Number Girl

oh my god.

I always just saw any Nazi/fascist/political paraphernalia as being a shock/edgy/ironical factor - its like when black metal bands put pictures of burning churches and inverted crosses/Satanic imagery on their album covers and videos. Most (note that I say MOST) of those bands aren't really Satanist/Christian killers or anything, they just do it to be scary and fit the intensity of the music. Western punk bands in the 70's/80's used to do similar stuff - heck, Sid Vicious wore that swastika T-shirt for a while, but I think their is evidence contrary that he was a Nazi supporter. A LOT of old visual kei bands were Sex Pistols/Vicious fans too, so they may just be imitating their idols? Visual kei is similar; it is (or at least it originally was) about pushing the boundaries of expression in their culture - a swastika armband is making a statement or it wouldn't be there. I doubt it is something taken lightly in mainstream Japan, even if it is somehow "less offensive."
Though they are not visual kei - I think a good example is from a quote from a Japanese punk band who called themselves "The Stalin." Michiro Endo chose the name because "Stalin is a very hated person and it would be good for our image."
I think if bands have a message to convey at all it is better than nothing. I think if they can write a good song about the wars, sex, crime, religion, or culture and it actually means something to them besides "lets scare old ladies" than I'm fine with it.
Anyways that's all my thoughts on it. ^^

Crap, I won't be able to get on a computer tommorow. I'll be tardy for the party. :0
Luna Sea is best band period. There is no "after X-ness" about them.

I always just saw any Nazi/fascist/political paraphernalia as being a shock/edgy/ironical factor - its like when black metal bands put pictures of burning churches and inverted crosses/Satanic imagery on their album covers and videos. Most (note that I say MOST) of those bands aren't really Satanist/Christian killers or anything, they just do it to be scary and fit the intensity of the music. Western punk bands in the 70's/80's used to do similar stuff - heck, Sid Vicious wore that swastika T-shirt for a while, but I think their is evidence contrary that he was a Nazi supporter. A LOT of old visual kei bands were Sex Pistols/Vicious fans too, so they may just be imitating their idols? Visual kei is similar; it is (or at least it originally was) about pushing the boundaries of expression in their culture - a swastika armband is making a statement or it wouldn't be there. I doubt it is something taken lightly in mainstream Japan, even if it is somehow "less offensive."
Though they are not visual kei - I think a good example is from a quote from a Japanese punk band who called themselves "The Stalin." Michiro Endo chose the name because "Stalin is a very hated person and it would be good for our image."
I think if bands have a message to convey at all it is better than nothing. I think if they can write a good song about the wars, sex, crime, religion, or culture and it actually means something to them besides "lets scare old ladies" than I'm fine with it.
Anyways that's all my thoughts on it. ^^

Band: Number Girl
Song: Trampoline Girl
Why?: Narrowing down my favorite Number Girl song was easier said than done; it ended up being a matter of simply following my heart. Out of all the highly definitive tracks in their collection, I strongly cling to a little known track from the SAPPUKEI album. I believe the primary reason "Trampoline Girl" is my favorite song is because of its nostalgic value. Hearing it's addictive, bouncy, youthful rhythm now brings back memories of many early mornings spent riding back and forth to my high school. The possible cold and disturbing interpretation of its lyrics aside, "Trampoline Girl" is an unfailing instant pick-me-up.
Musical aspects that strike me include the strong melodic quality of Inazawa's drums. Its synchronicity with the guitar and bass work together to create a harmonizing wall of sonic power. It is difficult to be listening to this song and not experience a momentary numb and hypnotizing sensation. Through the chaos pervading the song, Hisako plays a catchy, pop-sounding melody. It is like a children's playground song on steroids. Mukai's simple voice chiming in a midst the blast of noise adds to this effect. His screaming portions in the bridge is instant added fuel to my adrenaline.
Lyrically, "Trampoline Girl" appears (in my opinion) to have a very morbid underlying message, stripping away its innocent appearance and exposing some of Mukai's typical dark irony. Reading translations, I've always interpreted it to be alluding to suicide - it seems as if the "jumping girl" in the song is referring to Japanese student suicide incidents but knowing many indie bands it could also mean absolutely nothing. Even within this context, I still use the song as a means of lightening my mood and improving my day. However, its separate dimension of meaning is still worth my appreciation.

Got out of a year-long emotionally/physically abusive relationship this past month and been getting back in control of my life. My anxiety and depression has decreased a lot and my self-confidence has increased. Today I hung out with my best friend and listened to some new J-Rock that I love and I am really happy.

Yeah, I completely agree . . . and this has been something I've been working to practice on in my own blog and reviews (well except for this one), though there are times I find it hard to describe the music in absolutely technical terms and I still have a lot of work to do . .  . . . reading other people's reviews in magazines or on official websites helps immensely. It's also a really good exercise for writing in general. It helps you get in touch with your emotions, expand your vocabulary, etc. 
 
I get annoyed when a person's review is just "the guitars are shitty" or "the vocals were interesting" - well, they didn't sound shitty to me, haha. What do you mean by that? Haha.

First, my humble merch collection:


I organized my CD's by "genre" since I'm weird like that:
Metal
Featured: Anthem, Boris, Blindman, Eizo Sakamoto, Sigh, DEG, Dead End, Grand Slam, Loudness, and Exclaim
"Indies"
Featured: andymori, cinema staff, caroline rocks, Number Girl, Onsa, Vola, Sunsgrind, Melt-Banana, Spiral Chord, Suiseinoboaz, Molice, and one Drum:kan CD.
Visual Kei
Featured: Color, D'espairsRay, Gackt, Luna Sea, Versailles, and Kuroyume
Thank you, Gackt for having so many obnoxiously-shaped releases.
"Other"
Featured: B'z, BJC (the two thin packs at the top), and Yemon

D'aww, I had the same thoughts! 
 
It's been forever since I've touched their music, though. :'(

If your sexual activity doesn't solely consist of jerking off to the beat of Merzbow and The Gerogerigegege you're doing sex wrong

Now how exactly do you know all those J-Rockers are certified? I've seen no documentation whatsoever.

Luna Sea has so many classic songs. ^.^ It's like there's almost at least one song for everyone.

Hair, sexually arousing basslines, vocals that sound like the feeling of your hands reaching out of a sunroof into a clear blue sky, hair, the scent perfume that reminds you of the girl with her hair dyed in the colors of the sunset, the bitterness I felt when I stepped into the rain when I left behind my umbrella, guitars that weep, moan, fall like rain drops, or battle each other to death, hair, the schadenfreude over the misfortune of the one who broke you heart and the following realization that no matter what, you're still just as alone as you were before, basslines like heavy mist that engulf the darkened highway carved into the Blue Ridge mountains, hair, ribs, tattoos, vocals that wake you up before anything else in the entire world, and though you're still tired, make you still want to watch the sun rise, the guitar that takes you to the apartment window with a cup of coffee and a skyline view you've always dreamed of having, hair, sunglasses, and a melodies that bring a smile to your face as you return to that place you once were and relive one of those bittersweet memories.  

Hair, sexually arousing basslines, vocals that sound like the feeling of your hands reaching out of a sunroof into a clear blue sky, hair, the scent perfume that reminds you of the girl with her hair dyed in the colors of the sunset, the bitterness I felt when I stepped into the rain when I left behind my umbrella, guitars that weep, moan, fall like rain drops, or battle each other to death, hair, the schadenfreude over the misfortune of the one who broke you heart and the following realization that no matter what, you're still just as alone as you were before, basslines like heavy mist that engulf the darkened highway carved into the Blue Ridge mountains, hair, ribs, tattoos, vocals that wake you up before anything else in the entire world, and though you're still tired, make you still want to watch the sun rise, the guitar that takes you to the apartment window with a cup of coffee and a skyline view you've always dreamed of having, hair, sunglasses, and a melodies that bring a smile to your face as you return to that place you once were and relive one of those bittersweet memories.  

Before I tell you and Gaz to unbunch your panties and take it to PM, I want to address the part I've bolded. I want to do this because there's a misconception I want to clear up and it's something that's been proven to work on this forum.
Sharing your music with people who actually care involves three things: music, sharing, and people. The problem with it when restricted solely to visual kei is that the sharing is inconsistent. Some people hoard the rare music and it eventually becomes lost and no one can ever hear or find it again. Some people share everything freely. If you want to find other people who like the same music you do, you have to make it freely available. But even more than that, there has to be discussion about this music. There are two very underutilized forums in the Artist and Review sections whose purpose is to facilitate discussion. If you wonder why the type of visual kei you like seems to get no attention, go look for all the topics people have started about it and look at the last time someone uploaded an album by one of those artists and wrote a review for one of those artists. It's probably been a while hasn't it? Now switch gears and look at a lot of the K-Pop fans (a good majority of which came from visual kei) and estimate the size of the fandom in comparison to VK. It seems so much bigger because they all talk about it!
The key here is "out of sight, out of mind". I'll touch on that later.
But first, let's jump into some MH history. The year was 2010. Overseas attention for visual kei was on it's way out, as Champ touched on earlier. Activity was declining on MH because a lot of fans were jumping ship to the next fad, but there wasn't any musical spheres here to keep them interested. Thus, people spent less time here as they spent more time exploring new music. CAT5 and I had a problem with this. There is an entire musical scene outside of visual kei in Japan that was getting the shaft and we wanted to fix that. We started by first uploading a lot of new music to the download section. That had limited success. The turnover rate was so fast that by the it hit page two or three no one checked it out anymore. Out of sight, out of mind. So to fix that shortcoming, we tried something new.
This was an effort on the part of a lot of people, many of which went uncredited and who I will thank now because I don't think I ever formally did this at one point. CAT5, Aion, lukrecia, and I started "The Non-Visual Recommendation Thread" which grew to be a 30 page behemoth of a topic filled with sample releases by different bands in Japan that were all non-visual. The idea was that if it was always at the top of the forum and being constantly updated, people would check it out from time to time and find things they liked. There were some issues with it (disappearing posts, MU dying, etc.) but it had it's intended effect of people finding new artists that they wouldn't know that they liked. Because we made a place for it and occasionally wrote reviews in the section, we got all three components we needed: music, sharing, and people.
We expanded this base by starting the end of year lists at the end of 2011. CAT5 and I devised this as an idea to talk about really great albums we liked that didn't get the attention they deserved, got a lot of attention and deserved to be talked about more, or weren't even Japanese but was just great music overall. We got a lot of great feedback from lots of users because it was a combination of visual and not visual artists. There was something for everyone. The topics got hundreds, if not thousands of views and even attracted the attention of some artists we praised. This got more people listening, and more people talking.
Then the staff decided to do something really crazy and split the download forum about a year back. There was always talk about splitting it between visual and non visual music because of reasons, but we were hesitant to do it because we always felt the visual forum would just eclipse the non-visual forum and the latter would die off. By mid 2013, there were enough people here that enjoyed the latter for us to give it a trial run and see how it went. It was only supposed to last for two months. But because there was a clean separation between the two, non-visual music would no longer be buried in the unified download section as it once was. Visual kei music also benefited from this as well. Now that both were easily available for view, people began checking out more non visual kei music. Instead of failing, it's grown and now there's more of a balance here than there has ever been before.
So the moral of the story here is that if CAT5 and I had never decided to do something about the lack of attention non visual music was getting here that fateful day in 2011, MH wouldn't be the way it is today. If you want to promote your preferred style of visual kei, you have to discuss it. And continue discussing it and generate interest in it. Talking about how it's dying is a start but actually talking about the music is better. Music doesn't ever die until people stop listening to it, and the fastest way for that to happen is to have no one be able to hear it and have no place for anyone to talk about it.
Now I know this isn't directly on topic but I feel that it addresses the point being made in this topic accurately enough to belong here. Now you two go play nice.

Well, it pretty much confirms what I was saying. There was a short-term fad between 2005-2011, give a year or two. The fad is over and we are nearing the pre-fad level of interest again.
 
The fad actually took a bit longer to reach some central/south american countries, so it's still somewhat strong there, but it will wane as well.

Jesus, this. Y'all need to get that stick out of your ass and stop acting like bitter ex-girl/boyfriends that still aren't over their ex 2 years later. Sorry if this sounds too rude but it's just something that really irks me. Also by saying it, you're basically insulting the music taste of everyone on this board who is into current VK, and that's what I won't have. Besides, if VK was still the same as 10 years ago, I'm pretty sure 70% of you guys would be complaining about how VK has become too stale.
 
Now Zess has already hit the nail right on the head. The reason why there's less VK on YouTube is purely because of copyright issues. I sometimes also get a feeling some labels try to block off foreign fans from getting access to their content. The reason why can probably be found in the recent drama surrounding Nocturnal Bloodlust. VK bands are aware they have foreign fans, so do the labels. They know very well how much overseas VK fans download, and they're seeing it as damaging to their industry (whether this is true or not is another story). Selling their stuff on their webshop alone, not putting any content on international webmedia or blocking their non-Japanese viewers, it all doesn't help people who are looking for new VK, nor does it help people discover VK. I mean, when I got into VK you had like 30 different VK blogspots, YouTube was filled with VK PVs, Tainted World (god fuck I'm old) had over 13k members iirc. All of that is now no longer either; lots of blogspots have been deleted or become inactive (megauploads death also had a lot to do with this), YouTube hardly holds any VK videos anymore and MH has also seen a decrease in activity. I don't think people are less interested, there's just less chance for people to actually get access to the content.
 
I feel like VK bands should follow Boris' trend and put their full albums up for streaming for about a week before the album releases. Then take the stream down the day the album releases. They could stream the album or single on their own website and it wouldn't cost them a fortune. They could still sell the PV with the limited edition then, but at least people wouldn't be expected to pay everything up front.

Somehow I'm skeptical that foreigners' interest in vk is declining. Of course this isn't something quantifiable, but taking a cursory look at Twitter will suggest that even the indies vk bands show some awareness of their foreign fanbase (whether and to what extent they cater to this fanbase is a separate question). Also, the sheer number of VK bands having overseas tours these days indicates that there's still a healthy demand for vk bands outside of Japan - in addition to those who have toured Europe in the past couple of years, bands like DIV, Plastic Tree, Royz also regularly perform in Asia.
 
The youtube question is tricky, and like what Zess has said I suspect it's more of a consequence of copyright enforcement than a reliable index of foreign popularity. Just look at how many PV or full songs of obscure indies as well as disbanded bands do exist on youtube because there's a lot less surveillance in that case and these videos get taken down a lot less than e.g. Nightmare or ViViD PVs. Which is kinda ironic because obviously the disbanded bands won't be there to benefit from the publicization of their music lol.
 
Also, it'll be great if ppl can stop using "vk is dying!" as a sneaky shorthand for "the kind of vk I like is dying!".....

i remember we've already discussed this shit in another thread and came to the conclusion that people are just 2lazy2search for some good bands, whining about how shitty vk is nowadays.
 
the same about the shock factor. there is a proper thread about it. go and whine there. this thread is about jewtube and decrease of the vk videos there lately, in case you haven't read the OP-post.
 
about the topic: i kinda disagree about it because now some japanese bands learned how to use youtube themselves. i dont remember seeing any official channel of indie bands from mid or late 00's, not even saying about early 00's lawl. and people are rarely comment on bands' last.fm shoutboxes nowadays(talking about indie bands here). so i think it's not just a youtube problem but more like a decrease of the foreigner's interest in vk in general. 

Here's a question for you: why film a promotional video if you aren't using it to promote music?
The answer is, there is none! To expect people to buy the promotional video to see it defeats the purpose of it's design, which is to promote your music. You aren't supposed to be able to directly make money off of the PV. The money you put into the video either comes out of your budget for the album or is something you recoup when you make sales. It's called the cost of doing business. Sometimes it's necessary to spend money to make more money. If you do make money off of the PV, that's just a bonus.
That's why visual kei bands seem to run into so many monetary issues. They spend a lot of money up front to get their costumes, photo shoots, albums recorded, etc. and then expect fans to pay up front for everything. Here, pay up front for this ticket to get this live distributed song which didn't cost us a fraction of the cost we're charging you to get it! Here, pay for this promotional video so you can see the song that we're going to make you buy twice so you can get all of the music. Also, buy both editions and get some meaningless poster bonus too! But you have to buy them from Like An Edison only to get the deal! Like shit, I get that you need to recoup your losses but there are better ways to do it. I'll name a few below.
Why don't Japanese visual kei bands run an official YouTube channel where they can place all of their PV's (or hell, all of their music if they wanted), and some live performances and just make you sit through an ad first? That's extra money that doesn't cost them too much work to get. Why don't really indies independent Japanese visual kei bands put their releases on Bandcamp or iTunes and set a minimum price? There are lots of ways they can cut out the middleman and save themselves some serious cash, but they don't.
But yet it's expected that we should just shell out $40 for the music? It's 2014 music doesn't work that way anymore bb.

I have only been to one Japanese rock concert and that was to see Boris in Atlanta about three weeks ago. It was really amazing!  

Just to answer your question:

I grew up in New York. My mother was a Seikima II and DEAD END fan, and I got a cassette of X's Blue Blood when I was like, 11. That's how I found visual kei. 

I'm sorry you don't like the way I presented my points. 
 
Let me be more concise.

1. Illegal downloading is still illegal.
2. Making music, playing concerts, and promotion cost money that the band and their management pays.
3. This money and promotion comes from cds.
4. Bands won't go to the US/EU/South America if they can't see sales.
???
 Result: No sales? No band for you.
 
 
You don't have to like the bands, but this goes for any visual kei band. And we're talking about visual kei bands right now, which is why I didn't bring up other musical genres. So, you're not really making any valid points.

Culture doesn't work as an explanation when piracy is a worldwide issue. I've never once given thought to how the Japanese feel about piracy when I download music and I never will. I'm too focused on my own country and their stance on piracy, which I also feel is just as outdated. If an industry is too stuck in their old model of conducting business to take advantage of the new model, then they are outdated. That's literally the definition.
 
This is the double-edged sword of capitalism. It stands for any industry in any country that relies on a business model that hasn't kept up with the times. Adapt or die. It seems that the labels are adamant about sticking with their sixty year old business model because it's "worked for so long". But decentralization of music distribution via the Internet has removed their stranglehold on what music we are exposed to. We can search for what we want, listen to what we want, form our own tastes, and never need to turn on the radio to hear an artist's new single. That's why we're all here. Labels have the resources and the connections to push artists, but they are not the de facto chairmen in charge anymore. They don't like that.
 
All of their waffling back and forth on this issue is smoke and mirrors to distract us from the real issue. At the end of the day, the Internet is a revolution they didn't anticipate and it has the potential to disrupt business. Nobody in power has the balls to tell these companies to change their approach like pretty much every other industry has past 1995. They'd rather try to pass draconian legislation to protect their interests than to defend and exploit new ideas such as turntable.fm, SoundCloud, Spotify, Bandcamp, or YouTube. They want us to meet them in their court instead of meeting us in the middle and we don't have to do that anymore. Labels don't have to do anything right now because they're still turning a profit, so the discussion won't change until they're no longer making a profit. If/Whenever that happens will be a very interesting day.
What I would really like to now is how much pressure Nokubura gets from their label to sell records, and also what percentage of music sales they get. I'm pretty confident that they make more money selling merchandise and tickets than they do from their CD sales, so I don't understand why Masa is so thirsty for money he won't get unless it directly impacts the future of the band with the label. They didn't seem to care much about piracy when they weren't a visual kei band.
Then again I still think they're a bunch of sellouts who turned visual kei because they thought Photochop and a couple of fancy wigs and terrible outfits would be enough to attract squealing fangirls en masse to throw money at them for their music. It looks like they're finding out the hard way that their rotating wardrobes takes a nice chunk out of whatever slim profits they're making. I'd laugh my ass off if they ever drop the visual kei aesthetics in the future when they discover that maintaining the image is too expensive in the long run.