saiko

how did this thread end up with a venti serving of mad sour grapes tea is another important question x
 
I recommend u getting a hobby and a sugardaddy to payroll it, redistribute that wealth and express urself good sister

So yeah, he’s some dude that used to cover DEG songs while pretending to be Die. And I use the word “cover” loosely because you could never actually hear him playing over the original track. But boy could he ever mimic the stage presence that Die stole from Cipher. 

I'm interested! :)

As the title says, I'm interested in recruiting members for:
 
1) compiling available tabs of vk music in the web;
2) correcting them if they have mistakes;
3) transcribing published official "band scores" using interactive virtual score plataforms (like GuitarPro);
4) looking up for the said scores scans on the Web or buy them;
4) transcribing by ear songs that doesn't have an official "band score" release in Japan;
5) finally making up a single and exhaustive archive for the tabs.
 
Anyone interested?

Well, cringe over my BT pic all you want babe, but it delivers genuine vk aesthetics instead of idol-kei emptyness.
 
Xoxo

Well, cringe over my BT pic all you want babe, but it delivers genuine vk aesthetics instead of idol-kei emptyness.
 
Xoxo

The kawaii-poses makes me cringe a lot. Please bandoman, be serious,

This.
VK became quickly very stereotypical in terms of visuals. What I always consider a genre sometimes makes me wonder if it isn't lack of creativity and wanting to appeal to hysterical bangya.
For me, Dir is one of the few bands that always tried to put out something new each time they did a release.
And, yeah, I don't get how bands like Kiryu stay that popular nowadays. They had their peak of creativity, they amazed us, and then just fell off doing the fucking same for each release...

The kawaii-poses makes me cringe a lot. Please bandoman, be serious,

yall  have no taste when it comes to looks smh, the weird shit is at least interesting and creative when you compare it to the boring-ass "check it out bro we're all wearing SUITS" or "dude we're totally wearing kimonos lmao we're so traditional" looks that way too many vk bands do nowadays
 
i'd much rather take the weird yoda stuff over smth like kiryu, who have basically been recycling the same 3 or 4 general styles their entire career, for example.. for people who claim to be into visual stuff a lot of y'all are still pretty quick to write off anything that deviates from the generic vk pretty boy norm

Some more info on the album's tracks etc.:
 

I think the biggest kii of this shit album is that last time Kyo had his REAL DEEP DEPRESSION HOURS phase they came up with withering to death.
 
this entire mess would have benefited 20x if they released a 5 3 track mini with the passable/good tracks, and left the singles and ranunculus for the for an actually good album pushed back by a year.
 
downfall sounds like fucking sadie ripping off TMOAB

How lame is THAT?
 
Do they really have to do that? Bangya will buy your stupid shirts anyway to do 2shots with you.... Stay at least a bit visual.... #commercialkei

Hello! I have copy number 14 of the DVD. It contains a concert, but actually much more. Two PVs (Fleur and ROMANCIA), the Fleur is much better then the VHS release we only have, it contains many many pictures in a slideshow that were released nowhere else, over 100. It also contains a slideshow of lots of unseen concert footage, but with just a song over it. And it contains excerpts of yet another major era concert, with about 15 seconds per song, it has Billet in that! The only live Billet footage there is.
This DVD just shows as a love letter how much love KAMIJO has for his fans, he didn't have money to print any more copies probably, because he had to print more compilation CDs at that time like Imperial Concerto, but it's still a big love letter.
 
Good news, I PUT A PART OF IT ON YT!!
Share it like widefire guys.
 
But I love this DVD so much, it's my favourite part of my collection besides their 1st demo tape (100 limited), and I want it to keep it's huge value among collectors, being sold for 100s the rare times it shows up, so I'm not going to put anymore online.
BUT I'm going to make an entry of this DVD in Discogs with a detailed tracklist guys
I'm already doing a lot for the fanbase by giving info and that one vid, cus there's litirally NO info at all about this at all on the internet besides the Puresound entry. Oh yes, if you have this DVD, YA BETTER NOT SHARE IT TOO  It must stay valuable.
 
 
And OMG I read your long post about their disbandment! This made me sooo sad.... I already knew some of this but not with this much detail! I always knew LAREINE had so much love for each other and their fans, even though I hear people sometimes say KAMIJO is an asshole. Or even a few posts before that they didn't like each other LOL.
APPLAUSE RECORDS was the only reason why LAREINE could still make music, I'm so grateful KAMIJO made it when he still had money in Fierte era. And their late era music has so much gems! Imperial Concerto, Sakura, Drama, 愛されていた日々-Ever Love-, 月の狩人, basically the whole Winter Romantic EP, but there's a lot of just good and some decent tracks too so that's why people think it. But I've listened to NEVER CAGE and Imperial Concerto sooo much times, hundreds that I love it all hahaha. Only 眠れぬ恋は真珠 I actively dislike and avoid. It might be one of the worst LAREINE songs ever lol.
I didn't know they actually COULDN'T find a drummer, that's soo sad! 😢
 
Also almost ALL releases of LAREINE after 2003 are expensive ASF and rare and rarely show up: NEVER CAGE, the main album of that time is rare, the three versions are all three rare, normal, Deluxe and Limited... The main singles: Trailer, Sakura, Drama and Sakura -Second Season-, 雪恋詩, 道化師の舞曲 and Cinderella Fantasy are rare too! It's exeptional that these are on puresound at the moment actually, they're KINDAAA overpriced, but are still expensive items. And let's not talk about Best Album Ballad and Fleur, Imperial Concerto, Winter Romantic, Deep Forest, 白蝶 and 女王という名の貴公子 that are each worth over 100.... A prime example of releasing REALLY GOOD music on limited batches of prints. They actually also had a revival of the Fleur fanclub magazine in 2004 that had a few issues, these seem to be so rare that I've never ever seem them on sale. Heck, even the Fleur magazines from the major era BARELY go on sale...
 
I'm dreaming of ever seeing a Bara wa live performance, question: Did they perform this and Billet in their late era concerts? Or songs like ピンクの傘 and パリは秋色 from Fierte, two of my favourites and sooo underrated. Sadly these four are not on the THE LAST OF ROMANCE I DVD main concert.
 
 
 
And some good info:
I'm working on a huge LAREINE fansite! With scans of every release booklet, a full discography AND miscellanous items like the many many message CD/VHS/Tapes, lots of information, magazine and book scans! It's sitll in early stages so no link yet, but I will make a topic and a new LAREINE thread here (this one's from 2007 lol) when it's close to done and presentable!  Using a paid domain and a very good Wordpress theme with many plugins. I think I am very fitted to make the website since I own almost every item ever except the FC magazines that I barely own.
 
Inertla thank you so much for your post!! Can I use info of it in my site? I will credit you! This might also be my favourite post on this whole site lol!
Bye
 
Also if anyone is wondering why Reine de fleur I and II sound so weird, it's because it's a compilation of pre-BLUE ROMANCE LAREINE except for Detest Off Doll and a version of Féerie. KAMIJO's voice was completely untrained in some of the songs on it. When I first started listening and downloaded Reine de fleur I and II I was also very confused by this LOL. I put on 季節風 and Dir en gray at random and was like "WTF??" lol

The visual-kei scene is full of its own quirks and oddities that make it stand out from any other subculture in the music world; these hallmarks also appear to resonate at a national level, in spite of the culture stemming from several metropolitan hubs, each with their own small variants. One of these traits, for better or for worse, is how willing the scene is to reference itself. Since 2013, “willing” has become the incorrect word. “Obsessed,” “addicted,” “driven,” “obligated”; these words seem to fit the bill closer. References to older material is not uncommon in any medium of art, but visual-kei takes it four steps further to emulation. Today is the day we talk about homage-系 (Kei), kids.

“Homage-kei” is a made up word. It isn’t a real category to anyone else other than people who use this board, to be honest, but it is an apt descriptor for this phenomenon. This is when a band reuses melodies, thematic, aesthetics, and even titles from an older, typically more successful, band or bands. However: their music also contains many original elements, which sets them apart from being a literal cover band. It also needs to be more than a single occurrence as well: Dir en grey “””borrowing””” the main riff of Luna Sea’s “G” is not enough, but borrowing the front-man of 黒夢 (Kuroyume)’s aesthetic for several music videos is.
 


There are several bands that would fall under this umbrella from the late 2000’s. Two I want to touch on are Ru:Natic and the infamous Vajra. The first was one of the earliest examples I can think of that tried to revive the aggressive and bloody punk-meets-goth-meets-pop style popularized in the mid-90’s. They wore black clothes, had neon hair, and sang about being a crazy person invited to dinner parties that they had no business attending. While they weren’t the only group doing this (re: Sadie’s Mary and Sadie’sla), they were the first to start reusing melodies from older bands, namely La:Sadie’s, Madeth Gray’ll, and Aliene Ma’riage. There was even a hard-to-come-by single that was a reinterpretation of Baiser’s “undersea” and they had a demo tape that contained covers from some of the bands previously mentioned. They even lost a bunch of members, changed record labels, and released a lot of rare material: all cornerstones of “what an old school band does.” In my memory of the scene, this was the first time we got a real taste of bands reinventing the 90s sound that many people liked, but had fallen out of favor.
 



Vajra was fun for the wrong reasons. Their costumes were kind of similar to UnsraW and thematically they were a bit too close to Dir en grey for the fan base at the time’s comfort. One of their singles was apparently a near 1:1 facsimile of another Dir en grey track and that caused a shitstorm on last.fm . For days people were arguing back and forth about whether it was a copy or not. Our own dear @Zeus requested someone overlay it with the original so we could see how similar it was. I personally did not have a horse in that race, but for hours or entertainment seeing the bickering between the hordes of people in outrage vs that one person who apparently went to their shows regularly and gave sympathetic updates about how this was affecting the band personally. Take his with a grain of salt, as it is only a Western interpretation of what happened and I cannot speak to how it was received by fans who could actually go see them in person. Regardless of where you stood in this fight, history’s take is that it did not end well for Vajra; they broke up shortly after only to be remembered as “that band that tried to be Diru.”
 
Both examples were, in retrospect, unsuccessful. Ru:Natic, in their heyday, missed the boat on people eating up old-school revival acts by about 3 years, then only played again in one-off events. Vajra, on the other hand, failed for a couple of reasons. The first is that the fan base wasn’t ready for their style of tribute-meets-original-works. Secondly, there wasn’t enough time passed between what they performed and when their source material was released. Based on later act’s success, time helps prevent “a homage” from being seen as “a rip-off.”
 


Earlier I had mentioned 2013 being the starting point for “homage-kei,” in a more official (but still unofficial) sense. That’s because グリヴァー (GRIEVA) happened and caused a shift in the scene. For those unfamiliar, Grieva’s whole schtick was that they dressed like a modern version of 1998 Dir en grey and made music that sounded like it could have came from from the same time frame. However, after people got a hold of their first album, it became alarming clear that it was one big tribute to “Gauze” (Dir en grey’s first album). A lot of songs “borrowed” the melodies of Gauze-era songs, their music videos were kind of like high school kids reenacting their idol’s work for a class project, and you were even able to draw parallels to the lyrical content. Grieva handled this clearly stating their theme is to bring back the feeling of the old days, and even fabricated a whole interview about how they went on a quest for band members that held the same ideals. Unlike Vajra, when people confronted them by saying “You’re just stealing,” them saying “Yeah, but that’s like the point???” it worked. Granted, there were plenty of people who weren’t buying this act and loathed the whole idea, but there was more than enough support for it to keep them at the forefront of the scene up until 2015. In fact, it worked so well that their label made it happen AGAIN, but this time with a band that pretended to be The GazettE and another that mixed all different concepts from the eroguro scene and western nü-metal together. This was the first time in visual-kei where blatantly copying on purpose wasn’t met with more backlash than praise.

Several other acts spawned at the same time, due to a strong desire for “bands that sound like old school groups.” This was in part due to Cell, an offshoot of La’Mule that made somewhat similar music, Lin, a Kisaki band that came after he swore he was retired, and a general sense of boredom from the run-of-the-mill bands that dressed like host boys. Other groups that come to mind include Gauzes (a La’Mule homage-kei group), DEZERT (their first singles were nü-metal interpretations of groups like D’espairsRay and Nega), and AvelCain (who took more influence from groups like Lamiel than their fan base wanted to admit). Suddenly, it was cool to be like someone else.
 



Eventually, the hype waned a bit. Grieva started writing their own music and then eventually split after being worked to death by their label. It was mostly the same case for AvelCain, Cell went on break because frontman Kon can’t keep focused on one thing, DEZERT found (and then killed) their own style, and most of the other old school sounding bands weren’t big enough to really make a lasting impact. This was the death of homage-kei.


Or was it???


Interestingly enough, in recent years, this scene metamorphosed along with the scene at large. We started seeing groups now begin to “take influence from” more recent acts (which I guess are still old if you’re younger than 20??). We had メディーナ (Mediena), who took a lot from Phantasmagoria, ガンミ (Ganmi), which sounded like an early 2000s band without a real influence to pin point, and Mamireta, who tried to restart the subculture in high gear with their refreshing takes on 蜉蝣 (Kagerou)’s music. There are even big acts forming side projects that “sound like a 90’s band!!”, like Diaura(who are not guilt-free themselves, when it comes to Pierrot worship) and ぞんび (Zonbi). Even Gossip-ゴシップ- went from copying The GazettE to emulating their label owner’s old band (albeit at gunpoint (allegedly!)). It is worth noting that another significant change: aside from a few examples, the current trend has become "I want to sound like ___," rather than "guess which ___ songs I combined!!!" Arguably, the style should have started with this mentality, but controversy creates buzz.
 


Unoriginality in the visual kei scene is nothing new. We even have an entire thread dedicated to specific instances where someone took a riff or theme and matches it to the exact source material it came from. But homage-kei really takes it to the next level. Bands want you to know who they’re sounding like. Could it be for nostalgia sales? Or because recreating a well liked motif makes it easier for someone to like a new creation (they’re already emotionally invested)? Or is it just a lazy cash grab, which requires 40% less effort to produce material? Maybe it is fulfilling a fantasy to reenact what you love about your idols? In spite of how much I adore everything mentioned throughout this article, I would be lying to you if I didn’t say that it is probably a mix of all four.

Hey, remember when the guys totally killed it on Drag Race?
 
Seriously, the looks from the pre-Gauze era where really draggy. I wonder what could have happened then if the 90s could have met this rising of the trans and drag topic in the mass-media.

Honestly, as someone who lived through their "try hard to be metal"-era, but also old enough to remember what came before, I'm thrilled with every new look they give us these days. So glad they decided to get visually relevant again.

I'd choose bald nun Kyo over shitty bmth rip off Kyo anytime. 

rare solo image of kyo leaked

Yeah! They do! Well, mostly it's in the anime fandom of Japanese fans, but it isn't such a far fetch idea to think it wouldn't happen in VK lol I mean, if I were in Japan I'd do that lol Yeah, when I get the time this weekend I'll try to video it ouo and maybe show the photobook that came along the album as well lol they just look amazing in their last album ;w; ❤️❤️❤️ 
 
I seriously do not understand why that's a thing even e.e I mean, they're rockstars that started out with heavy music in the first place, why change their tempo completely? I mean yeah, I get being experimental but sometimes bands make a total 180 degree change after debuting wtf well yeah it's subjective, but I think a whole lot would prefer their original heavier music lol
 
Ho shi, I actually forgot that Gather Roses has a jazzy edge to it as well! Yuuto's double bass is amazing *q* seriously, I wish someone would use that again, double bass is awesome as fuck! Actually, now that we're talking about it, Screw prob experimented a lot with the Jazz genre into their rock music and we just haven't noticed much yet lol I feel like I might relisten to a whole lot of their songs just to see for myself ouo Oh oh, but in the end Byou's English is definitely turning for the better! In their last few releases, their really tearful song Remember Me had really good fucking lyrics like wtf yo, even tho some of them I didn't understand as Byou was singing when I saw the lyrics just holy fucking shit, this boi is so fucking talented and amazing that I am just so fucking relieved that he's back to making music because god damn it, the world may not deserve Byou and Jin but they sure as hell are very generous to the us and we're so fucking fortunate *gross sobbing crying*
 
Sorry, I feel emotional today cuz yesterday whilst I was out shopping I thought I could handle listening to Screw in public and I swear to fuck, I nearly fell down to my knees crying when I listened to Death's Door yesterday QAQ
 
Ohhhhhh, a Kazuki bias! Did you hear the news that Kazuki now opened up his own bar? I can't remember the name but Jin and Byou visited him on his bday as he opened his bar ouo But yes, I love all the members but, Jin is just too special for me sometimes QwQ ❤️❤️❤️ 
 
Wailing Wall is just a fucking MASTERPIECE bruh! It's definitely one of my all time faves, same as most of Screw's songs that are my all time faves lol but it just hits you sometimes, like you find yourself singing or humming to that song and then, you remember the meaning of the lyrics and just fuck, Byou you fucking genius I love you man. When Byou makes lyrics he's just amazing. I think we can both agree that 90% of Screw's songs we absolutely adore and love lololololol I rarely have any Screw songs that I wanna skip when I listen to them... Well, except of course recently cuz I can;t bear to listen to them without crying still ;w;
 
Yeah true Nov, 1 just can't come any sooner ahhhhhhh fbwejbfjk so for now we must satisfy ourselves with the samples first lol Don't be Silly reminds me of their X-Rays era whilst the Katakana one reminds me of their earlier years, like Virus era maybe? ouo
 
Thanks! And yeah hopefully, I shall meet Jin and have him fall in love with me so he may marry me e.e jk jk lol he's better off with Byou .w. lololololol I say lol a lot so please do not get irritated by that XD Ahhhhhhh I feel jelly ckndcklndclaedq well, even if you didn't get to go to their last live at least you still got to support them live and have the time of your life to go to one of their concerts! That's awesome! Must cherish the memoryyyyyy~ ahhhh Jin's drum solos ❤️ truly a gift from the heaven's ❤️ he's just so amazing ❤️
 
I've made some friends over commenting in their fics but it's not really that long lived XD but at least I got to chat with the author cuz most vk authors are superbly fucking talented and amazing ❤️❤️❤️ tbh, I only started out as a writer and got my inspirations and models from the VK fandom lol like heck, my most favourite author is a fanfic writer lol sweetlolixo to be exact ouo but recently I haven't been reading from them cuz my tastes in ships change lol
 
nah, it's cool we can just start reading each other's fics from now on and critique on each other XD Just make sure to always archive and save fanfics for yourself just in case authors start deleting lol 
 
And seriously, I feel like I always reply to you during my lunch break XD it's the most time i have to make long replies ❤️ currently replying during my lunch break lololololol

this post has aged extremely well

Shinya was shook by Sakura’s performance. 
 
http://kyotakumrau.tumblr.com/post/177994873017/moi-meme-moitie-twitter-20180910-mana様からdir-en

I think his singing is poor and needs improvement. The other musicians are good, but the vocal is behind and needs to catch up. I'm not saying he has to be the perfect singer; I'm just saying his vocals are poor to the point it needs to be addressed.
 
I listen to many bands that didn't have the best vocalists, but at least they were better and worked on it to make it better. It's their job.
 
 
 

This is something I've been thinking since I realized I loved vk more than any other music scene. I'd love to discuss it in another thread. It's really sad to get confirmed with facts and within the opinion of the community what every "normal" person with "normal" music tastes around you said when you came to discover it and fell in love... The negative appreciation on vk being a bunch of crazy people doing shitty music seems transcultural at this point...

Never truth was truer, unfortunately.