saiko

Perhaps we could move the discussion about ghostwriting to this thread. Recently I've been watching the topic pop up very often, so maybe many of you guys would like to talk about it.
 
Maybe we could start by each one making up a list of the artists or songs or whatever stuff you consider useful to explain to somebody how ghostwritten music looks like and how not-ghostwritten music differentiates from it.
 
In my case, I think I caught a nice example while yesterday looking up for old classic I've never had the chance to try. It was the case for baroque. The contrast between their A-sides before disbanding and after their comeback screams idolization so loud that I couldn't believe my ears.
 
 
 
 
One doesn't need critical music-listening skills to appreciate, in one hand, in the pre-come-back songs, the experimental nature of the trashy and psychedelic arrengments in every song (and what amazes me the most is that these songs, as A-sides, where intended to serve for promotional, commercial, issues!); and in the other hand, the almost complete submission of every musical arrange, and even their looks, to a very well-known, standarized, Johnny'sesque aesthetic, in order to appeal to the recent younger fandom. The differences are so abysmal, and kinda scary, imo... from early century neo-Tokyo punks, to creamy-sweaty-ribbon-shotacon manga characters...
 
Anyway, and don't willing to enter into much musical details, further than what can be clearly seen in the example above, I think an indication of not-ghostwritten could be the lack of imitation of a song style as a whole. Let's say, a not-ghostwritten song would be one that, although you could clearly identify well-known music trends in it (a punk sound, a nu metal sound, etc.), or even previously famous artists signature arrangments (a Sugizoesque kind of solo, etc.), still sounds fresh while displaying said features in a way that you definitely know it wasn't heard/seen before. Inspiration is always there, nobody creates something from nothingness itself, but that doesn't mean you can't make your own version of it and through that create something unique.
 
Here are some songs that I returned to after a long time not listening to them. After being triggered with the whole baroque thing, I started to look up for '01~'05 releases, and hell... say what we know, VK was always about dragging otaku girls into fandom while displaying androgynous looks, so it always had a commercial approach inherent to it, and also bandomen were all chinpira prostitutes who knowed little about playing actual music, blabla... all of that is true to an extent, but those facts shouldn't deny that there actually was people trying to express themselves in their own way, even if the results where amateur and unpolished, and even if they signed a major contract and started to make their sound and appearance more appealing to mainstream...
 
 

This thread is a living internet museum really.

Gauze's production is a dream. You can definitely hear every instrument in there.
 
Perhaps they had the biggest amount of investment of their whole career at that time... Having Yoshiki arranging your A-sides should have been anything but cheap...

Production =/= mixing =/= mastering.
 
Production is song creation, choosing instruments, recording them, crafting them to get the right atmosphere for the project.
Mixing is the balance of the stems recorded for each song.
Mastering is making sure all songs across an album are balanced the same, and getting the final 'sound' of the album with effects like EQ and compression.
 
For example, The Insulated World is a pretty well-produced album (a little laziness in writing aside). The mix is okay, but it's absolutely destroyed by an atrocious master that makes everything sound far too compressed, creating a fatiguing listen.
 
 

Gauze's production is a dream. You can definitely hear every instrument in there.
 
Perhaps they had the biggest amount of investment of their whole career at that time... Having Yoshiki arranging your A-sides should have been anything but cheap...

I was actually wondering this myself. There are a lot of cliche musical elements in 90's Visual Kei that I can easily point out, but don't know the music theory behind because I'm barely a musician. There are certain drum beats, chord progressions, scales, effects, vocal techniques, and more that have become cliche in Visual Kei.
 
One notable example is what I call "THAT" Visual Kei chorus. It's not really one thing, but a combination of factors that come together. Mainly the drum beat and chord progession.
Compare the chorus of these songs:
These aren't the best examples, but they're the first that comes to my mind. From what I've seen, it seems to be a synthesis of influences from Luna Sea, G-Schmitt, BOOWY, Zi:Kill and whatnot, but I really don't know which artists made it "cool", per-se, probably Luna Sea. They don't all use the same chord progessions or drum beats, but they revolve around similar ones.
 
Then there are the pinch harmonics. (This is where my super basic knowledge in playing guitar comes in). For those who don't know what pinch harmonics are, they're when you lightly touch the guitar string with your thumb joint while picking a note, in order to get a higher pitched sound. In Western Rock, these are referred to as "squealies" because they're often used to make high pitched squeals. In Visual Kei, however, they're used as ornaments to a riff that basically shift around the octaves of the notes.
I would say this started as mainly a glam rock thing, as BOOWY implemented it occasionally in songs, such in the bridge of LIKE A CHILD (which has also influenced Vkei in other ways)
 

Aka is the most beautiful piece of TIW.

Man this whole corona stuff is wild. I'm still taken aback by how much it's changed our culture, and how abrupt it all happened. 
 
Yesterday I went shopping at a Japanese marketplace and suddenly found myself encumbered by a very long line of people waiting to enter the store. We had to spend almost an hour on line to enter the store as they were admitting a small handful of people at once.  Of course, no one was actually social distancing. I had to travel to a different store real quick to use a restroom to which I could only be admitted if it was an emergency. I answered yes and  he allowed me in, gave me hand sanitizer, and told not to touch anything or something. I appreciate these safety protocols, but as a person generally fascinated by society and culture I was pretty intrigued by how suddenly this societal shift has happened. Feels like I'm in the midst of a some apocalyptic dystopian scifi movie scenario and it's absolutely fascinating, yet weird as hell and terrifying. 
 
And I remember before this all happened, one particular friend of mine had followed the story in china since its inception and during that period it didn't even enter my mind that the virus would escalate into the pandemic that it is today which would significantly alter everyone's lives. My friend knew since the very beginning that it would, and he was right. Sometimes you can be so used to seeing other people drastically exaggerate things — which is in part why I think so many people took this for granted. But this isn't just some ephemeral mishap that'll be easy to forget in a decade from now. This is a very sudden global catastrophe with far reaching consequences that hardly any of us anticipated.
 
It's also a good example of how being paranoid rather than being overtly optimistic is sometimes the better option.
 
Also some food for thought. A very significant chunk of people taking surveys have said they either wouldn't plan to get a corona vaccine, or declined to state. In some polls, this number reaches about half. I think that's terrifying. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/06/just-50-americans-plan-get-covid-19-vaccine-here-s-how-win-over-rest

I’m more curious about the folks that like Ochita but couldn’t stand The Insulated World. 

also WIDAWIDAWIDAWIDAWIDAWIDA

New Member - Kiyoshi on Bass (LUXURY, ex.The Honey Beez)
 
In keeping with our theme of cherishing the older aspects of VK while moving forward
we are super happy to have the veteran Kiyoshi join us on bass.
Advanced news for MH:
our first gig will be with STARWAVE at
2020年10月29日(木) 池袋BlackHole
[Dark Ambition Exposed Vol.120～ハロウィンスペシャル～]
出演：Scarlet Valse, 未完成アリス, LIVERCHT, En'Cell~Dis'Dein
 
More cool stuff coming!
 
 

IMAGINE KOICHI HAVING TO GET THAT FUCKING TATTOO LASERED OFF NOW LMAO

Dir en grey Drag Race is back!!!!
 
2007 Adidas kei fuck off!
 
Btw @Seelentau are you going to upload the PV somewhere?

That would be awesome! Hope you can!

Yo, 
Going to try and find the best place to rip my Due le Quartz collection live,pv,etc. 
Do any of you o.g. rippers have any tips on what to search/ask for tech-wise when choosing a place to make sure it is the best possible rip? 
Am gonna try to scan my complete collection of the fanclub booklets too and will share all fashowskies. 

It's been some time since it was released, so now we know the details from photos people posted on Twitter.
 
Cover art:
 

 
Back cover:
 

 
Tracklist:
 

 

 

 

 
Some credits:
 

 

 
Sticker:
 

New single out today:
 
https://open.spotify.com/track/6ihYvb9mcHHyGp7iV4u5Q2?si=11nKnoxLQny3uhJX7-LFwA
 
 

I corrected the lineup info, Shin is not involved. My bad

Princess Kyo...

Same. But at this point I'm starting to suspect that every live performance they did back in 97-03 actually sucked so much that they fear their ~legendary~ beginnings as an iconic band would lost all of that status whenever that stuff sees the light any day lol
 
That, or I find no reasons why they would ram us with footage from everything 07-onwards and then when the time comes to record an anniversary commentary on their '98 Budokan gig they would fucking show you NOTHING while at the same time you see the members actually watching the footage on a notebook turned upon you...

They need to fix the capitalization before that happens. And fix the band name because it annoys me. 

Making all discography available world wide? No way.
 
Splitting one BGM into 30 parts and making it available world wide? Profit!

They need to make Missa and Gauze available worldwide on Spotify instead. It is only available in EU so far

Same. But at this point I'm starting to suspect that every live performance they did back in 97-03 actually sucked so much that they fear their ~legendary~ beginnings as an iconic band would lost all of that status whenever that stuff sees the light any day lol
 
That, or I find no reasons why they would ram us with footage from everything 07-onwards and then when the time comes to record an anniversary commentary on their '98 Budokan gig they would fucking show you NOTHING while at the same time you see the members actually watching the footage on a notebook turned upon you...

Because it's idiotic.
They could sell so much material if they wanted to, like, I would pay mad cash for some old live shows or so. Instead they do the bare minimum to get some more cash in.
I know these are dire times for bands, but it's not like DEG has nothing more to offer than one song split into 30+ parts. It's like "here, have some random track, now give us streaming income pls". It's insulting to those who actually wish to support the band and would be willing to.