Jigsaw9

We all know he's actually Jun anyways.

Samples for the single can now be listened to on Amazon and Tower Records for example:
 
http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E3%80%8C%E7%94%9F%E3%83%88%E6%AD%BB%E3%80%8D-%E3%82%B0%E3%83%AA%E3%83%BC%E3%83%B4%E3%82%A1/dp/B00ITK3XGG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1406660819&sr=8-1&keywords=%E7%94%9F%E3%83%88%E6%AD%BB
 
http://tower.jp/item/3495810/%E3%80%8C%E7%94%9F%E3%83%88%E6%AD%BB%E3%80%8D
 
Can't waittt~

The Uninvited is such a good film. For some reason I always thought of it as very unique. The atmosphere is very... don't know. Like nothing else.
 
 
By the way, I made a proposal to my girl who also loves horror that we should see one horror film a day in october. We pick 15 each and watch mine, hers, mine, hers and so on until we end it with Halloween on the 31st. Should be fun. She's very much into film and horror, but not films before 1980, so I thought I'd pick some older ones to try to broaden her taste. This should be a fun month! I expect a lot of shit from her though as she is not that citical to films as I am, but we decided we HAVE to watch eachothers films. I can't wait!
 
Thought picking both new and old, classics and non-classics, and slashers and splatters and giallos and psychological horror and everything else. A bit of everything to help her broaden her taste. Should be a fun month!

Cooking With Yoshiki book confirmed for release, featuring over 20 recipes inspired by each X-Japan member.

Hah, I finally watched The Uninvited, it was pretty decent. Seen spookier of course but for 1944 it was aight.
 
Also lmao @ that ending "I've had a narrow escape. She might've been my mother-in-law!"

...and there will be Types A to X.

I have no idea what this is or who these people are but I'm here for anyone who names their band gouhou loli☆punk dreaming disco

Samples for the single can now be listened to on Amazon and Tower Records for example:
 
http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E3%80%8C%E7%94%9F%E3%83%88%E6%AD%BB%E3%80%8D-%E3%82%B0%E3%83%AA%E3%83%BC%E3%83%B4%E3%82%A1/dp/B00ITK3XGG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1406660819&sr=8-1&keywords=%E7%94%9F%E3%83%88%E6%AD%BB
 
http://tower.jp/item/3495810/%E3%80%8C%E7%94%9F%E3%83%88%E6%AD%BB%E3%80%8D
 
Can't waittt~

Sun of a Beach, would b perfect summer shinguru

People enjoy music in different ways, and in an ideal world it shouldn't be a problem. But every single time I've been to a show where it happens it gets a problem because the moshers, karate dancers and the rest of the mongers does it right where people want to stand and enjoy the show. They don't go to the sides or back where there's empty, no, every single time they do it right in front of the stage so that the people who are there to see the band has to go to the sides or back. They don't give a single fuck about the rest of the audience.
E X E C U T E !

Sun of a Beach, would b perfect summer shinguru

Hi Monochrome Heaven, I'm chewi. I've posted here before but I haven't introduced myself. I like music of all types, and honestly don't know much about visual kei and etc. However, I don't consider myself an "expert" on any type of music, so... I found this site through a turntable.fm room (RIP) and joined. I'm CAT5's friend. I'm a 20 year old guy who goes to college. I'm studying Japanese stuff. I'll try to post here more. Thanks for reading. If you wanna know anything, just ask me.
 
Last.fm taste for the past month:
I'm into japanese, pop, female vocalists, electronic and vaporwave, including:
Miley Cyrus, Richard Elliot, Lady Gaga, DREAMS COME TRUE, Iggy Azalea, MILLENNIAL DREAM CORP., Charisma.com, especia, Rihanna, Nicki Minaj, Macintosh Plus, Britney Spears, Alanis Morissette, Charli XCX, Azealia Banks, チャットモンチー, Lana Del Rey, Ai, Icona Pop, 骨架的, 戴佩妮, 小泉今日子, きゃりーぱみゅぱみゅ, Tove Lo, Trina, Serph, 氷川きよし, 人魚, Janet Jackson, Perfume, 少女時代, Pulp Non-Fiction, Capsule, 大森靖子, Beyoncé, 吳克群, 안녕바다, 휴먼레이스, рмнчитто, esc 不在, WTF.FM, cyberspace FANTASIES, Mariah Carey, AOA, Utada, 官恩娜, EMI MARIA, 2NE1, 小南泰葉, Saint Pepsi.
Check out my music taste: http://www.last.fm/user/chewiiii

八十八ヶ所巡礼 (88kasyo junrei) will release their new album "攻撃的国民的音楽" (Kougeki-teki kokumin-teki ongaku) on 2014/08/08 (like clockwork, that date! lol).
 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D90AOhojK3M

Things you never hear VK bands say:
 
 
 
 
sorry i had to 

sum bookz~
 
Teatro Grottesco by Thomas Ligotti
The Imago Sequence and Other Stories by Laird Barron

Artist: REALies Album: Drama Score: Deep breaths Zess. Deep breaths.
Before I begin, I'm going to invent a new term called musical dysmorphia. I will use this term throughout the review to describe a glaring flaw with this album. Musical dysmorphia is when a song awkwardly and unevenly moves between multiple genres with reckless abandon. It is the result of a composer stitching together compositions from entirely different genres to form The Musical Centipede. Do not mistake this for being diverse and do not think that this is a good thing. This is a very annoying thing to have to endure.

Fortunately, the listener will not be subjected to it for the first half of the album. As a matter of fact, the album was enjoyable up until 久遠-kuon-, which I found to be a tepid but unoffensive pop-rock track. I enjoyed the heavy bass presence on NEVERLAND (but I could do without the modulated screams here and there) and the entirety of セツナキャンドル and gossip, which I would call the best tracks on the album. In fact, I would dare to call NEVERLAND and セツナキャンドル good-to-excellent songs if REALies didn't resort to a contrived pop chorus to hook those pieces together. For the first half of Drama, I got something better than I expected from REALies, which is a solid pop-rock album with a few flaws. These flaws are the occasional flatness of Rayka's vocals, the occasional cheesy chorus, and an over-reliance on synthesized instruments to carry the bulk of the melody. The last point is the biggest flaw of them all. The production overall is really good for a visual kei band, being crisp and clean while still balancing everything in the mix. This is notable because there is a lot of electronics buzzing about in every track and for the first half of the album they don't overpower the band too much. But such great production reveals the artificiality of these instruments. There are violin swells, piano runs, and shamisen twangs that would have been REALized better if the instruments were authentic. Luckily, most of these fake instruments are relegated to flourishes only.

A critical downfall of Drama (and the reason for the low score) is the second half. Musical dysmorphia stops the album dead in it's tracks and spends the next five tracks in a rut it can't escape from. The first half of the album does diversity right, smoothly moving between rhythmic and tonal changes to good effect. There is thought and care put into the first five songs that is missing from the next five. Instead of smooth transitions, REALies resorts to interlude abuse to bring together parts of songs that have no business being together. We have dubstep portions, a trance intro, an exceptionally bad shamisen snippet, random breakdowns, and the occasional half-assed rap portion courtesy of Rayka. They're all broken off into their own sections and follow each other with not even so much as the backwards woosh-ing sound that Nega used to stitch their disjointed songs together. So let's explore this part of the album now.

彩花唄-いろはうた- starts the decline of Drama. It all starts with the inclusion of the shamisen I keep mentioning that doesn't sound quite right. At first you think the track is going to have it's own distinctive flavor but its inclusion sounds like an interlude and not a legit element of the song. The rest of the song is more pop with two interludes where it pops up again and again to be the ultimate tease. If it were an actual pop song played with traditional Japanese instruments it would have been excellent but it seems that REALies weren't brave enough to take that jump. However, this is just disappointment at the track. This disappointment was magnified by the following track. The piano is too loud, the guitars are heavy but the riffs don't hold up to the dynamic ones from earlier, and the growling is just bad. The chorus assassinates the track, being another cookie cutter rendition complete with off-key vocal ticks. It's then followed up by the worst track on the entire album.

180 is the perfect example of musical dysmorphia at work. It's three minutes flat but starts off with a trance intro before being pummelled with the loudest mishmash of riffs and synth on the album. Heavy riffs and terrible growls are abundant so I reasonably expected another cliche "heavy" song. Then it starts shitting all over itself around 0:53 as the hype train slowly ascends into pop territory and the song fools you into thinking it's going to turn out decent. To be honest, there was a period of about ten seconds where I thought this would actually happen. Then I thought that the track has to level out. It doesn't. Around 1:53 the train decided it wanted to be a plane and then shot off into orbit with another, more upbeat electronic interlude before jumping into a faster-paced rock section. And just when you think you've heard everything, there's a lynch.-like breakdown near the end there for no reason other than the gang didn't know how to end the song. Each section lasts for about twenty to twenty-five seconds and that's not enough time for any part of it to develop and the song sounds too disjointed to work. My repetition of the word disjointed is intentional. I wouldn't blame you if you did a 180 on the album right now.

The next two tracks are no better. LiNE combines all of the elements I don't like into one song. There's more terrible harsh vocals, a dubsteppy breakdown later, a four second excursion into the post-hardcore scene, and then a jump right back into a poppy chorus. It works about as well as I've described it. The track following it is completely forgettable and I have nothing to say about it. Things don't shape up until the last track, Drama, which is a half-ballad half-pop song with more fake violins. It's a pretty boring end to an otherwise lackluster album, but it's consistency and flow which was missing from the last five tracks makes it a decent album closer.

So I was surprised and then summarily disappointed. I was expecting an entire album of really bland pop with terrible vocals. What I got were some promising tunes, one or two songs I admit I liked, and then a shitshow to prove my fears right. There are a lot of positives here to talk about, more than I was initially going to give to the band, but Drama would have been much better off being a mini-album. There are too many bad tracks one after another to call this even a mediocre album. REALies needs to reign in the influences and compose more tunes like the first five songs and less like the last five songs. I also never want to hear another band do anything resembling 180.

This is really only an album for prior REALies fans. The rest can live with hearing gossip once on plug.dj.

I don't think I've heard anyone use "gangsta" since mid-2000's. Glad to see Sadie is as progressive as ever.

I've been swaying back and forth over this for a whole day now... just can't decide, dammit. XD
 
Will report back later, lol.

Things you never hear VK bands say:
 
 
 
 
sorry i had to 

Marking their 15th anniversary, D'ESPAIRSRAY will give one reunion concert at 2014/07/29 Zepp DiverCity Tokyo during the event "-Angelo Presents-「THE INTERSECTION OF DOGMA」". Other bands performing: Angelo, FAKE?, RIZE, lynch.
 
The band's message from Facebook:
 

^ Here are some recent setlists by them (the top few are from that STYLISH WAVE thingie):
 
http://livesetlist529.blog133.fc2.com/blog-category-110.html

Start with their album imo (tho they don't really have that much stuff to begin with xD).

Yeah, I'm hoping for a longer release after the single too... even a mini album would be fine. Not sure how well they would fare in album setting again, or at least their 1st full-length hasn't really held up well in my opinion (to me it only had a small handful of actually good/interesting tracks besides the single stuff). Tho I guess they have more experience now, so anyway, would be nice to see another album, yea.

I'm very picky with anime and manga, so not a whole lot:
 
Ghost in the Shell by Masamune Shirow
Uzumaki by Junji Ito
20th Century Boys by Naoki Urasawa
Suehiro Maruo's stuff

aww, well see ya till next time~