saiko

Aunt is bored

MAKE VISUAL KEI GREAT AGAIN.

Returning to the idol kei topic.

Nowadays, when I watch/listen back to ViViD —one of the first VK bands I came across and one that I enjoyed the most— I think I can acknowledge the hints that actually indicate how heavily they were produced to appeal to the crowds in an idol way. So, they surely weren't that pure and artistical about VK and stuff, and of course could have had more than one A-side produced by one or more ghost-writters...

But, let's be honest: can we ignore the fact that the arranges of their songs were fucking brilliant, and so were their skills as interpreters? Many, many kudos to Reno's polished approach to shredded guitar, IV's hyper-melodic bass lines, and Shin's VERY well managing of the VK vocal traits —whose exaggeration in some cases ruined great capacities forever, like what happened with Nightmare's Yomi— while at the same time enduring a full show delivering a constant and massive vocal flow.

This band was a fucking thrill, although the commercial intention of their project became so blatantly notorious in their last releases that many fans (myself included) lost interest almost inmmediatly.

That said, I really wish that nowadays' idol kei bands, even if they put their efforts to make that kind of career into the scene, at least make something commercial in the level of the quality bands like ViViD did back in their time. 

After listening PVs at random on Youtube, I decided to listen to a whole album of Lastier. I picked up their second. The first track kicked out, and the chords are killing me.  Fucking glorious.

What the fuck, it's been so long since a band hooked up my ears like this. I hope this ride comes up with more great stuff!

Is anybody here interested in making a post about the 90s softvi movement? Yesterday I've got very hooked by a bunch of guys that I've never given the chance to listen to yet: Lastier, Jurassic, Close, Waive, and many more. Since they clearly don't belong to the more serious, gothic stuff that the category of visual kei calls for most of the time, I've turned my sight off them because they were mainstream appealing and blabla. But hey, they sound amazing! They bring all that 90s anime opening sound, powerful and dramatic, with that awesome chords modulations that made myself interest in J-music as a kid. So, if there's anyone here interested into giving more insight over them and/or music recomendations, here's your chance!

This is what I found on a brief research over softvi. Still don't know enough Japanese to go into more insightful sites, so my information may remain very little till somebody enlightens me more lol:

*They formed a large group into the 90s VK scene, and also many of them received constant attention from media (judging mostly from magazine covers);

*They had a kind of specific aesthetics for them, both visual and sound wise;

*Most of them (if not all of them) were signed under a label named Break out.

So they were a thing back then, so I think they are a key point to anybody interested in looking for VK's history (although they've fallen into the obscure side of the Western fandom's radar even to this day).