enyx

So I did a thing today. I fucking love it.

So I was sitting in the hairdressers when Spangle call Lilli line's dreamer started playing and oh my god I almost fucking screamed.

I really need to hear this read out by the same guy that made this video.

Alcohol <3

10/10, would LOL again. Bwahahaha, so true. It's amazing how disappointing that album felt despite still being better than most of what I listened to in 2015. Yep, that single was such a tease. Like "Hey guys, we still exist! Here's a single to wet your appetite for our new album that's coming out NEVER!" This is the real disappointment of 2015 for me. The fact that the whole "Inspiration is DEAD" joke is so appropriate is both hilarious and depressing at the same time. I have to admit that I've become extremely ambivalent towards this band as of late.

Depending on the time that gets decided upon I might be able to make some of these sessions. Sunday at midnight GMT is the same as 9am on a Monday for me, so if I wake up early I should still be able to catch the later end of a session.

I actually found VITIUM to be slightly less awesome than IMMORTALIS overall, though still one of the year's strongest releases regardless. The middle three songs (foster mother, 雨上がりの優詩, and maniera) don't do as much for me as the rest of their material. The former seems to meander around aimlessly, the second track feels... unfinished to me somehow; like they had a good initial idea but weren't entirely sure how to develop it into a full song, and finally the latter of the three sounds like something that would work much better in a live setting than it does as a studio recording. I also don't get the "IMMORTALIS is too long" argument. So long as the quality is good, then the more songs the merrier for me. That being said, standout tracks like leather field and focus help to reinforce my belief that sukekiyo are very much one of the most exciting 'visual' bands going at the moment and overall VITIUM is still a pretty good sophomore release. "adventurous"

Why do people keep referring to DECAYS as a shoegaze project? Feels like everybody's been throwing that term around ever since Kobayashi was revealed to be a member but I'd hardly say that shoegaze is the core part of their sound. It sounds more like generic pop-rock than anything else to me. Anyway, neither Secret mode, NOVA SPIRAL, nor any of the other previews have really done anything for me so far. Probably wont be in a rush to check this mini out if I'm honest.

God fucking damn, I hate emotions so much.

I, for one, am shocked by this band's inclusion. Anyway, on a serious note it's nice to see the band not abandoning their poppier/softer side despite the positive receptions to their darker/heavier stuff as of late. Like most NOVEMBERS releases this one didn't really stand out to me on first listen, but instead grew on me overtime as kept listening to it. The only NOVEMBERS release that immediately blew me away was Rhapsody in Beauty, otherwise they've all had this sort of slow-burn effect that's actually become one of my favourite aspects of their music. Overall it's just more of THE NOVEMBERS doing what they so well. They've certainly become one of the most consistent bands out there these days, which is remarkable considering their rate of output.

Common sense: Hey man, it's getting late. You should study for your final exam tomorrow morning. Brain: Okay but first let's watch a horror movie.

Since I've been living in Korea I've come across a few artists that I really like, so I figured I'd share them here. Unlike my other posts, these are artists that I'm actually listening to on a regular basis rather than just recommendations from friends or bands I've heard about but don't care for so much. Tierpark Really cool mix of dreamgaze and post-rock with a little bit of math-rock added in for good measure. They remind me a little bit of a Japanese indie band called COgeNdshE but with more emphasis on melodic vocals. Their 오희정 (Oh HeeJung) Her sound makes use of both electronic and 'real' instruments to create a distinct and incredibly relaxing dreampop sound. Both of her EPs are available on Bandcamp and although I'd say Everybody here wants you back slighty beats 표류기 overall, I can comfortably recommend both of them. 유카리 (YUKARI) 유카리 is one of the most promising dream-pop acts in Korea at the moment (despite her Japanese-sounding name). Her work varies from very chill, almost cokiyu-esque, numbers to more up-tempo songs, but everything has a distinctly dreamlike quality to it. Like the previous two artists her album ECHO is available on Bandcamp and she supposedly has a new album on the way too. 실리카겔 (SILICA GEL) A combination of predominantly-instrumental progressive and psychedelic rock with a healthy dose of synth mixed in for good measure. Unfortunately their work doesn't appear to be available on Bandcamp but you can find their EP on iTunes nevertheless.

Image voting was buggy for me yesterday, seems to be sorted now though. Just went through para & seurong's requests! Could people vote this one up for me please? http://www.last.fm/music/THE+NOVEMBERS/+images/7a018799f43920f77cda6a1beb3a35ae

Didn't really do much for me, but those previews are too short to make much of a judgement I suppose. I'll give it a cursory listen at least.

I really want to be excited for this but after Fantastic Magic and es or s I've lost a lot of faith in him as a musician. I'll definitely keep an eye on it though and hopefully he'll prove me wrong.

Dysphoria is such a cool song, definitely one of the standouts from their pre-2011 discography. I was rewatching the PV for きれいな海へ again yesterday and I absolutely love how the two videos sync together when played at the same time. Probably my favourite PV released this year.

Since I came to Korea I've pretty much just been overdosing on Civilization V as it's one of the few games my laptop can run. I really miss having a proper gaming PC, especially now that Witcher 3's expansions are coming out. I also started Devil Survivor 2: Record Breaker but haven't really gotten into it very much, which is strange considering how much I enjoyed the first.

Guess they found a way to make the site financially viable again. plug.dj killed dubtrack.fm

The development process for Luminous Studio, much like Crystal Tools before it, appears to have been a complete mess. At this point Square just seems to have given up on creating its own engines and is instead taking the route of using already-established engines (namely UE4) for their future projects. At least this way there's actually a slight chance of the games coming out within a semi-decent time-frame.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt I haven't been able to play any new releases in the last couple of months, so I can't say anything about games that have come out in that period like Xenoblade Chronicles X, Fallout 4, or FAST Racing Neo, but I still can't imagine any of them coming close to The Witcher 3.

大象體操 (Elephant Gym) are a pretty decent Taiwanese math-rock trio. I believe they have two releases thus far: an EP released in 2013 and an LP released in 2014.

It's amusing to see things like possessiveness/clinginess/neediness being almost unanimously agreed upon as a deal-breaker, yet in my experience the main complaint people have about me is that I'm not possessive enough (well, that's one of them anyway, truth be told I'm just not good boyfriend material in general). I think people generally want their partners to be possessive to a certain extent, otherwise they mistake a lack of possessiveness as a lack of caring. Considering that most people enter relationships because they want to feel important to somebody else, feeling that the other person doesn't really care much about what you do can be just as much of a negative as a positive for a lot of people.

Some disconcerting news coming from Square's recent press release. I'm not sure how I feel about this yet. If each part is essentially the equivalent of each of the original game's discs then it doesn't sound so bad, but if it compromises things like the overworld structure or character progression, etc, then that sucks massively. Good shout, that completely slipped my mind.

I want to like this band a lot more than I actually do. There's just something about their vocalist that I really can't stand, which is weird for me since I normally don't find vocals to be a deal-breaker even when I dislike them. Hell, some of my favourite bands have vocalists that I dislike (I'm looking at you, Aureole). I keep giving this band a shot hoping that I'll just get used to it but I just can't get into them, despite finding their musical underpinning and the band's overall aesthetic to be pretty brilliant. Despite that, though, I still have a lot of respect for them overall and I consider them to be one of the most promising new acts of 2015. I just wish I could get into them more.

Conspiracy time. I reckon VII started development at the same time Nomura got taken off of Versus. I imagine they greenlit VII, assigned Nomura as the director, realised he couldn't handle three AAAs at once (Versus, KH3, and VII) and so they took him off of Versus and replaced him with Tabata. Then Nomura decided that he wanted to use the battle system he'd been using on Versus in VII, and so they decided to have Tabata just come up with his own action-RPG system for Versus instead. At that point they decided to just rebrand the latter game as XV since it was essentially becoming a different game anyway. This would explain why the gameplay in VII looks extremely similar to Versus' original gameplay (command-based action RPG, character switching, etc) whereas XV's has become increasingly different since Tabata took over (direct input-action RPG, no character switching, etc). It would also explain why the game looks so far along in development now. Rumours about Versus being canned and repackaged started making the rounds as early as 2012, so if my theory is even remotely close to being correct then VII should have had a decent amount of development time already. Conspiracies aside, the game looks decent. I'm not a fan of the voice acting but otherwise it seems to be progressing nicely. I'm glad they had the balls to scrap the original battle system. I've never seen the point in remaking something but then keeping it exactly the same in all areas except for graphics; it's both shallow and a waste of time/resources that could have been spent on creating new things. I'm curious as to who's re-arranging the OST. They already said that it isn't Uematsu which is a good thing; he's just not a very capable arranger (hence why he doesn't even arrange his own compositions any more). It doesn't sound like Hamauzu too much based on that track, and I don't think they'd give a game of this scale and importance to Ishimoto. My only guess at the moment is Narita since he's one of Uematsu's most trusted arrangers (XIV, The Last Story, X HD). Either way, I'm excited to hear more from the OST. EDIT: That track is from Distant Worlds, so disregard my comment about Hamauzu.