5 posts tagged “jrock”

  Wanna know something? Well, I'm kind of peeved at Vox (again). I keep having problems, because apparently I'm the first person to ever be audacious enough to want to put images directly into posts. Now you would think that because this is a feature Vox seems to be kind of proud of, they would make it easy to do. They do, they just also happen to make it very easy to screw up. Somehow I end up freezing Firefox or blasting my
fully-written post into the stratosphere of lost posts and emails...
And then I must get on my knees and pray to the Internet Gods for
forgiveness, may they free me from the karmic bonds of all my great web-wide sins.
  That also reminds me. Toshiba-san hasn't been very well recently, which is a cause of
great concern to me. I may have to take him to the doctor-guy for some kind
of check-up, as long as it's "complimentary".
I'm not sure what happened, but for some reason things have
been running kind of slow since the middle of the week...Certain
sites have been kinda wonky and such. I'm not sure what could be
the problem, though, considering that I deleted over 300 files and moved
a bunch of stuff onto backup so it wouldn't be weighing down the system.
The internet also takes a while to start up, although that has been a lot
better lately... And the left-clicker is broken. But that happened a long time
ago, haha....
  I guess it just isn't all that simple anymore.

Anyway... 
I think it's funny, because I had never listened to LM.C before last night.
I didn't even know they existed. But then I was watching... I can't even
remember. It was another long youtube sprint. I was watching something
and one of the "You Might Enjoy..." videos on the selection was...I can't
remember the title, either, but it was an LM.C song with an interesting title.
If my understanding is correct, most of their songs have such interesting titles.
Oh! The song was....no, wait, nevermind. It's no good, I really can't remember.
  They finally seem to be a band that doesn't get mobbed with Visual Kei
labels (?)...They're a good example of kei-less rockers, haha. Their look is
really weird...Very '90s. It almost reminds me of more the American band
look... Not in a bad way, just...in a way. I think they sound pretty interesting,
and they stand out of the crowd. Their PVs are very strange... A couple of songs
in particular jumped out at me, and I think this is really exciting, because this week
is the week where I set out to discover all these hit songs that I can't stop
listening to. I'm just lucky if iTunes happens to have the songs I find. ^^

  Namely, I wanted to talk about something that
isn't music, haha. (But inevitably I will talk about
music here as well, gyah!)
 I finally got to read some manga the other day T__T
(tears of joy), which is great because I never get to read
any manga! (at 8.99$ a VOLUME I seriously cannot afford
that kind of hobby, and unfortunately I don't have any friends
with extensive manga libraries.)
I found the first 2 copies of Yazawa Ai's masterpiece, NANA at the
library of all places. I took them both out...and read them all in the
same day (I try and force myself to use self-control and moderation
when reading manga. Unfortunately it takes me a little over an hour
per volume, so they don't last me very long. I haven't gotten to the
point yet where I can read a chapter and then set the thing down.)
  They were so good T__T! I then did something very bad and went
to the bookstore, grabbed volume 3, cranked up my iPod and found
a seat in the window....And read the whole thing. Unfortunately
for me, they only let you do that until about Volume 5, and then
everything after that is shrink-wrapped....At that point they'd kinda notice
if you were reading them in the store, hah...hah.
  Why is the whole world so stupid that nobody has invented a MANGA LIBRARY
yet? The manga section at the bookstore is populated with delinquents such as myself
who can't afford these massive 34 volume sets at 8.99$ a piece! Ridiculous.
At least it means I still have a life, though. I mean, if there was a
whole library full of manga....that could mean me spending 8 or 10 hours a DAY
in some library chair reading whole series at a time.
  (and then forget those lame ideas such as moderation and self-control).
 As far as my manga ambitions go, I'm really really interested in reading Re:Play. It's a series
by an American author, but her art rocks...and the storyline is about....a rock band. I read
the first chapter of Volume 1 in Anime Insider, or whatever magazine it was in...can't remember.
  
  (here we go-- music, I just can't resist)....
  I've also resurrected my suffering iPod, which has been a debauched
and miserable slew of bad music since I started working. (Due to my
spiritual connection with Jrock, it's not allowed on work-premises...and because
of my fetishistic approach to Jrock, you can understand the trauma I may have
experienced).
  I purchased An Cafe's Goku-tama Rock Cafe CD, and Ayabie's Rikkaboshi +A.
Pretty decent. I didn't even know who Ayabie was until recently. I mean, obviously
I liked them enough to buy the CD, but it takes a few listen-tos before you
start to get to know a band.
By the way, here's a great tip for discovering new music: publications like Gothic and Lolita Bible. They have pictures of harajuku and Lolita kids in Japan, and one of the questions they ask is "Favorite band". This is how I learned about Cascade and Ayabie. I think there are a few websites that feature different Fruits-esque shoots and details...If I find them, I'll put them up for your viewing pleasure and convenience!

 
 
    

Pause here again to wrap up the brief Best: Rock Series for the themed post selections. I just wanted to put a little disclaimer of sorts in here so that we're all perfectly clear on where things stand.
  The Best RS began just on a whim, but I suddenly started getting really serious during my second post (see Best: Rock Series #2). I realized that there were so many bands that I wanted to feature to do the "Best" label justice. For example, I barely skimmed over names like Luna: Sea, even though I feel strongly about them and what they have done for the Japanese music scene. For all of the hardcore fans out there-- sumimasen! Don't call me a hypocrite after the impassioned post I just put up [on choosing which names to feature]. The Best RS is a selection I will return to again and again, because I feel that even though all of the bands I feature are, in my mind, the best, there are still some that stand out as the most important/influential...They will appear! I decided to collapse the series into 3 featured artists and a subject-post because it's really just a sampler. I really like to think of Secret Garden as a Best series all around-- all I do is compile the bands that have impacted me strongly, and they put the best in it. Secret Garden is nothing more than a vessel for their greatness. Keep reading Secret Garden!

  Although I swore I wouldn't mention L'arc~En~Ciel in these posts, it really can't be avoided. I covered Abingdon Boys School, one of the awesome up-and-coming bands; and I went over the great portfolio of B'z, THE most historical band; and now I'll cover something that falls somewhere inbetween. Let's hear it for one of the most internationally renowned and loved, one of the most unique and consistent, bands out of Japan: L'Arc~En~Ciel.

  Yes, you fan-girls just go crazy and get it out of your systems.
 
  A short synopsis and introduction:
 L'Arc~En~Ciel is a 4-man group that sprang up in 1991 out of Osaka, Japan. The stats are thus: they have sold roughly 13 million albums, 16 million singles, and millions of other releases such as videos etc. The band was founded by later band-leader and bassists TETSU, who quickly recruited vocalist hyde along with a drummer and guitarist, both of whom left the band by '92. In '93, "Laruku"* recruited Sakurazawa Yasunori to be their drummer. In '93 the band released their debut album, Dune. They were enjoying mild notoriety in Osaka at this point, and the album hit #1 on ORICON charts, but they didn't start selling millions until the album Heavenly in '96.

Everything seemed to be going smashingly for the young band until '97, when they hit the lowest of the low. Drummer Sakura[zawa] was arrested for illegal drug possession, and when the news went public, all of the band's records were completely cleared from the shelves, not leaving a trace....At this time, the band was also working on a song Fourth Avenue Cafe to appear as the theme for the anime series Rurouni Kenshin. However, this song was immediately cancelled, and replaced by the previous theme, Heart of the Sword. 4th Ave wasn't released until 2006.

For several months following Sakura's arrest, Laruku continued to appear in magazines etc as a trio, and under the name "The Zombies". They functioned as a "cover band", playing their own songs.
  They returned from hiatus later that year with the Reincarnation 97 tour, with new drummer Yukihiro, under their original name and image. Their first concert at Tokyo Dome had an attendance of 56,000, which sold out within 4 minutes of being released for sale. It was a record at that time.

  Considering the American music scene, especially the big bands from the 60's-80's, along with many country, Jazz, etc musicians, this may seem like a bizarre story to Americans. Most of the great musicians of this age have horrific stories of major drug-addiction and alcohol abuse. Did this do anything to hurt their image? Au contraire, if anything it fuelled peoples' love for them. It was dangerous and scary on a level that appealed strongly. Therefore it may seem strange that the Japanese would basically shut-down a band, trash all CDs, refuse to use their song on an anime, and cause them to be a cover band for their own songs under a different name. Let me shed some light on this.

    Let's say you have been caught in possession of drugs. Once-- your mistake, you swear you'll never do it again and you mean it; you haven't touched pot since. Let's say you want to travel to Japan-- you can't. If you have any kind of record, you cannot enter the country. If you are caught with drugs in Japan, you will be told to leave the country. Leaving the realm of hypothosis, enter reality-- several decades ago during the huge soccer boom in Japan. There was a huge international match being held in Japan, and the tickets had sold out like hot-cakes. Everyone was looking forward to it, and the news people were going crazy. Shortly before the day of the match, one of the Visiting team's members got in trouble for drug use....And what did the Japanese government do? They refused to let the soccer player enter the country. The team was outraged, and said that if he couldn't play, the match was off. Rather than sacrifice their moral values, the Japanese government cancelled the match and the whole thing was off.
  One news-announcer said that he was very disappointed not to have been able to see the match....But that he strongly agreed with what the gov' had done, saying that it was more important to hold to their beliefs and moral values than to let it slide for the sake of some entertainment.

  So now it actually would seem that we can tip our hats to Laruku for having the elsaticity to bounce back after Sakura's unfortunate arrest. When I first encountered this information about the band, I thought it was a rather striking story about Japan's strong morals. Paired with the story about the soccer match, it's quite a window into the culture. Interesting, I think. #

  Now that we know Laruku's nitty-gritty, let's talk a little more about this wonderful band itself, and why people are going crazy about them world-wide!
  First of all, think about it this way: straight-up, awesome, rock-your-socks-off good punk-pop-rock just the way you want it. Laruku has its own sound-- this may sound ridiculous, after all most bands do, right? Wrong. recently I have been listening to a lot of new, indie, and oshare-kei (the opposite of Visual Kei) groups. I can't really remember their names...there were so many! I listened to so many! And they mostly looked and sounded the same. In the same way that there are several classifications of vocal quality in American rock music, there is the same thing in Japanese rock music. There is Class 1 (most common): slightly nasal, high, teeny-bopperish voice; Class 2 (very common in Visual type bands and heavier rock): very deep, smooth voice-- heavy Klaha/Gackt influences; Class 3 (less common but still prevelant enough to make this list): Typical Visual Kei vocals-- think BLOOD and Girugamesh....
I'm not really sure what this pocket of music was that I found....but it was sort of like a labyrinth of Jpop (mostly Oshare-kei)....where everyone looked and sounded Class 1!!!!! I was amazed/confused/distressed. I spent hours listening through, hoping to find something totally charming and unique. So anyway, there's my rant on that topic.
  Enter L'arc~En~Ciel. Extremely unique and characteristic. hyde has this creamy, deep, very, uh, hyde-ish voice that makes all of their music immediately "them". It's happy news! No one has been able to cop their style yet, which is crazy...But I guess it helps having a naturally unique sounding voice very unlike everyone else.
  Their music varies a lot in style... their album AWAKE, for example, has a huge range of styles flipping from mellow and relaxing to ambient jazzy piano stuff to heavy with some screamo. I love to listen to the last track, Twinkle Twinkle over and over again, haha! it makes me feel like I'm in a Japanese movie! Another terrific track is Lost Heaven. Follow the links and check them out.
  I mentioned hyde's name in my ABS feature on the topic of English lyrics. There was a tip of the hat to his English ability, which I will mention again here. Laruku seems to use more English lyrics than most other Jrock bands-- some songs are entirely in English, and may have strong English decoration and phrases. All pulled off with panache-- go hyde!

  To finish off with some perspective on their more recent work, in 2001 the band went on hiatus so that the members could pursue solo careers. Hyde released two solo albums and worked on several film productions (Moon Child and Kagen no Tsuki). They regrouped in 2004 with their North American debut at OTAKON in Baltimore, Maryland with an attendance of 12,000.

  Another L'arc~En~Ciel act is their alter-ego, Punk-en-ciel, wherein the members switch roles and play more punkish style music. The role-reversal is this: Hyde (L-vocals)--> guitar, Ken (L-guitar) ---> drums, Yukihiro (L-drums)---> bass, and Tetsu (L-bass)-->vocals. (I truly and fully <3 Punk-en-ciel!)  

  To close off this feature, I will mention one of my favorite movies: Moon Child. The movie was written by Jrock idol Gackt and hyde-- who happen to be close friends--, and both vocalists appeared as the two main roles. They played a Vampire (hyde) and his close friend/companion (Gackt) in a grunge-futuristic world....Supporting role was played by a notable Taiwanese/American musician Wang Lee-hom.

As always, check out their cool website at www.larc-en-ciel.com....and please support this band by buying their albums! Keep reading Secret Garden! ^__^  
     
*--- The band's name means "Rainbow" in French. It is pronounced "Raruku en shieru" in Japanese, and contracted affectionately to "raruku" by fans.

Before I move on to the third featured artist in Best Rock series, I want to discuss a certain topic. That topic is....can anyone guess? JROCK! Wooohoo! Bin bin bin! Surely someone guessed that. Getting serious now, actually what I want to discuss is why I choose to feature the artists that I do.

At an anime con I went to this fall, I attended an "intro to Jrock" panel...Not really because I wanted a Jrock education, but because I wanted to hear some Jrock!!! Of course I would have been entirely open to learning about some new great bands. However, I ended up being disappointed. The panelist showed some PVs and said a little blurb about each band. Basically she just picked the bands that she likes. Which is entirely understandable, I mean I write about the bands that I like, and I want to write about them because I like them. But if you're going to do a panel called "INTRODUCTION to JROCK", introduce us to it! Give us some context, some culture, a little background. Be objective.

  For example, she showed a PV for L'arc~En~Ciel, and her blurb for the video was something like "I don't know what they were on when they made this, but oh ho ho I want some." Unfortunately I can't remember which Laruku vid it was, but it was actually a really pretty new PV showing them in a sterile white room with women dressed in white making weird shapes on the ground. For a Jrock PV, it was extremely artful, tasteful, and tame.
  To me, anyway. Everyone else there kind of laughed along with her and went "woah...that was insane." afterwards. And why? Because there was no context, no culture, no background. I'm jaded because I spend about 42% of my time watching Jrock PVs and lives. I've seen some whack and totally wonky stuff (if you want to be "on" something, try CASCADE, for example), so when I saw the Laruku video, I found it really aesthetically appealing in a Western way. Like, yeah, westerners can approach this.

  What I'm getting at is the reason I choose to feature the bands that I do, is I want to present a certain amount of that: context, culture, and background. I think that without understanding the cultural qualities of the Japanese music scene, the cultural acceptance or denial of scenes like Visual Kei and Gothic Lolita... the rest of it is lost. It's just more music in a foreign language.

  When the panelist at the con didn't even brush over names like B'z (Buck-Tick got a video; Gackt got a brief mention and a video but only after we shouted at her like eight times), I was miffed. The bands she chose were names like Penicillin, Tommy February, and a bunch of other less popular faces that I can't remember. In my personal opinion, these were not the faces of Jrock as we know it. Hey, Penicillin is just fine. I just don't think they're who should be featured in an INTRO to JROCK. These were the bands that struck me as the most western. (Again we graze over the word "approachable"). And obviously bands that she liked. Again, I can't contest that-- but if you're going to introduce people to Jrock...then show them the whole world, you know? Give them B'z, whether it's your favorite band or not. Give them Arashi and show them Johnny's Entertainment boys--- why? I don't even like Arashi, but it's a facet of Japanese popular music. Even if you would never choose it, address it! There are so many bands that even if they aren't that popular or striking, still represent the truly Japanese touch in contemporary rock music.

  For this reason, I choose to leave certain names out of Secret Garden. I am a raging fan of Gackt and L'Arc En Ciel, but I will probably not write about them as often if at all, as well as other names like Miyavi, X-Japan or Dir En Grey (I don't care for them^_^) because I feel that they are names that are well-known in the west, and therefore, it would serve no purpose to address them like nobody knows! There are certain names that are very popular in the west, such as Malice Mizer, and I may mention and even write fully about them to make a point....But it's important to understand that what we're doing here isn't just checking out some new bands-- there is a huge wealth of Japanese culture in the music and the music industry, and I certainly have learned a lot about it. I hope that in my choice of artists and topics to feature on SG help develop a deeper knowledge of Japanese pop culture, accessable not only to avid fans but outsiders as well.

That brings us back to that appropriate word: Approachability. And another word, with which it pairs quite nicely: Western. We can conjugate these two words, scramble them and alter, and then stick them together in various ways and insert them into blurbs, sentences, descriptions...and then stick them onto essays about Japanese culture or bands or whatever...and get an interesting effect.
For example, I thought the featured Laruku video was "aesthetically appealing in a western way". I don't need to highlight the words for you, do I?! That basically translates into: approachable for Westerners. That's us. Frankly, I've seen weirder music videos by Western bands (try Panic! at the Disco). I thought most of the bands in the panel were approachably western. Perhaps a little jazzed up (they really can't help that), but nothing far out. When I watch Gackt's Lu:Na live performance, however, I really feel like that could make or break someone when trying to decide whether to like him or not. It's not approachable. It's alien.

I try and choose the artists to feature based on the quality of their music, style, and personality. I couldn't worry less about whether or not you find it appealing or approachable. I'm sure for a lot of people it won't be. For example, I think Buck-Tick can be quite unapproachable. I think Antic Cafe is unapproachable. I think there's a different level of unapproachability to these bands than to, say, X-Japan or Miyavi. They are unapproachable in a way that is appealing to westerners. I'm not quite sure what happens psychologically to make this happen. I think there is a quality to their image and music that is very western and western inspired...I think that Miyavi is very Japanese, but I also think he's approachable in a Western way because of his utter lack of reserve. When you see Gackt in any given moment, he is holding something back. Atsushi Sakurai (Buck-Tick) is holding back. It creates a sense of distance that is not desirable for American fans. Miyavi gives everything. This is desirable: i.e. it is approachable.

This whole thing on approachability may seem off-topic from where we began, but it is utterly relevent. It may be helpful to go back and read the previous paragraphs now, to better understand the whole intro to Jrock thing. When studying these bands and the whole Jrock thing, it's important to understand the Japanese music scene and appreciation, and the aesthetic qualities and how vastly they differ from the Western music scene. Now, I'm not at all trying to say that Western approachability is bad-- it's not at all! It's perfectly fine. It's just that we're trying to walk the edge, you know? We're trying to find the truly Japanese touch at the core of this sublime music. We're trying to find what's different and unique, not what's the same. Find that fissure into another world, or something like that. :-) Smile.

So, with all that in mind, we'll move on and wrap up the Best Rock section for now with a piece on L'Arc~En~Ciel and what you probably all know about them, and probably didn't know was such an important piece on an important issue in Japan. :-) Ooh, thematic material! Getting saucy there, Pause!  
  

Keep reading SG!

GacktPause      

I'm going to do a series of posts about what I think of as some of the greatest Jrock bands out there. I've listened to a lot of Jrock and Jpop, mostly through the radio, so I've heard a lot of what's out there. I've been over my head with things lately, so I can't say these will come in a prompt fashion, but if you're reading, then keep looking for them, because I'll find time to get one on here when I can.

 Starting right off in alphabetical order, I want to give the place of honor to a new band that I think deserves a lot of press: abingdon boys school (typeset in lower case).

  abingdon boys school [アビングドン　ボイズ　スクール」was founded only a few years back, in 2005, signed by Japan's Epic Records Japan (which also signed T. M. as a solist). Fronted by popular soloist, T. M. Revolution on vocals, the band was pretty successful, and I think they got pretty high on the ORICON* charts, within the top 10 definitely, but I think it was somewhere between 5-2. Their first single, Innocent Sorrow was released in 2006, and sold a whopping 75,533 copies, with an ORICON weekly peak at #5. Not bad for a debut. The single was also used as the OP theme for the popular anime name D Gray Man. Also not bad for a debut. Watch the official music video here.

  ABS, as they are commonly abbreviated, originally caught my eye because of their unique and interesting style, both in image and music. They took their name from the British all-male school, Abingdon School, where apparently the renowned British group Radiohead was formed. In synch with their name, ABS founded their image on the same school-grounds. Their typical uniform in PVs and concerts are private-school uniforms, usually black pin-stripe suits with the ABS emblem on the chest, or a blazer and kilt. While he can be found solo in tight white suits like you'd see in Mobile Suit Gundam or something similar, with gelled white hair etc, fronting ABS he sports a pair of large, thick-rimmed eye-glasses that make him look about ten years younger and ten times dorkier. The look works, and they stay consistent with their image.
 
  I have to say, even as an elitist Jrock-listener and fan, after a while many Japanese bands start to sound the same. Which is to be expected, I suppose, considering how thickly populated the rock scene is, and how the genres still seem pretty narrow, as far as it goes. American rock music has been booming for quite a few decades now, but you have to remember that Japanese rock didn't have its fireworks until the mid 80s, with names like Ozaki Yutaka, Buck-Tick, and X Japan. As far as the world is concerned, the Jrock scene is still quite young.
  With this in mind, I find the ABS sound immediately striking, and they stand out to me as one of the most unique bands in the genre. With a steady hard-rock sound, they mix it up (quite literally) with strong keyboarding and, did you guess?, a pair of turn-tables. It works, they've written some incredible music, and the sound is really different and unique. Then layer over that with TM's voice-- it's whiny and reedy, but really powerful. His vibrato? Are you kidding me? That guy can wail!
 
  If you've listened to a good share of Jrock, then you're probably familiar with the use of English lyrics. Gackt wrote an extremely beautiful and opinionated piece (but that just about sums him up anyway) about the use of English lyrics in Japanese music, which will always stand out quite clearly in my mind, for as long as I study the Japanese language. Gackt..... T__T Moving on. While it's in demand (I guess?), I still find that few bands can actually pull it off. Mostly people don't notice because they're a few strange and random English words thrown into a Japanese verse, and it just doesn't compute to us. One of the big faces in the use of English lyrics would be big-name L'Arc~En~Ciel (which I've mentioned briefly, but won't elaborate on since most Jrock fans know them). Laruku frontman Hyde is fairly confident in English, and sings it well, in large and small quantities, varying on song and style. His all-English piece, Cape of Storms, is quite as enjoyable to listen to as any all-Japanese piece.
  Another prominent facade in English lyrics would be ABS. Although not nearly as proficient as Hyde, TM proceeds undaunted in his singing and writing in English. With quite a collection of English pieces, you may even wonder if the barbarian-lyricist deigns to sing in Japanese. Well, he does, and quite amazingly. I think the fact that he writes ALL-English songs sets he and Hyde apart in a little niche. I'm a little torn about the English pieces by ABS. I like some of them, and don't like some of them. That's kinda the end of it.

  Yeah...here we go. Me and Buck-Tick again. ABS made some great cover-numbers for different band-memorium albums. They did a cover of Luna: Sea's Sweet Coma Again for the L:S cover compilation, Luna: Sea Memorial Cover Album. The one that gets my blood flowing, though, is Doresu by Buck-Tick on the compilation, Parade~ Respective Tracks of Buck-Tick.
  A world-renowned Buck-Tick enthusiast, I got totally excited about this. One of my favorite bands doing an extremely good cover of one of my favorite bands. Here are links to both Buck-Tick's and ABS' versions. I listen to BT when I want to be melancholy, and to ABS when I want to get pumped. ^__^
  On the topic of songs and albums, ABS has only one full-length album to date, which was released in 2007, under the title abingdon boys school. The album featured three of their four singles (Innocent Sorrow, Nephilim, and Howling,  excluding Blade Chord.) as well as the Dress cover mentioned above. The album comes heartily reccomended, and if by now I haven't convinced you to order it, then...at least you know about them, I guess.

For more info on abingdon boys school, visit their official website. And look forward to their 2009 single: JAP!

  You've been reading GacktPause's Secret Garden. If you like my posts, please comment and let me know!    
 
   
1- ORICON Charts, a music rating system with a weekly number. To make it on the ORICON charts (especially in the upper numbers) is a huge honor, and you'll find most excellent bands and solists on there, such as Utada Hikaru, Hamasaki Ayumi, Gackt, etc etc. All the popular names you'd like to see on there.  ORICON is "Original Confidence" contracted.