Final Fantasy…..D! (no, but close)

Sheesh….I really think it’s time for me to upgrade to another gig of ram or something. I don’t even know what that means, but it sounds like a good remedy for whatever my computer is going through. I’m kind of getting tired of all this “program NOT RESPONDING” nonsense that keeps popping up whenever I, god forbid, want to multi-task. Yes, it’s true, I’m a hard master to serve– always demanding that Tosh-kun work 7 programs at once without one. single. lag. Whatever it is, I should really look into fixing my poor computer’s problems, because I hate having to back stuff up and do massive clean-ups every other day just to ensure Firefox opens successfully… [sigh].

Last time we had a bit of a tete-a-tete about one of the god-father bands in Visual Kei Malice Mizer. You may laugh if I say they’re an “old-school” Visual Kei group, considering they’re only from the ’90s, but considering the rate at which Jrock at large is progressing and developing, we’ve come a very long way in the past ten or so years[this is assuming you still cling to the idea that the 90s were a recent time-period. This IS 2009, for heavenssake. I need to leave my coffin more often and check the calendar.]. Tonight I’d like to give you a glimpse of what some of the more core/generic Visual Kei bands of today are like, and hopefully from their portrait, you can get a better idea of where Visual Kei is going.

D

So tonight we’re talking about D. Short name. Big deal. Actually, (lol) I’d never heard of them until I discovered them TOTALLY by accident during one of my 4 hour youtube sprints. As always, I cannot remember how I came across them– they just appeared, like an oasis in the desert.

My ‘hajimemashite’ (how do you do) from D was their PV for the song Sleeper, off the album The Name of the Rose [released September 28th, The Name of the Rose was D's first full-length album].  One of the reasons I like them so much is because they are pure, unadulterated, stereotypical Visual Kei– they can be the poster-child for this whole topic….the god-children of Malice Mizer! (Maybe, haha).

One thing I notice about Visual Kei bands these days…the band members get around a lot. Like, if you look at their histories, each one has been in about 7 different bands by the time they get to the current band. And many bands form bands out of old band-members, so sometimes it’s like “Mir:ageX@ 2″! I don’t have a problem with this, but it does, certainly, leave a slightly muddy genre. After you listen to a handful of bands, say, on the radio, and you go “huh…that sounded familiar.” And then you realize that it was familiar because the guitar player and vocalist are the same as the ones from the last band. So anyway, the vocalist and guitarist for D (ASAGI and Ruiza, respectively) were both in the 2nd generation VK band, Syndrome. When Syndrome broke up, the aforementioned members rallied together and formed D.

The year…was 2003.

D released singles and several full-length albums under an indie label until 2005, when they went major with the label SMILE (har-har). They debuted with SMILE via the release of the single “BIRTH” in May, 2008. In 2007, they opened their official fan-club, Ultimate Lover (available to Japanese only, sorry).
Along with their steady export of music, D also puts out their own magazine publication, The Mad Tea Party Magazine.  Your guess is as good as mine.

Their image is everything I’ve been talking about in these posts, both music-wise and image-wise, so they’re a perfect example of 3rd generation Visual Kei. The costumes, hair, and makeup are theatrical and tasteful– erring on the gothic side.  The one thing I notice about them, is they like a lot of bondagey-straps, frills, and shorts. Yeah, I don’t really got for the shorts look, but whatever floats your boat. I was once asked how you tell if they are men or women– my answer was, ‘easy, they’re all guys.’ So yes, the vocalist, ASAGI, pictured in the middle there, is a guy. When he opens his mouth, you can tell.

They do, however, look BEAUTIFUL in kimono

The points that immediately grabbed my attention? The vocalist, ASAGI’s voice. He has a really beautiful, liquid, deep voice. Beautiful. Like, you want to listen to him sing. I mean, this should be a no-brainer, but it’s actually not. Sometimes I have to really be in a certain kind of mood to listen to certain bands, and these days a lot of what I hear is “classifiable vocals”. But back to ASAGI, the way the melodies are written, he sings them straight long enough that when he reaches the grace-notes or vibrato, it sends shivers down your [my] spine! They can be hard to catch on the first listen-through, but I particularly like the little ornamentations he does in a piece from Syndrome [see below]….listen closely around the 1 minute point– it’s beautiful. Some kind of gorgeous warble. If you miss it the first time, he does it again around the high notes in the chorus. 

The other point that really grabbed me was, as to be expected, their image. Sometimes you can make excuses for bands’ images– people could argue that Buck-Tick is “just Victorian-looking”– but absolutely nobody can argue that D is “just goth”. D’s look really embodies the androgyny and aesthetic of VK, and in a way that can’t possibly be argued. Come on, admit it, admit it– you’ve never seen anything like them before. They are pure, unadulterated VK hot off Malice Mizer’s family tree. Unlike, say, Buck-Tick, D intertwines historical/gothic with fantasy aspects. Their look from Birth reminds me of something out of Final Fantasy X or something. It’s very cool.

Final Fantasy....D?

Their songs are really long. This observation is drawn from the fact that most songs average at about 3.30 minutes, with a long one at around 5-6 minutes. Most of D’s songs average at about 5.30-5.45 minutes. This saves you the trouble of having to press the Replay button every 3.30 minutes (instead I just end up pressing it every 5.45 minutes :D). They have a steady streak of lovely ballads, but balance it neatly with a few really mind-boggling pieces, and a good amount of heavy stuff.

One thing– Jrock bands tend to be musical chameleons. When you listen to Gackt, his style changes with almost any song– (I have about fifteen playlists on my iPod just of Gackt) Anyone who has tried to introduce me to new music will know well that I like to change bands as infrequently as possible, so when bands have like a million genre-bending things going on, I love it. But D…is very steady. They know their style, and they stick with it. Even their ‘happy’ songs stick close to their signature style. So, unlike with other artists where you have to test each album to make sure their latest style is something you’ll be into– with D, you know what you’re getting, and you know it’s going to be good.

They have to be….something like… a “pretty band”, haha, if that makes sense. They’re pretty. Their image is pretty. Their music is pretty. Asagi doesn’t scream or growl. Sometimes I think people say ‘oh, Visual Kei. I don’t like that because it’s scary.’ Visual Kei is not all screamo and heavy-metal shredding. D is a good example of the more balladic side of Visual Kei as a genre. #

Their discography includes 13 singles, and the full length albums: The Name of the Rose, Tafel Anatomie, Neo Culture~ Beyond the World, Paradox, New Blood; several of which have been remastered/remixed/reformatted/re-everything you could imagine! Their live tours are available on two DVDs~ LAST INDIES TOUR 2008~ Follow Me ～05.05FINAL Akasaka BLITZ and Tafel Anatomie Tour 2006

Check them out at their website (Japanese only). (By the way, can someone please listen to the Intro Page BGM and let me know if it’s the song, if it’s my internet, or if I really need a new pair of headphones?)

As usual, support this band by buying their albums– I know just as well as the rest of you how damn difficult it is, but just do your best…