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[miko2]

Today's Song: C by Dir En Grey

Dir En Grey is a Japanese hard rock/heavy metal band that began life as a "Visual Kei" rock band. They are one of the few Japanese rock bands to get distribution in the West, and to successfully tour Europe and America. You can find them on iTunes, which is unusual for a Japanese rock band. ^_^ I downloaded the song C from their album Withering to Death mostly because I was interested in the band and it sounded cool. I've been listening to the song for about 5 or 6 months now, so I guess I like it. ^_^ I don't think it was ever a hit for them though. Other songs of theirs that I downloaded didn't grab my attention, and I'm undecided about whether I'd enjoy owning a full cd of their music or not.

Anyway here's a couple of their videos:

Dir En Grey - Yokan
Dir En Grey - Kodu
Dir En Grey - Jealous
Dir En Grey - Garden

These days, Dir En Grey is pretty much a typical modern hard rock group, with elements of nu metal, grunge, and bits of a lot of different styles thrown in. But when they started out they were part of a particularly Japanese music style known as Visual Kei -- and when I say 'musical style' I really mean more than that. Visual Kei was also a fashion style and a lifestyle in the same way that Goth is more than just a music style. It borrowed from glam, goth, cyberpunk, often involved elaborate orchestration, and spanned genres from pop to electronica to metal. One of the unifying elements was an elaborate, flamboyant fashion sense involving (to quote the Wikipedia article) "striking make-up, unusual hair styles, and elaborate costumes, often, but not always, coupled with androgynous aesthetics".

Noted Visual Kei bands (that were Visual Kei at some point in their career) include X Japan (essentially the founders of the movement), Dir En Grey, Luna Sea, Malice Mizer, Kuroyume, and Penicillin. Visual Kei is associated with Harajuku, the name for an area Tokyo around Harajuku Station in Shibuya where a sort of cosplay street culture is prevalent, with people dressing up in elaborate costumes to mimic their favorite bands or favorite clothing styles and movements. One of these movement is the "Gothic Lolita" movement, which involves elaborate childlike dresses inspired by Rococo, Victorian and Edwardian fashion sense. The look is a bit like a Victorian era porcelain doll. There are various sub genres such as "Sweet Lolita" and "Elegant Gothic Lolita" (and "Elegant Gothic Aristocrat", wihich is a male version of EGL).

All of this is of particular note since one member of one Visual Kei band brought about much of this all by himself. Mana, guitarist of Malice Mizer, coined the EGL and EGA terms (which technically refer to his specific brands). While in the band he regularly appeared dressed as a girl and still models his own designs for The Gothic & Lolita Bible, which is the movement's most authoratative magazine. He pulls this off quite successfully, as you can see:

malice mizer pics





How much does this have to do with Dir En Grey?

Well, not much. Dir En Grey moved on from their Visual Kei phase rather quickly. If they hadn't they might never have achieved their current level of worldwide popularity. However, I wanted to give a short synopsis on what Visual Kei was and how Mana influenced Gothic Lolita fashion. I was inspired to do this because, in Second Life, I'm a member of a Gothic Lolita fashion group. I like to dress my character up in EGL fashions. Yesterday someone used the group channel to ask about Gothic Lolita fashion for men -- he was looking for the term Elegant Gothic Aristocrat, but there really isn't much of this fashion to be found in SL at the moment. Anyway, someone responded by saying "men dress in Gothic Lolita fashion?" I mean, I couldn't let that one go, they were displaying a complete lack knowledge of the genre and who helped found it. ^_^ Yes, in fact, the founder of EGL is a man who dresses in EGL fashion.

On another aside note -- the people who run Second Life have come down hard on what is called "age play", which is where two adults engage in sexual roleplay where one of them is roleplaying a child. This sort of thing, when done in real life, might be considered weird but nobody gets too upset about it because they're both adults, but when you're in control of a child avatar it's suddenly much closer to actual child porn. Even if no real children are involved, it bothers a lot of people. I can understand why. (And as an aside to my aside -- this is all a seperate issue from people who just like to pretend to be children in Second Life; there are a lot of people who do that for fun and who are not interested in virtual sex at all.) But the upshot of all this is that the word "lolita" has been banned. That means you can't search on that word, which makes it harder to search for Gothic Lolita fashion. Most people have decided to go with the EGL tag instead.

And, as quite a few have pointed out, EGL fashion is not nearly as sexual as most of what passes for fashion in Second Life....

I gave a quote to someone named Lolita the other day. She had a slight accent which I thought was Eastern European. That used to be a more popular name, before Vladimur Nabokov's book came out....

Here's a few Malice Mizer videos. You'll note right away that they're much more theatrical than Dir En Grey and not as interested in hard, heavy rock. I don't think you can get anything of theirs on iTunes -- in fact their cds are only available as expensive imports:

Malice Mizer - Gardenia
Malice Mizer - Kyomu No Naka De Yuugi PV
Malice Mizer - Beast of Blood
Malice Mizer - Syunikiss (live)