sound you can peg to the scene and it's ended up creating, from my perspective anyway, an alternatively stylized sub-sect of cookie-cutter production in rap, rnb/hip hop, downtempo pop.
 
I'm not saying the music itself is bad, just that I would like to see more support for lesser-loved genres of music like hardcore, metal, and experimental music. You just don't see bands like Dir en grey and Deviloof, Mono and Boris or Midori and Otoboke Beaver from Korea.

Yes, I know about them! They vocalist is actually quite good. I didn't know this about them but they apparently go back and forth between Germany and Korea and are signed with Gan-Shin in Europe. You can definitely tell they take a lot of inspiration from vkei bands (especially since they associate themselves with bands like Dir en Grey, lynch and sukekiyo on their bandcamp lol).  This makes me wonder how much of a presence they actually have in Korea vs Europe since the latter has a strong vkei fan base already.

Korean vkei needs to be more of a thing.

I assume you have heard of Madmans Epsrit? They’re from Korea and they’re basically Black Metal 
 
 
It sucks that K-Pop is dominating Korea instead of these guys or literally any other rock or metal band

I stay as far away from the culture and music of Kpop as I can (difficult considering my circle of friends right now are all Korean and listen to it). It's just never appealed to me and the perception that I get is that it's done more harm to the Korean music industry than good. It hasn't allowed there to be space for different genres of music. Like, where are the hard rock bands and experimental electronic artists?
 
I think the burgeoning K-indie scene has created a more open space for actual artists to write and produce their own music and it's great to see some individual creativity. But even so, there's a certain sound you can peg to the scene and it's ended up creating, from my perspective anyway, an alternatively stylized sub-sect of cookie-cutter production in rap, rnb/hip hop, downtempo pop.
 
I'm not saying the music itself is bad, just that I would like to see more support for lesser-loved genres of music like hardcore, metal, and experimental music. You just don't see bands like Dir en grey and Deviloof, Mono and Boris or Midori and Otoboke Beaver from Korea.

Even on $5 headphones albums produced and mixed well sound fine.

This
 
and this

This
 
and this

Guitar tone is part of the production process.
 
A better master would make a huge difference. In TIW, there's so much overall compression that the sound is crushed to the point of almost becoming two-dimensional. That's why it sounds 'flat'. Distorted guitars sound 'flat' by their very nature. A good mix will give them not only spatial positioning but also breathing room in the song.
 
Anyway, I do think that this was an artistic decision to make the LP sound as claustrophobic and difficult as possible. If so, they achieved their goal... at the cost of the music being fatiguing to listen to. Compare the album mixes to the live ones. It's like night and day.
 
Apologies if I'm sounding like a broken record.

The fact that this is being discussed at all means that there is an issue here, at least for some of us. I haven't minded any of the past mixes (until Tue Madsen's muddy DSS, particularly the singles). Original Uroboros sounds great. Kisou is excellent. Heck, even Marrow isn't bad. They all have a garage-feel that works for their respective albums. To my ears, TIW does not work; it's fatiguing.
 
I for one will be glad to see the backs of this era's team. Looking forward to whatever's coming next. Hopefully they won't use these guys again like they did with Tue Madsen (who was okay for the most part, just overused and got old).
 
I received my copy of The World of Mercy a few days ago. Listened to it twice. It suffers from the exact same problems that TIW does. The song itself is okay, although I'm still trying to digest it. It does feel quite bloated. Dozing Green acoustic is nice but it ends too quickly. I wish they kept the end of the song intact. Grief is Grief.

From when I hosted my VK club in Warsaw, Poland in July. 

Even on $5 headphones albums produced and mixed well sound fine.

Even on $5 headphones albums produced and mixed well sound fine.

I take a pic of myself about once every thousand years so here we go

These pictures look like they were taken in 2006

Me again, this time featuring a hat.
 
 
Images may be somewhat mahoosive as they're the first ones I've uploaded here that were taken with my fancy-ass camera, so I put them in a cut.