saiko

The ad is awesome. Wish I live in Japan!

Kyouki sings really good. He has that visual kei color that is very difficult to treat, and seems to do it smoothly and with almost no effort. He is ready for something more than Grieva. I hope he comes back in another format that doesn't imply reaping off somebody else's work shamelessly in the name of 'nostalgia'.

Dimlim and Kizu. I'm surprised by the amount of 2012+ born artists you follow!

D'erlanger is by far more interesting imo. Buck-tick started to be a thing since 'Aku no hana', then with 'Kurutta taiyou' their classic sound embraced its true form. No wonder why the most part of their hits come from this albums, and not from their prior ones. Speaking of them, they are a wank of formulaic pop punk rock, same as other acts like Boowy.

Daigo from Breakerz?

I felt betrayed with that radical harmony change in the chorus! It sounds horrible! Even if they take it back for the last play of the chorus... Man, that progression was the dramatic climax of the original song! Definitely gonna skip this. Overall, yeah, they surely adapted the song to their own style, there's all their recent sonic clichés put in there. But listening to this helped me to realize once again that I've grown bored of their musical decissions in the past years. Listening to TIW, TWoM and this keeps bringing to me the thought that they've entered a phase of difficulty on getting into new realms of sound. They need to stop living on dirty guitar chunks on the A-string with diminished fifth, clackling-bass riffs that can't be undertood a fucking note and Kyo's "uo-ho-ho-ho-ho-hooooo" theatrics. Yeah, it's cool actually, but it ceases to be so when you try to put to everything you make in order to match it with your style. They used to be more fresh in the past.

Just what the hell is momma goth doing? She just made a killer comeback with Malice Mizer last year, and now opens a Youtube account to upload this... don't know how to name it. Now I have less doubts over if it was the right decision for Közi and Yuuki to leave her alone... Also, Seth is a really talented singer, what the hell is he doing joining this madness!!!

I've readen the name 'Devil Kitty' a lot in this forum, and I started considering to go and look up for them. What songs do you recommend to try their style? An Cafe deserves much more recognition than what they already have here. They've put out really good music in every point of their career. The "ow but they are not br00tal brooo" 2007 otaku fad must end soon for better in this scene. Now speaking about their first era, 'Touhikairo' is a excellent example of its sound's core: they had the genious to bring out everything of a catchy and memorable track from a radically simple base of punk riffing over archetypic Jpop harmonies and song structures. This song and 'Tekesuta kousen' are masterpieces.

Nothing outstanding at all, but they definitely already have a nice amount of funds to deliver a decent quality song and video, so I hope they use their potential to challenge themselves to amaze us in the future.

Can you post here some translated comments?

I'm surprised nobody mentioned the hillarious pinned comment the band put in the section of the video: "Let's think about the "ESSENCE"". I want to take Retsu seriously, but they guy puts it challenging. I don't know if it's his awkward use of English, his insistence on the matter in every place of his social media, or both.

Well, our passion for Dimlim made us go off-topic but... Despite being a complex matter to approach, and also the fact that there isn't analysis available on the matter (at least in English), VK actually is a genre. There being a lot of variation and diversification both sonically and visually between bands of the scene doesn't necessarily conclude into VK bands don't having a LOT of things in common to make them part of a whole 'scene', in many levels (sound and visuals, but also other aspects related to production of the artists, their promotion, fans' rituals, etc., VK culture per se). 'Genre', 'movement', 'scene', call it the way you like. 'VK', as other things, exists by virtue of patterns of key elements that repeat all over their products no matter their differences between; in the end, that is what make their producers, bands themselves, us the fans, people inside and outside the scene, pick the term 'visual kei' to describe some music projects, and not 'glam rock', 'goth', 'punk' or 'metal' instead, in the way of deciding what music to listen according to our tastes.

I'm FUCKING digging this. Excellent mix of poppy J-rock and today's metal progressive sounds, while at the same time keeps delivering Dimlim's trademark sound. Bonus points for Sho's look! The VK vibe's still there untouched!

A friend of mine (who apparently had some connections with people involved into the teams that brought Kamijo to Latin America in his lastest tour) told him that Kamijo invited two guys of the crowd to drink wine and perhaps have sex, after the show. But who knows. Btw, Kamijo always seemed pretty non-straight to me. His approach to the androgynous aesthetics differ a lot from what your typical bandoman does with them, imho. Do you have any other info?

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'm liking it more than the regular djenty -Polyphiac Dimlim stuff, so I'm definitely on board does this. Also, love Sho's tribute to 2001's 'Macabre' Kyo.

This is my fantasy for sure.

This video along with Fender's clip of J trying a model from their new Ultra series... ...makes me wonder why the Western music industry's big fishes' visibility of J-rockers (and thus their legitimacy over them as rock musicians) is happening today, with a VK scene deader than ever, both in Japan and abroad, and not in 2007. Is 2020 going to be a revitalizing year for VK despite all our -accurately justified- apocalyptic thoughts?

Dear Monochromians: Can we just accept the fact that 'Gauze' is the most perfect gem Dir and VK as a whole scene gave us all, so much that nothing of it will be ever able to overcome such a miracle of art? Xoxo. Edit: wtf is 'psychobilly'. Are we discovering Dir's actual '~kei'?

I've just ended up a whole listen of a list with all the Moran PVs. Pleasant stuff, many sweet sounds picked my ear at moments, but definitely it is not something that goes beyond good generic stuff: good compositions, good musicians, but nothing far good from your average formulaic jazzy J-rock. Maybe my appreciation above came because, in the will of having a compressed listening/watching of a whole career in a matter of hours, I've ended up digging their A-sides only, let's say, their commercial-oriented stuff. So I'll try the B-sides you recommend here, to challenge the opinion I've made up till this point. In the other hand, this song from Hitomi's recent project caught strongly my attention from the first second, for sure: The synth and chorus work is REALLY beautiful. Reminds my of some 90s J-pop songs, like the one that made the opening of the Serial Experiments Lain series. Btw, Does anybody know why is there so little material from Umiyuri uploaded to the web? Edit: I've digging into Moran a bit more, and I've discovered actually beautiful and amazing songs! This is actually really complex for a pop-oriented A-side. And this is all about the musicianship composition wise I was looking for! Now I'm really looking forward more stuff from this talented guys!

Why didn't I see this earlier. Moran still can't get into my radar (God knows I tried). Maybe I'll give them a chance soon! Thank you so much for this pieces of historianship!

Well, it seems that they've actually acknowledged the hype they've stirred upon their stans with the celebration of the 25th anniversary event. So I seriously hope for the upcoming event that they at least play more Malice Mizer songs instead of N.P.N.G lol

Since Mako got active again I hope this means some kind of return to activities for Yuki or Malice Mizer altogether as well, even if they consists in more anniversary lives.