LUNA SEA - MOTHER [Discussion Thread]

[CAT5 9075]

リリース： 1994年10月26日

レーベル： MCAレコード

 

▼収録曲

01. Loveless

02. Rosier

03. Face To Face

04. Civilize

05. Genesis Of Mind～夢の彼方へ～

06. Aurora

07. In Future

08 .Fake

09. True Blue

10. Mother

 

 

What are your thoughts on the album?

[Takadanobabaalien 3607]

Great initiative, there's definitely not enough LUNA SEA discussion on the board.

 

This is such a classic that it's difficult to even begin to talk about it. For me this is the epitome of LUNA SEA. A perfect mix of their early rawness and the soft/poppy sound they did from EDEN up until STYLE. Not to mention their timeless classic ROSIER is on this album. 

 

It is to me, their best album and probably one of the best visual kei albums ever to be released. Every song on this album is way too good. The ones that stand out a bit from the rest to me are: Genesis of mind, Loveless, In future, Face to face and Rosier. 

[kiddybombs 40]

solid album, agree with @Takadanobabaalienperfect mix with their early era & poppier sound, favourite are: Face to face & Genesis of mind ONLY!

[少女椿 343]

Absolutely love! 🥰 I'm not a fan, but own limited edition of this album and this is one of the main treasure in my collection! I don't remember when was the first time I heard luna sea, but the first song of this band I ever heard was gorgeous ROSIER! Many many maaany years ago it was my nickname, huh. Nostalgic...

Edited April 6, 2020 by 少女椿

[Egnirys cimredopyh 54]

Great album for sure... genesis of mind is one of my favorite LS songs and most of the other songs here are quite enjoyable, but i don’t consider it their best as many others do... that would be style or image

[Saishu 1589]

Face to Face and In Future are two of my favorite Luna Sea songs. Mother isn’t my favorite album (I tend to run towards Image or Eden or even Style) but it’s undeniably a classic in the scene. 

[Tanishi 598]

All the songs on this album are super fantastic except Fake which is still a good song. I can't decide between this and Image for my favourite LS album they're both about equal in greatness. But this band has one of the best discographies in visual kei so it can be hard do decide.

[Peace Heavy mk II 7200]

Their best album and one of the most influential albums in the scene to date. It was more or less the blueprint for the entire white-kei / soft visual / actually popular kei that came in the late 90s / early 2000s. 

 

How do people not like "Fake?" It's literally quintessential 90's sentimentality. My top highlights are Fake, Civilize, Rosier, and FACE TO FACE.

 

Title track is a snooze.

Edited April 6, 2020 by Peace Heavy mk II

[Jigsaw9 6783]

ROSIER was my introduction to the band, so I can't help being partial to this album. It's one of the all-time greats.

 

LUNA SEA really upped the bar not only for other bands but themselves too with this album. It's pretty much flawless from beginning to end, full of memorable moments, and even the few tracks that don't stand out for me are of a category which would count as "pretty great" if any other band did them. Zero weak songs. From what I've experienced, it translates to live performance really well too (witnessing FACE TO FACE in the flesh back in Germany 2010 was one of my top-tier vk experiences of all time).

 

Favorite tracks: LOVELESS, ROSIER, FACE TO FACE, IN FUTURE

 

@CAT5 Damnnn, I wanted to skip choosing a weakest track from this flawless album but the poll makes it mandatory, how rude! ;(((

Edited April 6, 2020 by Jigsaw9

[Demivee 103]

Thank you for creating this thread! There is definitely too less love for Luna Sea in this forum.
This album is clearly a VK-masterpiece which everyone who is interested in this scene should have listened to at least once.

As Mother is not my favourite album by them (the self-titled it is) it has a nearly perfect balanced tracklist and I never grow tired of listening it from front to back.

 

Finding specific highlights is very difficult but I would choose IN FUTURE (RUDE BOY!), LOVELESS and MOTHER.

[CAT5 9075]

On 4/6/2020 at 12:59 PM, Jigsaw9 said:

 

@CAT5 Damnnn, I wanted to skip choosing a weakest track from this flawless album but the poll makes it mandatory, how rude! ;(((

 

oh shit! My bad, man. I had no idea this is how the polls operated. I just added an option for "none". Hope this helps!

 

As for me - when I first got into J-rock (2004/2005-ish) i had a bad habit of downloading albums, and just skimming through them and keeping whatever appealed to me at the time. LUNA SEA was one of the bands I did that with, so I've liked a random batch of their songs for a while (stuff like "sweetest coma again", "into the sun", "be gone"), but I got caught up in so much other music that I just never bothered to go back and actually give their albums a full listen.

 

It wasn't until I saw soko ni naru's cover of "Rosier" that I got interested in hearing the original:

 

 

 

And so I literally just got around to listening to this album maybe a month or two ago, and it's a great listen! Obviously, I'd be lying if I said I considered this album a classic (as I clearly don't have much of history with this record), but I can definitely see why it's considered one. Sugizo's guitar work and composing has even been a huge influence in younger, non-VK bands like Ling Tosite Sigure and soko ni naru. So it's clear that LUNA SEA has had a far-reaching impact.

 

Imma definitely have to dig into some of their other albums now!

[Jigsaw9 6783]

By the way here are the songwriting credits if anyone's interested... Most of them sound pretty obvious, others maybe not so much so!

 

- LOVELESS: SUGIZO
- ROSIER: J
- FACE TO FACE: INORAN
- CIVILIZE: SUGIZO
- GENESIS OF MIND 〜夢の彼方へ〜: SUGIZO
- AURORA: SUGIZO
- IN FUTURE: J
- FAKE: INORAN
- TRUE BLUE: J
- MOTHER: INORAN

 

(one of the more "evenly composed" LS albums as far as the songwriting credits are split up between the members, excluding Shinya and Ryuichi ofc)

Edited April 7, 2020 by Jigsaw9

[Takbardzozly 19]

Mother was the first vk album which I randomly downloaded long time ago. I was into goth/dream pop/shoegaze music and a i didn't enjoy visual kei. This album blew my mind, it was a perfect combination of western dark indie and this mysterious visual kei soul. Mastering and composition of this record is perfect to this day and each track is a masterpiece. 

Thanks to this and Laruku's DUNE album, I gave the whole genre a chance and I fell in love with it

[YuyoDrift 1540]

Oh, this is a nice change of pace.

 

The experience that is Mother gets much of my praise musically for its incredible arrangements that paint a vivid depiction of Luna Sea's initial career and the era it was birthed in.

 

What's also worth noting is that many songs you think will end up a flop, gradually and surprisingly, get amazingly better as the track progresses. Once you hear that shift in direction after the buildup, you'll understand what I mean, it's something I've rarely experienced. Personally I think the break-periods with calmer songs in-between made the listening experience that much more enjoyable, and even those songs give you that same overall album feeling to keep things vivid. "Genesis of Mind", without a doubt, pulled a fucking David Bowie on my ass, continuing to prove that it is the "long-song"-ers that end up being worth the entire listen, and it's my favorite song on this album, hands-down. "Mother" is one of the best "last songs" I've heard thus far, you wouldn't even think it was last song in that album. 

 

By just Mother alone, I'd be convinced that these were some majorly  dedicated musicians with so much potential and creativity that was blossoming for its time. If other fans are saying that this is Luna Sea at their best, then that is a pretty fucking convincing argument. This is a pretty high point to be at, I'll admit, it's unreal. I wish I was there in person to witness this album being created in the studio, I like this album that much.

 

Really, I know this saying gets overused but, this is a release that you deserve to listen to if you consider yourself a VK fan.

There are a lot of great tracks that make the listen worth it, but the overall achievement I feel having listened to it is my takeaway.

[chemicalpictures 1888]

What impresses me the most in Luna Sea is how J is basically the father of the next 20 years of VK.

Listen to Wish on Image, In my Dream on Eden and Rosier and SPECIALLY True Blue on Mother and you have the blueprint every single band followed around that time and after. Shit is freaking impressive, to say the very very least

 

Regarding the album itself, I don't think Luna Sea works best looking at albuns individually, as I wouldn't be able to point only one that defines them. That said, Mother sounds really really mature in songs like Rosier, True Blue and Mother, while giving them range to experiment in songs like Genesis of Mind. Together with Style, this is their all time high imo, the trademark Luna Sea sound in its peak, polished and defined for the generations that would come after

[K8A 22]

[..kissing in the cosmos, Face to Face ..]

 

My absolute favorite Luna Sea song, on my absolute favorite album. I feel the album was a step up in not only in musical quality and production, but in that it provided something more. It provided a narrative akin to a space opera. When I hear Ryuichi go into the chorus with the words "Face to face..", I picture scenes from.. not quite Blade Runner, but something close, yet more abstract and spiritual. I feel like I'm on a journey through space that is both sad and lonely, yet hopeful and fulfulling.

 

It's weird. Not many albums make me picture scenes so vivid as MOTHER does. Then again, I'm a total scifi romantikku freak so that might play in as well of course. Still, I feel that it represents them wanting to step up their game and present something more than just an album. It's a journey to the future, while still being absolutely grounded in both time and place with it's very stylized 90's pop-rock, and I fucking absolutely love it.

[saiko 429]

I'm a very fan of Luna, but never had the chance to dig their discography while trying to trace the development of their artistic project, whatever it is. So, like in the listening of other of their albums, I've listened to Mother a lot of times, enjoying it a lot, but never payed attention to it as a whole, rather I concentrated my pleasure in each track as a unit. Maybe it came the time to do it the other way!

 

On 4/18/2020 at 1:48 PM, chemicalpictures said:

What impresses me the most in Luna Sea is how J is basically the father of the next 20 years of VK.

Listen to Wish on Image, In my Dream on Eden and Rosier and SPECIALLY True Blue on Mother and you have the blueprint every single band followed around that time and after. Shit is freaking impressive, to say the very very least

 

Regarding the album itself, I don't think Luna Sea works best looking at albuns individually, as I wouldn't be able to point only one that defines them. That said, Mother sounds really really mature in songs like Rosier, True Blue and Mother, while giving them range to experiment in songs like Genesis of Mind. Together with Style, this is their all time high imo, the trademark Luna Sea sound in its peak, polished and defined for the generations that would come after

I'm so impressed J is credited as the main composer of those classics! Now I realize I unconsciouslly assumed all this time it was either Sugizo or Inoran who were back them, because 90% of the times in rock bands it's the guitarist who comes with the majority of ideas... This deserves more researching! 

[Jigsaw9 6783]

6 hours ago, saiko said:

I'm so impressed J is credited as the main composer of those classics! Now I realize I unconsciouslly assumed all this time it was either Sugizo or Inoran who were back them, because 90% of the times in rock bands it's the guitarist who comes with the majority of ideas... This deserves more researching! 

J really did not fuck around with laying down the template for 80% of all vk that came afterwards.  Here are his songwriting credits (excluding MOTHER already mentioned) up till the band's disbandment/hiatus:

 

TIME IS DEAD
SHADE
THE SLAIN
PRECIOUS...
MECHANICAL DANCE
IMITATION
IN MIND
WISH
JESUS
IN MY DREAM (WITH SHIVER)
STEAL
STAY
SLAVE
FALLOUT
G.
HURT
RA-SE-N
FOREVER & EVER
Time Has Come
STORM
SHINE
Unlikelihood
ANOTHER
BROKEN
INTO THE SUN
Sweetest Coma Again
a Vision
TONIGHT
Crazy About You

[saiko 429]

 

5 hours ago, Jigsaw9 said:

 

TIME IS DEAD
SHADE
THE SLAIN
PRECIOUS...
MECHANICAL DANCE
IMITATION
IN MIND
WISH
JESUS
IN MY DREAM (WITH SHIVER)
STEAL
STAY
SLAVE
FALLOUT
G.
HURT
RA-SE-N
FOREVER & EVER
Time Has Come
STORM
SHINE
Unlikelihood
ANOTHER
BROKEN
INTO THE SUN
Sweetest Coma Again
a Vision
TONIGHT
Crazy About You

All of my favorite LS songs are written by J. Literally. I'm speechless. 

[hopefully_benign 56]

Classic, if maybe a little overproduced (not every five seconds of every song needs a bunch of sound effects and blips and radio broadcast snippets). Ryuichi had an emotional range beyond just the arms-waving-in-the-wind messianic drama thing and could sound pretty convincingly sinister at times, which prevents the wimpiness of it all from getting on my nerves.

 

more threads about ancient albums, please

Edited April 28, 2020 by hopefully_benign