User talk:Tmat060 - Stage One Wiki

Visual Kei

Visual Kei ヴィジュアル系 was, and is, a Japanese musical movement which began in the mid 1980's. I prefer to think of it as a phenomenon which could only occur in Japan. Literally, the term means 'Visual Style' and is a play on the way in which the band members all dress eccentrically, flamboyantly or just plain crazily. Indeed, music is perhaps only half the show where Visual Kei is concerned. Visual Kei draws inspiration from, but not limited to, such other styles as Rock, Metal, Pop, Classical, Electronic, Prog (progressive rock) and Rap. Most bands do not really fit well into any of these groups or together in the same musical genre, but their costume and performance are such that they can all be grouped together as Visual Kei. Visual Kei appeared first in the late 1980's, spear-headed by the group X-Japan, whose popularity still lasts. Other groups who could be called Visual Kei, but were not so popular as X-Japan, were D'erlanger and Color. Visual Kei was, at the time, a very minor, unknown, underground genre, limited mostly to independant labels, a serious hindrance in the Japanese music market, but in the early 1990's bands such as L'Arc-en-Ciel, Glay and Luna Sea helped X-Japan (not intentionally) raise the popularity of Visual Kei. On the Outskirts of this 'Popular' bunch, are bands who are considered more 'Visual Kei-aimed' than the others, the 'true' Visual Kei icons. Malice Mizer, Kuroyume and Dir en Grey aimed almost directly for the 'out there' Visual Kei look and style-of-no-style with rock/metal, rock ballads, prog style long intricate pieces, poppy and rap based songs featuring highly, and were hugely concentrated on their presentation and performance, the mark of a Visual Kei Band, where the others were not, but simply fell into the genre. Of these three, only Dir en Grey remains intact, although they have long since dropped the Visual Kei look and sound in favour of the hard rock look and feel, which has garnered them a large following in Germany, and allowed them to break into the US, a feat not done by a Japanese Visual Kei band since X-Japan, or since Malice Mizer's lead singer Gackt broke away into a solo career. Since then modern Visual Kei based bands, or at least bands whose appearance and musical style seems all too similar to Visual Kei, have appeared more and more, and have actually gained popularity, although this is possibly due to their songs appearing in popular Anime opening and closing theme songs. such bands in clude Nightmare, D'espairsRay, Gilgamesh, The Gazette and the singer Miyavi (once a member of Dué le Quartz).

This page was last modified 20:35, 14 January 2009.

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