Google trends showing the decline of visual kei

[Karma’s Hat 3107]

14 minutes ago, Peace Heavy mk II said:

 

Kind of just thinking aloud, but does it seem plausible that the decline in interest in vkei and Japanese things in general have to do with the general populace's expectation of someone who likes these things is?

 

The weeaboo stereotypes were always really bad and everybody knew. Actually, I'd say the weeaboo pogroms were far, far worse ten years ago.

 

Lol I suddenly recalled this story of MUCC and Girugamesh performing at a metal festival in here back in 2009. They were promptly heckled and treated to chants of Pokemon by the irate heavy metal public. It's not that they hadn't seen shitty novelty acts before since this festival was always full of them, but it was that weeaboos were really considered to be the worst of the absolute worst of people. Everyone thought the bands were trash, that we were trash and we then got treated as such. Even as an act of scene betrayal I remember this weeaboo from middle school who we used to call names and yell at while passing her by in the hallways. I think all the rabid fangirl stereotypes were known and openly mocked, and the clique behavior within the scene was problem even back then and definitely a part of the stereotype.

 

3 hours ago, aetarna said:

I also remember it was the time v-kei fandom started losing its presence on manga convention - before there was always j-music dedicated room, or even two - one for prelections, events, contests, make-up presentations etc, and other for pv viewing.

 

 

Oh fuck yeah this. It used to be that the anime conventions catered to the visual kei fans as well, and some activity of that sort was set up. The Tsukicon convention had brief run in Helsinki where they'd also book visual kei bands for the afterparty. This was lineup was very well curated featuring such bands as Screw, Vistlip, Aicle, Dio, Sincrea and Alsdead. 

 

During the peak years the weebdom had grown separate from the anime community. Cons no longer catered to us and it wasn't a given that a visual kei fan liked anime. I don't watch anime at all and I don't remember when I picked this up, but "narutards" is what I referred to the anime fans as who infringed upon the sacred visual kei space.

Now ten years later: Anime conventions are still going strong, selling out throughout the _entire_ country even months ahead of time. The convention near my parents place in the literal arse crack of the the European continent is always sold out! We can't sell out The Gazette.

 

2 hours ago, Kaleidoscope said:

Here in Germany, we still have a few concerts every year though and some of them seem to sell quite well - from what I've heard, Nocturnal Bloodlust's show was very crowded.

 

This was organised in Finland by sheer organic grassroots activity. People moaned about it enough on twitter and spammed the hashtag enough to gain the attention of the band and the promoter. I had a laff about the desperation of the dying weebdom, and then they went out and got it done.  A good amount of people showed up too and I reckon some who weren't big fans came just to show solidarity and experience the feeling these events used to have back then. It also helped that this was for once a good popular band that's on the upward swing, instead of a travelling conman after merch money and Ukrainian women. You book irrelevant bands and you make visual kei irrelevant, and that's a fact.

[enyx 903]

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.

Edited December 28, 2016 by Pho

[seikun 317]

Visual Kei was always a relatively small niche. The thing is that between 2005 and 2010 approximately Visual kei faced a lot of exposure and popularity that attracted many people, sometimes not so much because of its music but because the looks were cool. Then many of those people left because it wasn't really or them, but the people who really love the scene and the music remain.

 

I saw a lot of people getting into the scene during the mid 2000's, but after 2010 the old ones the new ones  who truly developed an interest in the music stayed.

[cvltic 1482]

i have a pet theory about why foreign fandom shrank.

1) like @TheStoic, i think the death of scene/emo has a lot to do with it. like it or not the primary audience for visual kei is girls of about 15-23,  and that was probably also the same demographic for My Chemical Romance, Panic at the Disco!, FOB, etc. alternative in a girl-friendly package was all the rage. i probably wouldn't have found out about vk if there wasn't stuff like Sum 41 and co.'s pop punk and Linkin Park on the radio -- rock bands were cool at the time. they're not cool right now.

2) fragmentation of fan communities -- @nekkichibrought this up well but i'll run my mouth off about it too. lj in particular was centralized, filled to the brim with the primary fan demographic, and the structure was very conducive to roping fans in and keeping them not only interested but wanting to establish themselves as BNF. myspace groups may have been similar but idk i wasn't a myspace girl. there was incentive to make fan content even as simple as journal icons or fanfics and positive feedback would spur people to keep contributing. even something more controversial like roleplay communities served as fan labor. this promotion was invaluable even if it was prone to being derided by people who wanted a bigger focus on the actual music. resources, legal and less so, were available in huge one-stop shops, not just as mp3 sharing communities but things like jrock_scans (which has 23,661(!) members for reference). the craze for fanlistings and their older cousin, webrings, also connected people who posted about multiple bandoms and facilitated cross-pollination.

 

twitter was/is insufficient for a multi-media experience and doesn't allow for collaboration, and tumblr has the problem of lack of community building and cross-pollination (while on lj, kyosamaluvr666 could post actively in dir_en_grey, customers_suck, lotr-fanfiction, garagesalejapan and mention all of these topics on their personal journal to their 400 friends from all of these places). forum culture differs too much from these dedicated fan communities, and forums are kind of a dead meme on top of that anyway.  we no longer have BNFs/influencers that bring in teenage girls. 

 

 

tl;dr visual kei fandom died because teenage girls, the demo that propels pop culture trends, aren't being drawn in. we lost our beatlemaniacs, our MCR-my, our directioners.

[nekkichi 6042]

8 hours ago, cvltic said:

 lj in particular was centralized, filled to the brim with the primary fan demographic, and the structure was very conducive to roping fans in and keeping them not only interested but wanting to establish themselves

omg

remember lovetrick

[cvltic 1482]

33 minutes ago, nekkichi said:

omg

remember lovetrick

 

lmao i was her lj friend and i still hear from her once in a blue moon on twitter. she was definitely a hugely c*nty ladder climber on lj tho (so was i tbf...)

i was also lj friends w/ the girl who ripped off Aki from SID's necklace when they came abroad. lj was great and when it died so did all these wonderful pieces of history ;_;

[BrenGun 2259]

ah.

which let me add ineline

 

what kind of music is cool and most wanted?

 

the media promotes Dance music the most created by those famous DJ's

 

while years ago rock bands got promoted now DJ's are promoted in all media.  even bigger artists want that kind of help.

 

and lets not forget....

Metal core also kinda got more popular thanks to DJ's 

 

or does nobody think of DJ music?

even tho its damn popular and nowdays kiddos don't need rock unless a DJ or fancy DJ elements are inside. 

[helcchi 942]

44 minutes ago, DarkWater said:

while years ago rock bands got promoted now DJ's are promoted in all media.  even bigger artists want that kind of help.

 

and lets not forget....

Metal core also kinda got more popular thanks to DJ's 

 

or does nobody think of DJ music?

even tho its damn popular and nowdays kiddos don't need rock unless a DJ or fancy DJ elements are inside. 

 

I think due to the changing times, what it means to be a musician has shifted significantly. Instruments are often considered to be reserved for elites and/or archaic while turntables and music software can be easily attainable to anyone. Now that technology has become more advanced, anyone is able to create music on the cheap, with a faster turnaround, and without having the knowledge of how to play an instrument.

 

By completely abandoning musical notation and focusing less on complexity and more on catchiness, I think this is what most people will relate to the most. It's what makes mainstream mainstream and it's also what makes pop music so prevalent.

 

Instruments and musical gear are hella expensive and often require a lifetime of practice and care - a skill and dedication that is seen as unattainable to most people and therefore cannot aspire to be. "Why spend my life savings on band gear and learning how to play an instrument when I can replicate the sound on my computer easily?" kind of deal.

Edited December 30, 2016 by helcchi

[BrenGun 2259]

56 minutes ago, helcchi said:

Instruments and musical gear are hella expensive and often require a lifetime of practice and care - a skill and dedication that is seen as unattainable to most people and therefore cannot aspire to be. "Why spend my life savings on band gear and learning how to play an instrument when I can replicate the sound on my computer easily?" kind of deal.

 

That's true.

But will this be still the case after 10 years?

 

 

But for now, people love digital created tracks and dance music a lot which are created by DJ's or good track makers.

Also DIV used lot's of digital sound... however they decided to break up.

 

But still bands such as SiM also use lot's of DJ fancy tunes. Which makes me think, will they ever return to real played music, or will they stay with CORE the rest of their music carrier? They and also other more famous artist CAN change the music world again. But will they go back? or will we have for ever endless (metal) core?

 

So let's see what we will have in about 10 years.

 

 

 

---

about LJ, I think it mainly died because we all moved to this FORUM. well we all moved to tainted world and then LJ simply slowly died. 

However I still don't get why we all also stopped when we moved to this forum to scan our magazines. Maybe we even stopped to buy?!

But also what ZESS did mention, back then when MEGAUPLOAD went offline, also did do something to the sharing community.

 

However visual kei was never pure dark gothic or screamo or emo, there was also lots of happy shizzel. I also think it kinda died because MANGA and ANIME suddenly got less popular. back in the days so many ANIME was aired on the TV and ANIME also did help a lot for discovering visual kei music.  If there would be more anime on the TV there would be much more people who would listen to Japanese music.

 

 

But visual kei is not dead.

Look at this forum, still new people join. If Visual Kei would be dead this forum would be DEAD now too.

[Zeus 7997]

1 hour ago, helcchi said:

 

I think due to the changing times, what it means to be a musician has shifted significantly. Instruments are often considered to be reserved for elites and/or archaic while turntables and music software can be easily attainable to anyone. Now that technology has become more advanced, anyone is able to create music on the cheap, with a faster turnaround, and without having the knowledge of how to play an instrument.

 

By completely abandoning musical notation and focusing less on complexity and more on catchiness, I think this is what most people will relate to the most. It's what makes mainstream mainstream and it's also what makes pop music so prevalent.

 

Instruments and musical gear are hella expensive and often require a lifetime of practice and care - a skill and dedication that is seen as unattainable to most people and therefore cannot aspire to be. "Why spend my life savings on band gear and learning how to play an instrument when I can replicate the sound on my computer easily?" kind of deal.

And then to bring it all the way around, there are plenty of people who will pick up an instrument but only half-ass their lessons. I can't remember how many times I've criticized a visual kei band for not being able to play their instruments properly...and more often than not it was probably true about at least one of the members.
 

[BrenGun 2259]

31 minutes ago, Zeus said:

And then to bring it all the way around, there are plenty of people who will pick up an instrument but only half-ass their lessons. I can't remember how many times I've criticized a visual kei band for not being able to play their instruments properly...and more often than not it was probably true about at least one of the members.
 

 

but creating music digital isn't the only reason why they cannot play an instrument.

Don't forget that there are many girls/woman support their favorite guy because he is IKEMEN.

I often talked to woman who said, I only support his band because I do like him, I don't like their music at all.

Which gives also gives the thought"why would I be able to play an instrument if I'm good looking?!"

 

But we know what to most only hot looking bands happen, they disband after a (short) while.

[enyx 903]

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.

Edited December 30, 2016 by Pho

[Karma’s Hat 3107]

Time moves on and irrelevant art forms and their instruments get thrown into the very crowded dustbin of history. If you have any doubt about this, I'd like to ask you to name the top 10 premier bebop musicians today, or how about something that sounds like it was from the paradise garage? how about poodle rock? is anyone playing like Weber lately while painting like Monet and catching the salon by storm? They're all gone from the popular consciousness and live as mere perverse retro curiosities ( new post-punk and goth rock fucking eww ) for a handful of people. Scenes, genres and movements always come, go and never come back in the same form. If you ask an enthusiast he'll no doubt tell you about all the killer up and comers, but that's all bunk and they know it too. Nobody's touching Billie Holliday, there's not going to be a new Beatles, nobody's turning back the clock and doing nu-Bach in a manner that won't be scoffed upon by anyone who's serious and in the know. Visual kei in that regard is, to be quite honest, finished. I'd say its creative, artistic peak ended right when the turn of the millenia labels dissolved, and the European boom was caused both by the hot air from that period and the aptness of visual kei musicians to appropriate the emo/scene stylings as mentioned before (see the mallgoth act D'espairsray and nu metal Girugamesh for proof of this ). Visual kei's adaptability has given it such a lifeline for sure. There's not a whole lot of genres that can keep moving the needle and making money both domestically and internationally the way that it has. We've literally outlived and survived the deaths of hair metal, goth and mallcore. Probably only the general metal subculture can boast such a staying power, and they too have been struggling to stay on the surface since all that Anthrax skate metal and the alt-rock Metallica boom faded away. Now even big names can't sell out in fucking _Finland_ and underground classics struggle to pull. In my pessimistic thinking we are at the tail end of this rock guitar saga, and it's due to the gradual withering away of rock music's cultural and demographic base. 

 

I have my own fantasies about the evolution of visual kei as an active counterculture as opposed to a dull consumer culture. Agendered danger lurking in the metro stations near you; they'll know us by the trail of blood and the smell of hairspray. It's all complete fantasy however that I entertain with like three people max. In reality I know we're over and done with as a seismic cultural force. This however doesn't mean that everything is lost. While I don't think MH contributed to the fad beginning or ending, I certainly think MH has contributed massively to the staying power of visual kei on the internet in an age where everything else is disappearing. That Japanese indie analogy is an apt to make, because there's no reason why we shouldn't be in that same position had there not been these stalwarts of vk culture like MH have withstood the storms of the passing time. This was achieved by the unending dedication and efforts of the core-group that keep coming here year after year after year. If there were double the people with as much heart, perseverance and ability, who knows where we would be. Could the boom period had been extended by the valiant and most importantly of all, smart and applicable endeavors of a few dozen dedicated enthusiasts? I don't know. Bless this website either way and all you people who keep coming and contributing.

 

I won't dare to wager ( but i'll haughtily speculate ) why the laptop took over rock 'n roll, but stuff like the global demographic shifts were just too much for it overcome. The popular sphere has drastically diversified both nationally and racially. The stuffy dadrock crowd is losing their death grip on the entertainment zeigeist and big festival lineups are a testament to this. The rock bands pulling the big crowds are really fucking old, and the audience is only a notch younger. Sure the vk bands can draw a garage-full of people and enjoy the company of a few snappy young women — that's it though, no one else cares. The faucet has dwindled down to a point where it is increasingly harder for bands to sustain themselves. It just happens to be a form of music that doesn't speak to the majority of people anymore, not to the young person in school or the higher cultural crowd either for that matter. Electronic music is thriving both commercially and artistically, even hip hop is still doing a fabulous job of innovating itself; all the while one of our biggest newcomers ripped off a decade old deathcore album just last year. Even selling CD's in this day and age is dated, and labels are dying to adjust before the inevitable fall. The electronic underground, even hip hop has managed to adjust and evolve to a degree in the way music is released and spread ( a lot of the big names aren't even releasing full LP's anymore. Just songs, for free on youtube and whatever ). 

 

I'd honestly like to know what kind of social factors contributed to the rise of scene culture. Remember those bands like BrokeNCYDE, BOTDF and etc.? Where were we at the time, as a culture, that stuff like that was tapping into our consciousness. Nothing happens in a vacuum and people don't just decide what to think, feel or do out of the blue. There are reasons for everything in the social and economic fabric of societies and It's an interesting question fo' sure.

 

 I know my way enough that if I want to make an impression, I wouldn't go telling a cool stranger by four euro latte's that my taste in music is essentially the Japanese Poison and Coal Chamber. I'd embarrass myself either way if I left it at that or started nervously flinging my hands and explaining how deep down this culture is really gr8 and transgressive art. My heart stays true to bijuaru kei either way. I'm going down with the ship and I'll keep on making-a-fool of myself on a daily basis. So that's why this is my favorite thread, because I have a hard time of letting go of the glory days of my youth and its music, endlessly try to rationalise it by intellectual gymnastics. While my death slowly approaches and even the last patches of grey hair are falling out, in my mind I'm still young and full of cum, ready for adventure. 

[Peace Heavy mk II 7200]

Make vkei a meme to prolong it's lifespan. Then fuckh8 will sell it on sweat-shop made t-shirts to eternal preserve it like an unopened Twinkie 

 

Bokutachi wa Ichiban

[helcchi 942]

@Disposable, all my hats off to you

 

 

@Pho, i love your take and totally agree with what you're saying - I wasn't trying to provide an argument about traditional instruments vs electronic instruments. That was never my intention.

I also don't think that electronic music is killing vk, rather, I was trying to explain [poorly] what makes music popular.

 

But having said that, the fact that music software is now so diverse in the way you can use sound/rhythm packs and other autopilot options, theoretically it can require minimal talent to make a decent sounding song. After all, the main focus of developing technology as such is to open up the option of music creation to a larger audience and not just to a select few.

 

I think that it's easier to excel at hip hop/rnb/electronic music because of the no-frills-attached nature to these genres. Convenient to practice, no burdensome "traditional" instrument to carry around and take care of. It is also a sign of the times why music manufacturers are dying as well; people can seldom afford the time, cost and discipline it takes to learn a traditional instrument.

 

This is probably the reason so many young rock musicians noticeably lack the talent to play their own instruments and they either squander at the bottom rungs of the scene while very few actually improve enough to be acknowledged. I think in these cases it's the rockstar lifestyle that attracts them.

 

It perhaps aids electronic music's short history that you don't need to pass 8 grades of musicianship to become competent, but this could either be beneficial or detrimental to music as an art form. We don't know for sure how music is going to evolve - the curriculums at music schools have yet to take a few years to catch up to and acknowledge a lot of the current trends in music.

 

But at the same time, I don't think any musician pursuing any genre should ditch music theory - it's such an important skill to have even if it's not required in the type of music that you're making. How many times have you encountered a kid who plays guitar that can't read sheet music?

 

Yet sadly, more often than not, it isn't the music that sells - musical excellence is constantly overlooked in favour of appearance and charisma by many music consumers, no matter what genre and that is the unfortunate truth.

Edited December 30, 2016 by helcchi

[BrenGun 2259]

1 hour ago, Pho said:

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.

 

You are right, but if you look up at the charts now you rarely find good rock or metal music. DJ's are mainstream now. We simply have to face that even if it feels so damn wrong.

However who knows that there will be a twist again in the near future, that DJ's change their shit in more quality? that they really work with bands to deliver a real piece of music than only flawless remixes of pop/rock/metal songs. Maybe someday they gonna DJ together on stage while a great band is also playing on the stage.

 

And visual kei didn't lost their popularity in Japan. So? Should we worry? Now days we can order stuff way more easy from Japan. We have proxies, we have shops like RAREZHUT. I remember panda saying, oh yes we actually sell really good around the world even in the USA.

 

However, I don't think visual kei is dead because people search the word lesser on google. As said before if visual kei really was that dead this forum wouldn't be around anymore.

As so long this forum is alive like this, visual kei isn't death at all.   #resurrect visual kei now?  eh... I don't see a gravestone yet.

 

beside the DJ reason. I also already did mention that I think that visual kei got lesser popular BECAUSE of that not the right bands came to Europe or America. Bands came over who we didn't want to see. Or bands played not on the right events. It's not strange that some promoters lost their money.  Maybe at the boom time, people just went because it was a Japanese band but after a while you aim more to see the band you love. Also there was a time that almost every damn month a band came to Europe. How the hell should you have the money/time to visit those concerts each time?  And with getting lesser interesting bands the media also don't get noticed that people do love some obscure music from Japan.

 

And with the DJ mainstream area now it's difficult to break a kind of barrier to make young people attend that there is REAL good music around the world.

The whole rock/metal world has a hard time because of that simple laptop music.

 

So after all

#resurrect visual kei ?

 

No, as so long we are still alive, it doesn't need a resurrect, because it's not death.

 

EDIT: we only have a harder time now to GAIN new SOULS.

Edited December 30, 2016 by BrenGun

[hiroki 5521]

2 hours ago, Disposable said:

I have my own fantasies about the evolution of visual kei as an active counterculture as opposed to a dull consumer culture. Agendered danger lurking in the metro stations near you; they'll know us by the trail of blood and the smell of hairspray. It's all complete fantasy however that I entertain with like three people max. In reality I know we're over and done with as a seismic cultural force.

 

But what if a spent counterculture is actually more subversive than an active one?

 

For me, there are two very different ways of thinking about countercultures and the transgressive work they are performing. The first is where you try to build rapport, get more people interested in the subculture, then flag it up as some kind of collective protest. In practice, this has always been the mode by which identity politics operated in the public domain--through aggregation, coalition-building, and ramping up the numbers. There are good reasons for this, but there are problems with it, especially for its cultural parallel. Some of us here might be familiar with a book published some decades ago by Dick Hebdige on British youth subcultures (punks, mods, etc.), in which he observed that every subculture that has historically evolved in ostensible protest against popular/mainstream culture cannot elude the inevitable fate of commodification by social and cultural institutions. This spells the death of that subculture either because the ‘transgressive’ force has by that point been entirely neutralized through its absorption into mass culture, or because the “angry young men” who are in them just to make a deafening aesthetic/political statement about themselves have migrated to another fledging subculture en masse before that could happen. I have a hunch that the "scene culture" today that Disposable alluded to might be linked to precisely this. Just look at how cultural scenes have become increasingly dispersed, and interest groups increasingly fragmented (and alienated from one other) since the last decades of the 20th century.

 

The other way of thinking about transgression, I think, is to simply not concern oneself with it. This might sound somewhat counterintuitive but I’ve always been struck by how it’s actually incredibly difficult in this day and age to be totally useless. Think of NEETs who are sitting around at home relishing how they aren't contributing to society; but by being held up in the mass media as exemplary negative "case studies" that parents ought to dutifully warn their children about, they are nevertheless serving an important social function. All of this is a very laborious way of saying that even as we admit to ourselves that it's no longer possible to be radically transgressive in the way most of us had hoped to be at some point in our lives, at least the Wildean decadent who doesn’t give a damn whether the subculture he’s participating in is still relevant or subversive wouldn’t rehearse the problematic we encountered in the first case--where, by reacting violently against the mass culture we absolutely detest we’re in some sense being held hostage to it and playing by its terms. Which reminds me of something Slavoj Zizek said: sometimes, doing nothing is the most violent thing to do. He isn’t taken very seriously by most of his colleagues within academic circles, but I think there’s at least a grain of truth in what he said there.

 

In any case...

 

If nothing else, people who stick by visual kei even after it’s no longer the fad are usually those I enjoy talking to the most. I had an uncannily similar experience in classical music: over there, the same handwringing we’re having now in this thread had taken place approximately half a century ago and by this point everyone I know has basically given up trying to ‘make it relevant’. Thankfully, it’s always more fun associating with people who consume a cultural product because they genuinely enjoy it, and not because they want to appropriate it (consciously or not) as a proxy to make a conspicuous statement about themselves.

 

[vanivani 558]

1 hour ago, hiroki said:

If nothing else, people who stick by visual kei even after it’s no longer the fad are usually those I enjoy talking to the most. I had an uncannily similar experience in classical music: over there, the same handwringing we’re having now in this thread had taken place approximately half a century ago and by this point everyone I know has basically given up trying to ‘make it relevant’. Thankfully, it’s always more fun associating with people who consume a cultural product because they genuinely enjoy it, and not because they want to appropriate it (consciously or not) as a proxy to make a conspicuous statement about themselves.

 

 

Yeah, I agree with this. It's always nice to meet fellow fans who have been in the visual kei scene for a long time. All the friends I "converted" to visual kei in high school are no longer into the scene. It was a fad to them. It makes sense for the subculture reason, but also, people change--and with that, their musical interests change and/or visual kei was only a short fad for them in their teens/early twenties--maybe a way to rebel like punks subconsciously. I even have Japanese friends who fell out of visual kei as well. Visual kei loses followers, then gains the next generation of niche followers, only to probably repeat the cycle when the fans hit a certain age.

[Karma’s Hat 3107]

@hiroki Oh, in what I wrote I was just jestingly mentioning my daydream of a new visual kei-man, which has no basis in reality nor any widescale implications lol. In the deepest recesses of my fancy, what I want out of a lifestyle visual kei is to be drinking in public places and being a nuisance with a couple of mates, until we go in a blaze of pink haired glory. Visual kei manifestos, subversive violence and political terror for naught except a slew of demotapes and a forgotten wikipedia article, ready to be enveloped in time and dust. My own constructions are just me fantastically reflecting my own particular temperament to what I want out of it in a world of my imagining, where I admittedly do fetishise the mere aesthetic of counter culture hehe.  Nais post though so have this like

 

The counter culture polemic has no bearing on the relevancy of visual kei nor its lasting power I'd say, although it's a good conversation to have regarding the history of rock music and its character. I do agree on the observations about subcultures and their faux-opposition to the establishment, but that's because I'm a stinking commie and feel the entire monetary system and capitalist superstructure ought to be seceded from in an organised revolt with a clear-cut programme of revolutionary despotism ( which certainly isn't born out of art, but vice-versa ). Personally I think dilly dallying with fat record executives and the bloody media is a sordid reactionary affair that I myself would never take part in. This doesn't concern the topic, I just wanted to throw it out there for clarity and entertainment's sake.

 

What I was concerned with in general was really the lamestream palatability of bijuaru that would in turn translate over to record sales and gigs in my neighborhood. I think the cultural shift of these next 30 years is burying rock music and the conventional music business under a heaping mass of rock and rubble of such mass and proportion that it will not, and could not be excavated from underneath it. How this is relevant is because I think we are feeling the effects of it now. Nothing implodes instantaneously, but rots away slowly, gradually without particular notice from the heavens that people often expect. In the grand scheme our epoch of breakdowns and guitar solos has lasted barely the blink of the cosmic eye, the gust of wind from the turning of the hairy back of time and space to gaze towards this miserable earth; and before anyone knows it we're in flying cars pondering about new aesthetic conjunctions. There's absolutely not a chance in hell that rock music is the kind of an establishment it is now in a few generations. 

[Atreides 454]

7 hours ago, DarkWater said:

 

 

 

EDIT: we only have a harder time now to GAIN new SOULS.

 

New video-game. Visual Souls. Carbon copy of Dark Souls except replace main character and all enemies with pretty effiminate Japanese men with garishly coloured hair and a penchant for leather and neo classical outfits. 

[Nyasagi 259]

I don't think visual kei is dead. People have been saying that rock music is dead for decades... but there are still people, who like it. It just changes, evolves... the negativity of this tread irritates me, because I think that the foreign audience has completely no influence on this scene. We're only responsible for keeping the interest abroad, which these bands are completely not interested in. Their only aim is the Japanese market. For us it's a niche interest. I've been a fan for 11 years and I saw changes, all I think is that people who really love it will never stop loving it. As for the bands, they evolve... maybe some people won't like them, but the trends will change and it's always good to keep an eye on them. Many bands small in Japan were just treated as music gods abroad, so... it all depends on where the fans are from.

[d4rkie 5]

The bands I used to listen to (lynch, Dir En Grey, MUCC, Merry, X, the GazettE) are still alive and kicking in Japan. Google trends might just display the interest over time, and the trends change whether we like it or not >_>

 

gazerock is not dead

[platy 3018]

One of the issues that stand out the most to me is the difference in promotion. 

 

Kpop goods are easily available and for every release there's a huge PR campaign around it,  as if it was the release of the century. They create insane hype, my sister always goes on about ''so and so is having a comeback'',  here I am thinking they haven't released anything for a year or so,  but it's more like they haven't released anything for a few months and it's celebrated as a comeback. 

In VK they release a teaser and announce 20 different CD types. Guess what? Those CDs cost an arm and a leg. 

Whereas in kpop you get a photo book, stickers, this and that plus the CD at a SUPER affordable price! 

 

Of course this is likely because Kpop is POP therefore they make enough money to be able to sell stuff cheaper. 

 

I think VK was appealing back when scene and emo was huge (like other people mentioned) but now scene fashion is dead,  so is the interest in vk. The look scares people and it seems to be getting more extravagant/stupid by the day. I saw a bandman basically cosplaying voldo (Soul calibur V) for a release a while ago. Let me tell you... Very few people will be comfortable enough to approach a band where a member is voldo. 

In the 80/90s glamrock was a thing, men with make up and feminine looks were seen on daily basis on mainstream TV and androgynous get ups were almost accepted. So maybe VK was embraced more then. 

 

But just a few ideas:

- there's a new rise in interest in gender  non-conforming ideas in the new generation. This could *possibly * bring an interest to VK in the future as the new generation is more curious and open to '' weird looking men. '' 

Rather than embracing rock as a rebellious phase that will go away once they reach adulthood,  it will be something they embracing out of taste and a connection to... ?  I'm not sure how to word this. 

 

- the biggest trend in Western mainstream music is dance music right now. Maybe if we had more VK groups experimenting with that, getting creative then we'd get a revival in the scene.

Look at Purple Stone, they're already having some fun with mixing dance music & VK. If they get the boost in popularity they deserve they could  reach out to broader audiences. There's massive potential in 'panic panic'.

 

-I already mentioned the fashion, but look at GazettE,  an cafe, diru  etc all the bands that were huge in the west back in the day. They were popular around the time their looks were more laid back, nothing too crazy. It just makes me think vk is too extravagant/theatrical right now to appeal to western audiences. How many people are gonna look at Arlequin and not laugh at the singers hair and get up?  Whereas you can look at soft emo GazettE from back in '06-' 09 and easily accept the look.

Kyo back then had blonde hair and less make up than ever before, now that bitch is dressing up as a nun.  (I'm all for that,  but other people slowly back away when I show them) 

 

This could be just a bad period for the scene,  we'll look back in years and say ' remember the great lame period of '10-'16?.   We just need to keep hoping for those few bands in vk who will dare to be creative and their risks will pay off. 

Edited January 2, 2017 by Platy

[nekkichi 6042]

18 minutes ago, Platy said:

Kpop

it's for Asians and white girls who listen to top-40 music anyway, except in a fancy exotique language with visibly hetsex men flaunting nice hair.

 

Quote

 

Of course this is likely because Kpop is POP therefore they make enough money to be able to sell stuff cheaper. 

they can release that shit for free lbr and get reimbursed with skincare collabs & live gigs

 

Quote

The look scares people and it seems to be getting more extravagant/stupid by the day. I saw a bandman basically cosplaying voldo (Soul calibur V) for a release a while ago.

slipknot did the very same thing tho

 

Quote

But just a few ideas:

- there's a new rise in interest in gender  non-conforming ideas in the new generation. This could *possibly * bring an interest to VK in the future as the new generation is more curious and open to '' weird looking men. '' 

I'm actually pretty curious regarding what the trans-othersex people who use "it" and "zir" as their pronouns listen to on the reg. (like I really would like someone in the know to chime in on this)

 

and that being said, there will be a spike in western trans-music acts getting signed/promoted/recognized before vk will have its hypothetical 2nd chance if we're using gender expression as a reference point.

Edited January 2, 2017 by nekkichi

[platy 3018]

30 minutes ago, nekkichi said:

 

and that being said, there will be a spike in western trans-music acts getting signed/promoted/recognized before vk will have its hypothetical 2nd chance if we're using gender expression as a reference point.

Don't know if it's worth mentioning but there's an idol group of Japanese  trans men who are gaining some popularity lately. 

 

As for your slipknot comment: aren't they seen as manly and cool regardless of how crazy they look? Whereas VK is usually met with comments of 'um gay'. 

The difference is also that most western people can understand slipknot whereas the language barrier tends to put people off vk. It's a combo of things. 

 

Maybe bandmen should stop wearing ugly wigs (*cough that dude from MORRIGAN)  a try having nice glossy hair.