saiko

HBD, underrated pop prince.
 
 

Since Közi has been uploading quite a few acoustic MALICE MIZER cover snippets on Twitter in the past year or so, I thought it'd be fun to try to gather them here in one post. I've put the videos under individual spoiler cuts so that the page doesn't become too bogged-down/media-heavy.
 
claire～月の調べ～
 
Ju te veux
 
Garnet～禁断の園へ～
 
...okay I thought there was more, but actually the other vids are him doing ZIZ or solo tracks, heh. Still pretty cool.  
 
btw all these songs were credited to him, so I guess he might be only playing his own MM stuff. Based on this logic, hopefully he'll do some of these in the future:
 
seraph
APRÉS MIDI～あるパリの午後で～
偽りのmusetté
Madrigal
COLOR ME BLOOD RED
ILLUMINATI
Brise
月下の夜想曲
鏡の舞踏 幻惑の夜
地下水脈の迷路
 
The more poppy/laid-back stuff would translate really well to a stripped-down acoustic arrangement, but what I really wanna see is ILLUMINATI or COLOR ME BLOOD RED, haha.  

Tell some names!

I'm a very fan of Luna, but never had the chance to dig their discography while trying to trace the development of their artistic project, whatever it is. So, like in the listening of other of their albums, I've listened to Mother a lot of times, enjoying it a lot, but never payed attention to it as a whole, rather I concentrated my pleasure in each track as a unit. Maybe it came the time to do it the other way!
 
I'm so impressed J is credited as the main composer of those classics! Now I realize I unconsciouslly assumed all this time it was either Sugizo or Inoran who were back them, because 90% of the times in rock bands it's the guitarist who comes with the majority of ideas... This deserves more researching! 

Here is the translation:  

Now you mention it, some users and I discussed this hypothesis a months ago, and the agreement was over the fact that it may be true.
 
It is almost impossible to explain other way how a group of little to no known indie musicians (yeah, I know Lime was in Lezard, but anyway... who the fuck are them?) launched from night to morning a project with such level of excellence both in music (compositions, recording), looks, videoclips and overall advertising campaign (remember the whole thing of the telephone number where bangya could talk to Lime to make catharsis of their suicidal thoughts? Crazy!).
 
They definitely had a ton of money behind them to do such, and if someone risked that amount of money for funding a band of nobodies in an currently almost dead genre/scene, I think it's obvious that those investors still now take every chance and tool they have acces to to make Kizu deliver profit in the most effective and eficient way. I'm still amazed about the fact that someone decided to take said risk; if I had the money I'm not sure if I would do it considering the situation, tbh.
 
And I'm not against it at all, because it was Kizu the band that (along Dimlim) retained the dignity of VK all this time within a scene full of ultra cringe-worthy newcomers and slowly-dying big fishes...

hope jesus heard his prayers asking to get his voice back

Me and some friends are starting up one for fun called 紫苑/Shion. We only have a bassist, guitarist and violinist (me). So far we're just planning some covers to show our general skills, and when we have the remaining musicians needed for a real band we plan to actually do something.

From 2007 to 2011 I played guitar in the band Dark Cherry, formed by a group of friends. We made kinda poppy emo/alternative rock/metal with electronic elements (implicitly influenced a bit by D'espairsRay, Abingdon Boys School, L'Arc and stuff like that). Home-recorded a bunch of crappy sounding demos, studio-recorded two better sounding singles and played a few dozen gigs mostly locally, it was fun.
 
From 2006 to this day I'm in a hobby/"just for fun" music project with my vocalist friend (who is also ex-Dark Cherry) under the alias The 21st Cherry Boys (the name came from BUCK-TICK's song, lol), or T21CB for short. We record stuff at home, in totally random styles that come to our mind at the moment. But usually it's some kind of silly weird pop/rock music coupled with electronics (for a while a friend of ours joined too, he played the cajon). We're doing a 12-month single release campaign this year, tho dunno how far we'll get due to the virus scare, lol.
 
We also had a short-lived project Sunshine Demons with the guitarist cousin of said vocalist friend. We recorded an EP in 2012, kind of a mixture of punk, post-hardcore and pop-rock. We also have an album's worth of unreleased and mostly unfinished tracks recorded during 2018-2019, which we are slowwwwwly working on getting finalized. So far it seems like it will have somewhat of a Latin flair in the music, and it will be a concept record telling a story about cowboys, crime, ghosts, revenge,...stuff like that, lol.
 
From 2007-ish onwards I'm also doing some solo stuff here and there under the name JigsawJohnny, but I'm super lazy so I haven't recorded that much music. Genres range from noise, industrial to hardcore, death metal, post-punk, whatever I feel like. My latest release was a dark ambient record with a dystopian cyberpunk concept last Halloween.
 
Most of the music that isn't totally terrible to listen to for even those involved can be found on Bandcamp.

I was in a few local bands and some of our sets got decent turnouts (bare in mind we lived in a small city) but I was always late to join bands so I could never really make their sound my own. The best group I was in was called 'Flock North' and we played political fuelled rock...I had no interest in politics so it was a bit like how The Smiths sang about meat being murder but Morrisey was the only vegetarian.
 
As for now I'm a small time hobbyist producing lofi hip hop and Breakcore although I did have a breakcore track released on a compilation a few years ago which is my crowning achievement. I'm trying to incorporate VK somehow but I'm still finding the best way to do it.

the signs were there all along!!!!

Wow. Karma must be very sure of him having rich bangya who will definitely spend that amount of cash for his art... I'm so envious of his level of self-esteem as an artist, lol.

Classic, if maybe a little overproduced (not every five seconds of every song needs a bunch of sound effects and blips and radio broadcast snippets). Ryuichi had an emotional range beyond just the arms-waving-in-the-wind messianic drama thing and could sound pretty convincingly sinister at times, which prevents the wimpiness of it all from getting on my nerves.
 
more threads about ancient albums, please

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

I guess this is not totally unexpected but still it was surprising/fun to spot in this context: the Strictly Dumpling guy just put up a video on his channel where he went to a bunch of ramen joints in Sapporo, and one of the places is decorated with signatures/messages from bands who ate there. 未完成アリス (Mikansei Alice) is the only VK band I could spot... well it was hard to miss, lol.
 

Gackt  said in his 2018 platinum photobook that the other members were already in a weired relationship when he just joined the band, it's on the verge of disbanding so it's clearly not his fault to break up all the things.
And it was him who was trying to negotiating and putting things up together.  Although he felt weired but it was just a job so he withstood it.
So it's all other members' fault.
Among all things Gackt said, I think there are at least some truth in it: He said all MM members  are very unsociable and laid-back person. He wondered who was going to take the role to communicate with outside after he left. And when he was in the band he had to urge everyone to do their job.   
However now we know Gackt is a very strict overman about his job, maybe they didnt know it back in 20 years and would blame him for it

3rd and 4th track are alright. Where did all that art kei go? I almost ended up liking a karma project for once.

I really want them to succeed and do well and they’re not making it easy for me. It really is hands down their worst so far and doesn’t matter how tongue in cheek the ripoffs are it’s just... eh

who is kurt cobain and why is he plagiarizing karma??? 

I think I’m like a lot of people lately who have been rediscovering their love of VK lately. I haven’t really kept up with any bands since I was about 16 so it’s been 10 years! Quarantine has left me bored and looking up loads of old songs on YouTube.

I was a HUGE Malice Mizer fan. Some other bands I liked were Madeth Gray’ll, Nightmare, Nega, DEATHGAZE, deadman, Schwarz Stein & Versailles.
 
Looking forward to catching up and finding some new music! :)

I don't know this and the animal shit they seem like decent guys overall 
 
oh yeah, and when i saw them live the venue bungled the queue and some people didn't get in by the time they started playing, so they just played the first few songs of their set again. They also played Eden after someone requested it at the Q&A. Most of the bands that come here just shit out an abbreviated version of their japanese set and fuck off with the next flight.

I haven't listened to D in a long time but mad respects to them for trying to spread hope and positivity in this song.
 
 

All of my favorite LS songs are written by J. Literally. I'm speechless. 

J really did not fuck around with laying down the template for 80% of all vk that came afterwards.  Here are his songwriting credits (excluding MOTHER already mentioned) up till the band's disbandment/hiatus:
 
TIME IS DEAD
SHADE
THE SLAIN
PRECIOUS...
MECHANICAL DANCE
IMITATION
IN MIND
WISH
JESUS
IN MY DREAM (WITH SHIVER)
STEAL
STAY
SLAVE
FALLOUT
G.
HURT
RA-SE-N
FOREVER & EVER
Time Has Come
STORM
SHINE
Unlikelihood
ANOTHER
BROKEN
INTO THE SUN
Sweetest Coma Again
a Vision
TONIGHT
Crazy About You

[..kissing in the cosmos, Face to Face ..]
 
My absolute favorite Luna Sea song, on my absolute favorite album. I feel the album was a step up in not only in musical quality and production, but in that it provided something more. It provided a narrative akin to a space opera. When I hear Ryuichi go into the chorus with the words "Face to face..", I picture scenes from.. not quite Blade Runner, but something close, yet more abstract and spiritual. I feel like I'm on a journey through space that is both sad and lonely, yet hopeful and fulfulling.
 
It's weird. Not many albums make me picture scenes so vivid as MOTHER does. Then again, I'm a total scifi romantikku freak so that might play in as well of course. Still, I feel that it represents them wanting to step up their game and present something more than just an album. It's a journey to the future, while still being absolutely grounded in both time and place with it's very stylized 90's pop-rock, and I fucking absolutely love it.