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[miko2]

Today's Song: Lunar Eclipse by Silver Ash

Silver Ash is China's first "visual kei" rock band. Visual Kei, meaning "visual style", is a Japanese music genre or perhaps more to the point a movement or sub-culture within Japanese music that involves excessively flamboyant costumes, hair styles, and make-up. Often, but not always, it involves androgyny, usually men dressing very feminine or actually dressing as women. It is related to goth rock, glam rock, punk and metal. Japanese visual kei bands cover a wide range of music styles, from hard rock/metal to progressive art rock and pop rock with classical influences. This is why not everyone agrees that "visual kei" is a music genre at all -- the emphasis is placed as much, if not more, on the band's visual look as opposed to the type of music they play.

I found it interesting that such a band might appear in China (let alone several of them), or for that matter that visual kei would appear outside of Japan at all. I downloaded one song from iTunes and put it on my iPod, and from a few listens it sounds as good as anything from the Japanese visual kei bands I've listened to. Mind you, the only actual band of this sort that I own a full cd of is Dir en Grey, and the cd I own is one of their recent ones, well past their visual kei stage. These days they are just a talented hard rock/metal band, and have even had success in North America and Europe.

Like many of the Japanese visual kei bands, Silver Ash has more recently moved away from visual kei. However, on their myspace page they indicate that this was "due to the proposed demands of the government". Probably not too surprising. The band claims to have appeared on many television shows and in many magazines, but is currently without a recording contract. The band members have needed to hold down regular jobs to stay afloat. Their next contract might well be with a Japanese label, which makes sense.

Silver Ash list as influences Japanese visual kei bands X Japan, Dir en grey, and Luna Sea. Wikipedia adds Malice Mizer (another visual kei band) and, interestingly, Radiohead. Although probably Radiohead is listed as an influence on every creative band on the planet these days.

Sliver Ash - Lunar Eclipse

Silver Ash - Wind of the Broken Cliff

Silver Ash at Myspace