enyx

3 hours ago, patientZERO said:

Yeah, I went to Japan for four months. I didn't want to leave. My only compulsion to graduate now, is so that I can get my ass back to Japan.

Hahaha, change the 4 months to 10 months and you're in the exact same situation as me having come back from my exchange in Korea. All I can think of is how much I want to get out of this country again. Hang in there!

On 1/16/2017 at 2:15 AM, patientZERO said:

Last semester abroad was the best four months of my life. Now I have to go back to my shitty college tomorrow and I'm dreading waking up in the morning. The stress is honestly painful.

Was it an exchange semester or something?

Just now, ghost said:

Earache is SO good

https://topshelfrecords.bandcamp.com/album/out-of-body

Yeah, I just found it on Topshelf's Youtube and have been spinning it constantly since haha

Whoa, Earache and the Intro both sounded cool as hell.

Roses are red

High school is gravy

When the dark hour cometh

BABY BABY BABY BABY BABY BABY

So I was just browsing DECAYS' OHP when I noticed something interesting - namely that Kobayashi is still listed as a member rather than as an ex member:

This kinda makes me think about what Die said around the time the band formed, about them having a 'revolving' line up or something that effect. Does that mean that the line-up just changes based on what the members' schedules and other commitments are like at the time, or even just based on what Die wants for that particular release? I think that's a pretty cool concept if true. Does anyone know if they ever made a statement about Kobayashi officially leaving or did we all just assume he had because he wasn't featured on the latest release?

4 hours ago, Tokage said:

In retrospect, the Harry Potter franchise is honestly a pretty goddamn mediocre, plothole-riddled mess..

It's always been much better in terms of having relatable & well-written characters than it is with regards to its plot. The storyline is an absolute garbage mess of conveniences, deus ex machinas and outright plot-holes. The characters are what keep things interesting; I just think people are so in love with the aspects of Harry Potter that are good that they don't seem to acknowledge how weak it is in many respects.

Some nice tracks on this list. I'll particularly second the 八十八ヶ所巡礼 track along with the two DECAYS ones. I'll add a couple of recommendations of my own too (maybe I should stop being a lazy shit and actually write a guest contribution sometime...)

dilitant by siraph

I'm sure that absolutely noone who knows my music taste will be surprised about this choice. siraph's latest single is basically confirmation that this band is the real deal and that their mini album from earlier in the year wasn't just some cool one-off before fading into obscurity. Yoshimasa Terui's sole composition on the single is a testament to how well he's been able to adapt his natural writing style to fit into siraph's school food punishment-esque soundscape. Given their output this year, I really can't wait to hear more from these guys in 2017.

太陽と暮らしてきた by JYOCHO

And while we're on the topic of new 2016 bands that are effectively spiritual successors of dearly missed dis-bands, 宇宙コンビニ's spiritual successor JYOCHO, lead by guitar prodigy Daijiro Nakagawa, dropped their brilliant debut mini album earlier this month and it's a real treat to listen to. 太陽と暮らしてきた serves as the mini's lead promotional track and it's not hard to understand why. All of 宇宙コンビニ's hallmarks are there, except now Daijiro is playing with people that are able to keep up with his technical wizardry and there's even a flute added in there for a nice bit of aural variety.

I might drop by later if there's one going. You can always drop a status or post in the MH FB group if you want to get one started!

I guess for me it has to be logos by ハイスイノナサ. Looking through my last.fm it's pretty much always one of my most listened to songs regardless of the timeframe set (last 30 days, last 90, last 365, etc). 

Yeah, this one really came out of nowhere. I wouldn't call it a masterpiece by any means but considering the fact that I found absolutely nothing notable about their previous release, the fact that I ended up enjoying this one quite a fair bit is a big surprise. I haven't had enough time (or listens) yet to decide whether it'll just creep its way into my end of 2016 list yet, but it might be a bit of a dark horse contender.

I think I'm going slightly off-topic here, so I apologize for that, but this seems like a good time to mention this anyway.

I've always found it a little perplexing that people often tend to consider electronic software, turntables, and other things associated with electronic music to somehow not be instruments. I mean the literal definition of an instrument is "a tool or implement, especially one for precision work". In a musical context that essentially just means a tool that you feed inputs to to generate music. A voice, a flute, an acoustic guitar, an electric guitar, and musical software are all instruments; they're just tools you feed inputs to generate a desired sound. The only thing that changes between them is how 'artificial' they are in the sense that some are entirely driven by natural means (the voice), some are a fusion of natural and artificial elements (an electric guitar), and some are primarily artificial (musicial software), but all of them still need a good talented musician feeding them inputs to create truly good music.

I think by arguing that, due to the increasing prevalence of electronic software and the like, musicians are

2 hours ago, helcchi said:

completely abandoning musical notation and focusing less on complexity and more on catchiness

is a bit of a dangerous train of thought. Mainstream pop music has been doing this for quite a while now, long before electronic software became as extensive as it is today. The fact that mainstream pop is incorporating more and more electronic elements shouldn't be conflated with the mistaken belief that all music made with electronic instruments follows this approach of making music. The truth is that great musicians will produce great music no matter what tools they use, and if anything the only thing determining their choice of instruments should be the aural qualities of the music they're trying to make. There are plenty of really talented musicians making really brilliant, primarily electronic music. At the same time there are plenty of musicians making music with more traditional instruments that, as @Zeus said, is utter garbage.

Basically I think we should pull away from assuming that the development of electronic music is one of the main contributors to the decline of VKs popularity; at least not in the sense that music created with these sorts of tools is inherently more simple, catchy, and poppy than music created with more traditional instruments - that just feels snobby to me. It could have contributed in the sense that musical fads have transitioned from the emo/scene music of the mid 2000s to the DJ/Club music of today, but implying that this transition is the result of some sort of inherent flaw in electronic instruments versus traditional instruments feels wrong to me.

Lord @Ito has asked for feedback, and thus it shall be given.

I think I've mentioned in the past that I'm not too fond of making best-of lists where there's an arbitrary number of entries (top 10, top 25, etc) because it creates situations where you can find yourself adding releases that probably aren't great per se, but are simply needed to make up the numbers. In that sense some of the recommendations I'll make here for releases that weren't featured in this list aren't necessarily ones that I consider to be amazing by any means, but I'd at least say they're as deserving of a mention as a Versailles best-of album of all things. I'll also just take a moment to mention that even though the format isn't something I'm personally a fan of, I appreciate the effort the staff put into the whole thing each year, and I accept that the 25 releases thing is just a play on the whole 25 days of Christmas thing anyway so it's not a big deal by any means. 

Anyway, both cloud nine(9) and LITE probably could have had mentions for their respective full-lengths this year. Neither are Earth-shattering by any means, but they're both fairly decent math albums. I'll also give a shout out to Hiromi Uehara's SPARK; it is more of the same from her but when you're as proficient as Hiromi's trio that's honestly all it needs to be to be one of the strongest releases in any given year. I suppose it came out too late for the staff to have added it to the list (a downside of rushing lists out too early, I suppose), but JYOCHO's debut mini really should get a mention too, it's essentially 宇宙コンビニ but even better. On the electronic/IDM side, M-KODA put out a really nice album earlier this year, as did newcomer (or at least I think he's new, lol) 網守将平 earlier this month. If we're including singles then I quite liked Lycoriscoris' release also. 

To be honest though, for me personally 2016 was mostly a year where non-Japanese bands tended to stand out to me more than Japanese ones; though there were a few really noticeable Japanese highlights such as downy and siraph's output - both of which ranked pretty highly here so I'm certainly not complaining

Good topic. 

14 hours ago, Takadanobabaalien said:

 A lot of the "vk fans" were also just in it for "cute japanese boyz" and I guess they figured cute korean boys works just as well.

This is definitely a contributing factor, I think. I know there's a thread floating somewhere around here talking about the way that a lot of fans of VK seemed to have transitioned over to K-Pop over the years. I think a lot of it has to do with the the whole 'pretty Asian boys' fetish (maybe 'fetish' is a slightly strong word, but you guys know what I mean). K-Pop in general takes the whole cute Asian boy thing and ramps the production values up to to 11, whilst also presenting itself as a more mainstream and socially acceptable thing to be into. It's no surprise that a lot of foreigners mostly looking for their cute Asian boy fix would slowly have migrated over to the K-Pop scene once that started getting popular in the early 2010's, which coincidentally just so happens to be when VK's decline took hold according to that Google trends result. 

8 hours ago, nekkichi said:

could there be some correlation between myspace fading into obscurity by late 2010, and last.fm following its steps, with tumlr not really being focused on music/media sharing, but rather being granulated into small fandoms and meme reblogging? the myspace/last.fm tandem were relatively efficient for sharing media and luring heterosexual men into mana sama's fandom dungeons.

Also a very good point. I'd say this combined with the previous point definitely contributed to some degree.

9 hours ago, helcchi said:

Most people in japan use Yahoo, but I don't think Yahoo has a similar trends analysis tool to google. Hence I searched in Japanese, and Japan was the only region available so I didn't have to narrow it down further:

 

Blue: "visual kei" / Region: global

Red: "ヴィジュアル系" / Region: Japan

I find this graph particularly interesting. I have to second what @Zeus said previously; the so-called decline of VK does seem, in many ways, more to be a simple case of its western popularity declining after a short boom. In that respect it's really nothing too surprising, a lot of rapid booms in the popularity of a concept or thing tend to be associated with equally as rapid declines. The real thing to note is that its prevalence in Japan has remained relatively stable, so the scene itself probably hasn't changed all that much in domestic terms.

Another theory I'll put forward though, and I'll admit not everyone with agree with me as this is a pretty subjective viewpoint, is that the quality of Visual Kei music simply hasn't been good enough in recent years. It feels like there are still shittons of bands out there, but almost no truly great ones; ones that you just feel you HAVE to pay attention to. Once upon a time you had the likes of D'espairsRay, Kagrra, Miyavi (still around but not VK), the GazettE (still around but a shadow of their former selves IMO), Rentrer en Soi, 9GBO, etc. Nowadays there are very few bands, if any, that are on levels similar to those groups. I'm sure there will be quite a few people that disagree with me here, but I've seen similar sentiments expressed by other members too, so I know I'm not the only one who thinks this way.

Silly tl;dr - The popularity of Visual Kei internationally reached its peak when the GazettE reached their creative peak in mid 2009; since then the band's creative quality has fallen into oblivion. To cope with the disappointment, western VK fans began listening to K-Pop after hearing BIGBANG's FANTASTIC BABY around the same time Gazetto released that garbage DIVISION album, and decided that G-Dragon oppa was the new saviour of cute Asian boy music. Thus VK died an agonizing death. Also, MEJIBRAY.

Sometimes when I see thread titles on here I really want to say them out loud to someone who doesn't know anything about Japanese music without any context just to see what their reaction would be.

I'm sure everybody can already guess that I fundamentally disagree with this album being placed so highly on this list, and that I believe it's an abomination that nobody should ever listen to /s

On a serious note, the album is just as good as their 2013 behemoth, and I consider that one to be one of the best albums ever released. Maybe I'm just a hopeless fanboy, but this band can seemingly do no wrong.

I actually found Hallelujah a little disappointing, personally. I'd argue that it's their weakest post-2011 release largely on account of the fact that they didn't really take any risks at all throughout the entire album; the whole thing feels decidedly 'safe' from start to finish. That doesn't mean it's 'bad' exactly, it just doesn't push their creative boundaries at all - which is what every release they've put out for the last 5 or so years has done in some way or another. As a result some of the tracks feel rather like filler or leftovers from previous albums, such as 時間さえも年老いて, !!!!!!!!!!!, etc. Even its high points, while enjoyable, do come with that 'more of the same' sort of feeling, so I've noticed I only really end up listening to most of the tracks on this album when they come up in a random shuffle as opposed to deliberately seeking them out. I'm hoping their next release sees them going back to a more experimental mindset.

New teaser:

Kaoru's been pretty open about his love for downy for a few years now, so him being involved with this doesn't necessarily surprise me even though I'll admit I wasn't exactly expecting it. SUGIZO can be really cool when he gets his creative cap on, so it's nice that he's involved in some capacity too; I wonder if his involvement means that there's going to be a prominent violin component in there somewhere? Don't know anything about Morrie so I can't really comment on his involvement.

88kasyo out of nowhere! The end to this year just keeps getting better.

Loved that track on first listen; leans a lot more to their restrained side but has more than enough psychedelic shit going on that it doesn't get boring. Definitely a step up compared to their last PV song.

Any chance of them getting an album out before the end of the year?

Very good thread, thanks for sharing.

Brilliant! I really liked Uchu Conbini but they were pretty much a one-man show in many ways; I'm not surprised at all by how similar this group sounds. That PV song is really promising, definitely looking forward to this!

Best. Match. Ever.

On 11/24/2016 at 10:53 AM, Shir0 said:

Loll 2016 VK drama never ends 

It does, in 2017

23 minutes ago, AliceParanoid said:

They see spanking as non-conventional.
Lmao.

Yup. To quote a pretty good post I saw on this elsewhere:

Quote

The Independent reported at the time that the 2014 regulation "requires that video-on-demand (VoD) online porn now adhere to the same guidelines laid out for DVD sex shop-type porn by the British Board of Film Censors (BBFC)" and said that this "effectively bans the following acts from being depicted by British pornography producers:"

 

Spanking

Caning

Aggressive whipping

Penetration by any object "associated with violence"

Physical or verbal abuse (regardless of if consensual)

Urolagnia (known as "water sports")

Role-playing as non-adults

Physical restraint

Humiliation

Female ejaculation

Strangulation

Facesitting

Fisting

 

The new legislation appears to extend the restriction and would, as the Guardian reports today, "force internet service providers to block sites hosting content that would not be certified for commercial DVD sale by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC)."

Welcome to the United Kingdom, where the only fucking allowed is being fucked by your own Government.

Honestly, I get that 'non-conventional' porn is an easy target that probably no MP would be willing to defend purely out of embarrassment, but the precedent this sets really scares the hell out of me. When the Government is passing legislation to allow it to outright block access to websites showing perfectly legal content because they arbitrarily decided that it, in their opinion, is 'non-conventional', you know something's majorly fucked up. Add to that the law that was just passed forcing ISPs to store at least a full year's worth of your browsing history which can be accessed by any one of up to 48 state agencies (so much for the right to privacy) at any time, and you start to wonder whether anyone got the memo that 1984 wasn't intended as a fucking instruction manual.