hiroki

that's my worry too. we'll see what happens at their oneman later today.

wtf. awful news ;(

omg really sad to hear that.

this band needs more love.

pretty much my sentiments. i've definitely heard worse stuff this year lol. i guess when bands get hyped to this extent almost anything is going to be a disappointment.

better than their last single for sure

you're welcome! do you live in Japan? if you do you can get it exchanged for a working copy for free. otherwise you might have to go through the shopping service or whoever you purchased the DVD from :/

check your "Disk 2" according to http://mejibray.com/posts/view/63809/?aid=230 the bass audio is absent from the 2nd track onwards.

yeah they sound ok. probably impossible to get their stuff though.

omfg!!!! please don't let this be live-limited. nvm they just announced it'll be released nationwide through VR Label, wheeee.

This is my first review here, so please be kind XD I guess it also doesn’t hurt to confess at the outset that I’m writing from the perspective of an unabashedly passionate vistlip fan. So… fair warning for people looking for unbiased reviews. I’ve been looping LAYOUT since its release and I think I’ve soaked in it enough to form a fairly stable opinion of it (around 30 repetitions). While I haven’t had the time to go around canvassing opinions from my friends, at this point I can say that I definitely like it more than CHRONUS, and maybe a little less than THEATER, which remains my favorite vistlip album (if only because that's their very first album, and it's special for the fact that there can always only be one "first" time). I still can't decide if I like ORDER MADE or LAYOUT more! But overall, LAYOUT is an extremely satisfying album. I apologize for not doing a track-by-track review; I’m terrible at that as I prefer to focus on the "emergent" qualities of the album instead of the nitty-gritty details. Maybe someone else will review the individual tracks below. Structurally, the album’s track placement is impeccable. REM SLEEP, released previously as their promotional PV, wastes no time in pulling the listener immediately into the classic vistlip soundscape. For me this track operates as a prelude to the trio of songs constituting the nexus of the entire album (Idea - World is mine. - By the rain.) which consolidates the signature sound that will continue to reverberate through the rest of the album. Flanked by My second B-day. / Catastrophe on one side and ROACH / Good girl gone bed. on the other, the soft and seductive core of the album is shielded by these harder, more intense tracks (reminiscent of vistlip releases like GLOSTER) that textures the overall experience as one pulls away from the mellow central portion. Period and Jack (title tracks of their last 2 singles) have been deployed by the band as the album’s 2nd and 2nd last tracks, allowing the listener to begin and end the album on a comfortably familiar note without either track being unnecessarily obtrusive to the extent that they steal the show from the new songs. Finally, LAYOUT (the track) is the proverbial icing on the cake that provides a nice denouement and closure to the album. It's a simple but elegant setup (I’m almost tempted to say 'layout' XD); because the mistake a lot of potentially good albums make is a lack of organization, as a result of which an album that boasts many interesting ideas ends up meandering nowhere in particular and fizzling out because you simply can't tell where it's leading you. With LAYOUT, the division of labor between the tracks is clear and everything fits perfectly into an integrated whole anchored by a strong conceptual scaffolding. It's nothing too complicated, but sometimes less is more. So while it isn't exactly a roller-coast ride of an album with its share of surprises and shocks, there's scarcely any place for the superfluous. Tohya composed most of the songs in this album, except 4 songs which were written by Yuh. Track-wise, my favorite songs off the album are Idea, REM SLEEP, World is mine., By the rain. (roughly in descending order). I'm a sucker for pop-rock with a nice beat and groove, performative vocals, and evocative lyrics. Idea is sooo pretty I need to reserve special praise for it. An energetic song driven by its robust chorus (ohh I swear vistlip kills the vi-IV-I-V progression) and Tomo's hypnotic vocals sweeping effortlessly across the mid-high range, Idea belongs in the same category as vistlip songs like CHIMERA, inc., PERFECT CRIME, insofar as they all have the characteristic bittersweet sound which never fails to gives me goosebumps ._. I can't exactly describe it: these songs are upbeat, forward-looking, yet tinged ever so subtly by a shade of 重み [idk how to translate this word.. “heaviness”?] beneath the surface. Consequently the attentive listener gets a lingering sense of something more going on – an undertow, perhaps, that does just enough to keep the album from meekly collapsing into an unrestrained celebration of optimism. (A digression: some time ago I saw someone asking a new band on Twitter whether their sound would be 明るい (“bright”) or 暗い (“dark”), and then I realize that’s such a painfully reductive way of conceptualizing a band’s sound, because any band worth their salt would surely have enough facets in their music to transcend that simple dichotomy.) Finally: I'm just really excited that vistlip always strives to break new ground, but keeps enough of what makes them unmistakably vistlip. It’s a tough balance to be had. Among bands who've managed to last more than 5 years some try too hard to expand their sound where, at some point, fans can't help but pause and question if this is the band that they used to like; and then there are others who go on surreptitiously recycling their old materials until fans are bored and eventually put off. Thankfully, with vistlip this hasn’t happened, and I’m quietly confident neither of these scenarios will happen as the band soldiers on towards their 10th anniversary. I didn't intend to give a rating, but if I have to it'll be around 8.5-9 out of 10. I’m sure my review could have been better, although if it actually manages to pique the interest of casual vistlip listeners or people who haven’t tried vistlip then I’ve succeeded in what I'd set out to do Now let’s hear what others have to say about this! What do you like / not like about LAYOUT?

ahh you should definitely start from her earlier materials! i strongly recommend her first 2 full albums - インソムニア (Insomnia) ( ) and This Armor ( ) - almost everyone i've spoken to agree that they remain her best albums and then there's Sugar High (the album after that), which is more energetic, and still very good! her works after 2004 have been a mixed bag really. there's still the occasional gem here and there, but on average they're a shade below the high quality output of her earlier years (purportedly due to some drama in her personal life which i didn't bother to follow haha).

i have fond memories of female singer-songwriters like ZARD, KOKIA, Onitsuka Chihiro. oh, and Utada Hikaru of course (can she please come back from hiatus?) i've followed w-inds. and Keita's solo projects since 2004(?), as well as another dance/vocal group in the same mold, Da-iCE, who just formed a few years ago. 2 other artists off the top of my head: R&B/pop singer Matsushita Yuuya (i love ), who recently decided to end his solo career to form a lame boy band ._. and Miyano Mamoru, pretty much the only seiyuu whose singing i can stand (i even have all his cds)finally, i'm totally not into idol music.

^ wow what would the international shipping of that be like? :'D my record was around 200+ cds, which had cost me more than 10k to ship. i've since learned my lesson, lol. staying on topic, my latest buys: - ジミニークリケット 「嘘とデタラメなTemptation」 - ジミニークリケット 「ソアラ」 - おかゆさんとはっくん　「Astraythem」 - ソニックデスモンキー demo - ViV signed photosets - 10x tsukasa (ZUCK) chekis - 5x Shia. chekis

hi! welcome to MH i feel the same as you, vk is such a big part of my life i just wouldn't be who i am without it :'D also love your list of bands. i'm soo happy to see Purple Stone on there

i kinda understand why people would feel frustrated at live-limited releases, cuz it happens to me a lot as well. i've already explained why i feel live-limited releases are justified so i won't repeat myself here. i agree with tetora's points, except i would also add that the difficulty of procuring a live-limited release varies with a lot of factors, e.g. how popular the band is (obviously the most important), performance venue and capacity, etc. it also matters a great deal whether the release is distributed to everyone at the live, or distributed to those who enter under the band's name, or sold at the band's merchandise table, or (god forbid) as a A賞 "lottery prize" for 500-yen-per-draw ガチャガチャ etc. therefore while i won't furrow my brows too much over blu-billion or born releasing live-limited stuff, since i know these would be circulated rather healthily and comparatively easy to find, bands who have 5-10 fans doing the same make me want to kill them. having said all of that, i would love to see some changes in how live-limited releases are managed if/when bands go down that route: 1) bands need to enforce purchase limits better. to give a concrete example, during anfiel's first live on 1/22 the band released 100 copies of their demo single (1st press). when sales started, "fans" at the front of the queue were buying 5-10 copies each to sell on auctions after the live, and as a result the CD sold out before people at the back could reach the table. in the end it was a lose-lose situation for both the deeply embarrassed band and their grumpy fans who weren't able to get the CD after paying for the live ticket, with the shameless resellers being the sole beneficiaries of what was a poorly-managed situation. 2) bands should explore online distribution avenues e.g. mail order or webshop. for smaller bands who don't have the manpower or desire to deal with logistics involved in distributing their CDs through physical shops, or don't want their profit margin cut into by these people, ought to consider mail order or webshop sales as viable alternatives. i think of this as some sort of a compromise between live-limited releases and "流通盤" (cds distributed country-wide through shops) as far as physical CDs are concerned, since they are more "exclusive" than the latter but not as inaccessible as the former. trance note did that for their 1st single, and i think it worked out pretty well. digital music is another possibility of course, although i don't have much to add to what Seimeisen has said on that. 3) NO live-limited best-of albums please, tyvm. imo this is the biggest troll move ever (i'm looking at CodeRebirth, forte, POPCORE, AsteL, etc.). if anything, bands that mainly subsist on live-limited materials through their entire history should consider making their best-of more accessible, not less! finally, no less annoying than these are the hugely elaborate schemes where fans have to go to specific lives to get "exchange coupons", amass a number of them, and exchange these for a CD of an unreleased song at the band's tour final.

happy birthday CAT!

lol this is just Black Klaxon v2 XD which is good.

omg, i hope he recovers soon.

btw previews can be listened to at their OHP http://lill-dkdcpresents.com/

i find it both amusing and sad that people are willing to pay to see an attention-seeking psychopath like him vent his frustrations on stage. sorry but i can't imagine anyone watching this being struck with an anti-establishment epiphany, or a motivation to live his/her life better, or be profoundly moved, or anything of value at all. if this is the kind of 'shock value' that people want i'm happy to say that i can do without it..

just finished reading Norman Maclean's A River Runs Through It. Maclean was an English professor at UChicago, who began writing fiction after retiring at an age of 70+. at just slightly over 100 pages, this semi-autobiographical novella is a haunting throwback to his childhood and teenage years packed with memories of fly-fishing with his father and brother in rivers of the Rocky Mountains (where they grew up). at times Maclean's narrative is imbued with a quasi-religious tenor (his father was a deeply religious person), but the novel as a whole remains a down-to-earth, heartfelt tribute to his brother who had tragically passed away at 32. Fun fact: this book was the very first (and only, i think) fiction that UChicago Press ever published. apparently it has been made into a film too, but i haven't watched it.

yayy welcome back~

wow it sounds awesome x.x

from what i've found after scouring the internet for information, HAZZE has at least 3 releases: - a 4-track "mini-album" 自分革命構想 which was sold at lives and online. someone actually uploaded this on MH here and the link is still active! - a 7-track mini-album limited to 100 copies sold at their 2010/10 live only. see tracklist here - 1 of the tracks in the Christmas omnibus album featuring GIZA studio artists i will empty my bank for a copy of the first two lol ;< i love both your choices! Scar and Hysteric Lady are amazing my favorite is either Scar, 絵空事, or their demo songs on the CRIMZON live distros given out at the Visual Graffiti 3-man lives. arghhh its impossible to choose XDD