| This is NOT a Formal Review |
[Wednesday
›March 12th, 2008 at 2:04am‹] |
First of all, for any drama I might have agitated (i.e.: placed drama on top of drama), I apologize. People involved know what I'm talking about. The only thing I'll add now is that I can be a L'Arc fan and still dislike something they do. And I'm not talking about one song here or there. I'm talking about bigger things. Maybe this says something about me as a fan, that I find a large flaw in them, but still love their music. I've yet to find a band that doesn't have aspects to them I wish I could erase from history. Let's look at some examples outside L'Arc since I already had a crack at them. This is not hating. This is criticism:
(OMG MY FAV BAND) VERSAILLES: No. Just kidding. Had you for a second there, didn't I?
Buck-Tick (since they were mentioned for some reason): If I was the age I am now in the late 80's, I would've considered B-T a fly-by-night product of the band boom, giving them a few more years before they'd fizzle out into oblivion. They could barely play their instruments until Taboo and even then their music reeked of synth pop rock. I honestly don't like Buck-Tick before Kurutta Taiyou, which barely holds its place on my playlist. It's dated by its use of contemporary technology, and not in a niche retro way. That's not to say there's no merit to any of B-T's early works. The ballads (read: Hide's numbers) such as "Jupiter" are timeless mostly because they rely on melody over synthesizer and "noise" (read: Imai). I have a weak spot for some of the corny classics ("Just One More Kiss" and "In Heaven"), but that's more of a false sense of nostalgia than anything else.
While B-T certainly produced very original and experimental music from Aku no Hana on, for the most part, it wasn't until Six/Nine (my heart and soul) that they were able to harness that raw creativity into comprehensive music. Imai's noises are more congruent with the music, providing more of a background than noise for the sake of noise. I even suspect the band decided it was time to put a little more humor in their attitude. As a result, Buck-Tick has created some amazing music, but at the same time they've created some complete duds. 13kai wa Gekkou has its moments, but it tends to mesh together in my mind as one mass of a song. It was a stretch for them to move from industrial to melodic goth, a risk they took knowing full well that some fans wouldn't like it. But they did it nonetheless and you have to respect them for that.
Quickly, this may have been because I was in the absolute back, but I found the last performance of Tenshi no Revolver tour unremarkable. B-T is a great live band on DVD (Devil & Freud being the best live I've seen in my life) three quarters of the time, but they were so off that day. Same goes for Day in Question 2003 and 2006. 2003 was probably the worst performance ever recorded by B-T that I've seen. And yeah, I haven't seen all of B-T's lives.
Buck-Tick is more of a niche band for restless sado-masochists. A lot of their music can physically hurt (the end of "Candy"). But being more or less a sado-masochist myself, I love them.
Kiyoharu (including Kuroyume and Sads): I love Kiyoharu, but I must say I'm primarily a Sads fan, meaning I listen to Kuroyume out of obligation and choke down the majority of Kiyoharu's solo work in the attempt to accept him as a soloist. In the case of Sads, there isn't a song I particularly hate or even dislike, possibly due to their comparatively short discography. Certainly there are a bunch of "meh" songs on that list, but for the most part I'll rock out to anything they made. The lyrics are blunt to match the songs laced with sexual tension, and Kiyoharu delivers it with both sleaze and class unlike any other performer.
Kuroyume is a different story. I hate about half their songs, especially most of feminism or any time they tried to touch pop-rock. Starting out, Kuroyume did a lot of the visual kei bark-screaming and hyper-active 16th note drumming, but that stuff is too abrasive if not downright impossible to listen to comfortably for me. But even that is nothing compared to when they (for lack of a better word) sold-out for a few albums, doing horrendous, Glay-level pop-rock. On top of a number of things that went wrong, Kiyoharu's voice simply does not fit in that genre. His vocal range is about an octave and his voice quality is simply thin and nasal unless he's belting. Let's just say Kiyoharu would never make it on American Idol.
The solo stuff is much on the same level, though Kiyoharu's voice has mellowed out and made it more suitable to the works he produces nowadays. That, however, does not make up for the drab, monotonous lulling of 90% of Kiyoharu the soloist. All of a sudden, Kiyoharu took a pretentious pill (he must've gotten it from RK). Now he thinks he's some deep poet. If we're not careful, we may see a collaboration between him and Bump of Chicken. Joking aside, if anyone read my review of Vinneybeach, I mentioned that Kiyoharu has one look: "I am sad." Albums are like one drawn-out song that would put the president of the Insomniacs Society (totally made that up) to sleep. Lately, we've been graced with a few exceptions ("Tattoo"), but those are buffered with a slew of mellow sleeping pills.
However, I must note that Kiyoharu's live show that I saw was outstanding. Unlike many Japanese bands that basically play what's on the CD, Kiyoharu changed up his songs in tempo, melody, and/or instrumental accompaniment for many of the songs. "Haunted Boogie" was so different, I didn't recognize it until he motioned for the audience to sing the song title.
For me, Kiyoharu unfortunately only fits comfortably in one genre, and that's punk-core stripper music. I call myself a "Kiyoharu fan" rather than simply a "Sads fan" because, honestly, I find him an interesting man and artist regardless of the slop he produces. Plus he's naked a lot. WHAT? I'm only human.
Luna Sea: My love for Luna Sea is only music-deep. Meaning, I don't like watching them live, I don't care for their personalities, and have tasted the fruit of their solo ventures. It was bitter, my friends. Bitter. In terms of music technicality, Luna Sea is the most talented of the groups listed here, but that is often mistaken for pretension, even by me. Still, most everything before Mother tried to mask this pretension with a VK sound straight out of hell. And I don't mean that in a good way. RK's voice never managed to reach that level of darkness that would match the music, leaving the doom and gloom in early works hesitant if not half-assed. When RK tried to be a bad, vampy dude, his voice lost most of its violin-like tone. Luckily by Mother, he was able to harness the smooth, even tone, allowing the music to ascend into the more ethereal than hell-bound.
But after Mother, the band's attitude transformed into this VK martyr state. It was as if they were saying, "We're turning our VK fans away for the sake of letting the genre evolve!" while their real intention was to make more sales by being more mainstream. While I love Style and Lunacy (I could take or leave Shine), I can't help but sense the underlying holier-than-thou disposition, especially with the latter. Everything is almost too carefully placed. From Sugizo's precision guitar playing (as in he's so IN tune and ON the beat) to the perfect mixing (think Goldilocks: it's juuuust right), Luna Sea tends to be all too aware of how awesome their skills are, making them unapproachable. This is why I don't like watching their lives. Because there are so few flaws in the recordings, the occasional live differences (oh no the drums started out on that song but it was supposed to be the acoustic guitar oh no it's the end of the world!), I feel uncomfortable and confused. It's like seeing a breathtakingly beautiful person picking their nose.
----
These plus L'Arc are my four favorite bands/artist. I've been in the online J-rock fandom for nearly seven years. Naturally, I've heard my share of anything from badmouthing to constructive criticism. I admit that I was at the beginning I acted like blind fangirl for L'Arc. If there was a L'Arc song I disliked, I would stay quiet about it for fear of disrupting my online reputation. I'm not saying that now I don't care about what people think about me, because I do and anyone who says they don't is in denial. I am saying that I have more confidence to voice aspects I find negative. I can take the harsh words, screams of inaccuracy on my opinion, and people who insist their word is the be all end all because of whatever reason they can throw out (length in the fandom, popularity in the fandom, number of CDs they have, etc.). Like I've said, I've been in the fandom almost seven years. On top of that I have a rather extensive J-rock CD library, have seen all these bands except Luna Sea live, live in Japan, I'm a classically trained violinist, I wrote for Purple Sky and am now working for JRock Revolution.
You know what that means about the status of my opinion?
Absolutely shit.
I could be hyde's best friend, Sugizo's mother, and Toll's psychiatrist (does this woman exist?). That would still mean that voiced properly, my opinion has the same merit as Jill from Vermont who just discovered Kuroyume a month ago and downloaded all her music. The only leeway my "credentials" gives me is that I lived certain moments in history, but that only carries so far.
I can like or dislike something just as much as the next person. I shouldn't fear the remarks of my peers, but I do. Still. I wrote this because I want to prove that I can voice my opinion with people who agree or disagree responding without accusations or anger, in an intelligent and mature manner. That's asking for a lot, knowing some people simply cannot do that (we all have our strengths and weaknesses). It's too much to assume there will ever be an Internet without intolerant e-drama. Still, I try (and sometimes fail) to not be one of its perpetrators.
Note: If no one responds to this, I may go apeshit. Come on you, guys! I love reading contrasting opinions. *slaps you with a silk glove from the 17th century* I challenge you, good sirs, to a duel.
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