Street of Alice

I've been wanting to write something about this for a long time but haven't had the time, now finally I'm ready to share my thoughts and discoveries with all Velvet Eden fans about the link between the Velvet Eden song and the ero manga Street of Alice by Senno Knife!

In 2016 Dada announced Velvet Eden would make a collaboration with manga artist Senno Knife (千之ナイフ), the person who created the manga Street of Alice, which also inspired Dada to write the song of the same name. The origin of the song is that it was featured as title track on their first demotape from 1999, later it was remade to be featured just one year later as titletrack on their second album. The song itself has a sort of mysterious wibe, starting of kind of simple and then progressing really making you feel like you're going deeper and deeper into the world of Velvet Eden. To sum up the lyrics, there seems to be two characters, one obedient and one dominant (this is based on that there seems to be one of them inviting the other one into his or her world and wanting to introduce the other person to that, also offering him or her a key.
The collaboration announced was that they would make a music video to a Street of Alice song remake and the music video would be made by Senno Knife, featuring Dada and Chro as characters in the manga. This video was later given at a Velvet Eden live in Tokyo and released on a DVD togheter with their last cd Requiem.
One of the biggest reasons why I became such a big fan of Velvet Eden in high school was that I truly admired Dada creativity with his lyrics and how Velvet Eden wasn't just a band, everything was connected and helping telling these erotic, horror love stories. Dada's lyrics, Kalm's (or any of the other songwriters) songs, their performance and their costumes. So finding out one of Dada's official (I say official because with time I've found other sources I suspect has influenced Dada but he never mentioned them though) sources for inspiration I decided to dig in deep. He only mentioned that the manga was called Street of Alice, I assumed it was the name of the book so I searched quite a lot and found nothing. Later I realised it wasn't a book but a chapter in one of Senno's books called Sepia. I was lucky being in Japan so I could buy it straight from Amazon, I'm originaly from Sweden, probably one of the strictest countries when it comes to porn. When buying this book it acctually said it couldn't be shipped to my address which I assume has to do with the content, so I can't say if it's available for everyone to buy!
The book contains of 10 acts with different characters and stories, and then at the end you find Street of Alice and another story called Sleeping risky.

So, let me explain the story of the ero-manga Street of Alice! Our maincharacter opens the story by telling us that he woke up having his body stolen, and that it is not a rare thing in this city. He is now a skeleton walking the streets, so from the look it's hard to say if it's a female or a male body, the reason I know it's a male will show later. Anyway, he runs into a person walking in bandaids, and gets to know that this person had his body stolen the other day and he went back to the body shop (hehe) to find his body but it had been sold already so he ended up with another body. Our maincharacter then procedes to the body shop in hopes of finding his own body. He can't find it and ends up with a girls body. Walking out of the shop a car pulls up to him and a woman says she's been looking for her, "Alice". He jumps into the car and tries to tell the woman he's not the person she thinks he is. And soon after he sees someone walking the streets with his body. However, she does not pull over and they end up in a house where some hermaphrodite is greeting "Alice" back. He still tries to tell them he's the wrong person, he's not Alice. They then end up hanging him in chains, the hermaphrodite then says "Alice...you are our toy." and the woman in the car puts her fingers in his now vagina saying she will let him slowly with time remember. They will "give her her favorite toys" and as he screams they say they'll give her mouth a present (guess what:P). So in the next picture we see out maincharacter hanging from chains giving the hermaphrodite a blowjob while the other woman is lying underneath.Then we see our maincharacter sitting almost like from a 3d frame, and he's thinking that he's lost track of time, and that he has to run away before both his body and mind will become Alice, he has to go back to the body shop. The last page I have a hard time understanding to be honest, I first assumed it was our maincharacter still thinking but it doesn't seem right concidering what it says, so I think it's acctually a storyteller now. What the last page shows is car, but we can't see who's in it, and another person who's got a new body walking down the street. Last picture is that Alice, is sitting in the car and the text says Alice will probably be taken back again...again and again. We can see that when our maincharacter ran away, he was basically naked, the picture of Alice in the car shows she has bandaids again. My asumption is that our maincharacter got to the body shop and got himself a new body and gave back Alice body to the shop. The new person in Alice's body then, just like our maincharacter, was picked up by that couple and driven back to their house.In the video to Street of Alice, it is Dada and Chro which is picking Alice up again.

Link to Amazon.jp



I guess it's up to everyone to interpret the lyrics to Street of Alice the way they want to. If one pleases I guess you can see it as a song for the manga, aside from Dada's story.
I hope some might have found this interesting and useful, and I hope to add more entries similar to this in the future!

Sidenote:
Anyone else thinking this character looks a bit familiar? :P It's from one of the other stories in the book. The boy has a human sized doll he wishes to become human. His servant likes him and therefor dresses up as the doll making him believe the doll got life. They meet for nocturnal rendezvous and that's how the story ends. Even the story sounds a bit familiar... fufufu

Kaya - Dream after Dream

As probably all Kaya fans know, Kaya released a long awaited solo single, Yumeji in March! After all the "gothic" songs on Gothic it seems to have been time for a light purple ballad written by Yume Suzuki.
I'm not so keen on Kaya's ballads to be honest, what I like about Kaya is his electronic sound and I think the stuff Kalm and Hora has written for him is when Kaya solo is at it's best (Ken Morioka also did a very good job with Taboo and Dance Macabre). So I wasn't too suprised that I didn't really like Yumeji. It's ok, but not a song I'll listen to over and over (thank god for trance remix). However, never having seen Kaya perform as a solo artist I had to go to this tour final at Shinjuku ReNY!

 

Since it was my first time, I had no idea what to expect from a Kaya gig. Since it was a tour dedicated to his new release I was a bit scared he'd only play slow songs, and like I mentioned I'm not a big fan of those. Fortunate for me I was wrong! Kaya opened with Hydrangea, one of the few slow songs I acctually like! Obviously he wore the Yumeji outfit, minus the hat and minus shoes, and he looked very pretty. His make up was perfect, so cute. He also had a pianist, which people seemed to be familiar with, aswell as his two dancers from back in the days. I was really happy that he played so many older songs frm the Glitter days like Masquerade, Epicurean, Kasha -Shining Flowers- and previously mentioned Hydrangea. Among the other songs was Sink, Babylon and Ophelia, so I felt like Kaya really included a lot of different songs from his career and not just his latest like many bands do, that was a big +!

Besides being a good vocalist live (which I already know from the Schwarz Stein concerts) he also talked a lot between songs and was his cute self. This mans smile really is contagious. For this tour Kaya was selling a new fan for Epicurean which a lot of fans bought. It looked very similar to the old pink one, so not sure what the difference was. I noticed that when people took them out of their packing a lot of feathers seemed to get loose and fall off, so after Epicurean there seemed to have been one girl in particular who's fan had lost a lot of feathers. Kaya noticed it and asked from the stage if she'd bought that tonight, when she said yes he told her to go and have it exchanged afterwards. I thought that was really sweet of him. 

As I mentioned he played a lot of different songs, and he even included a chanson! I don't like the chansons normally, but live it was kind of nice, and Kaya seemed to enjoy singing it so much it made good. Last out on the ordinary setlist was Yumeji and eventhough I didn't follow it all Kaya talked a great lot before it about dreams and how he's always continued to follow his dream to be a vocalist even when it was rough and he wanted to quit. Some girls acctually began crying in the audience when Kaya himself got a bit teared up. I'm not a big fan of Yumeji but it was better live than on the cd (acctually I haven't been abe to hear my single, but based on the trailer on youtube).

When the gig got to the end he acctually announced that Yume Suzuki would perform with him, and they ended the evening with Frosty Rain and Glitter Arch togheter with his two dancers. Before the songs Yume Suzuki gave Kaya a present, a tiny glass shoe in a really nice box and Kaya seemed so excited reaching it with his hands several times despite Yume still talking about their collaboration not being ready to hand it over just yet. Seeing them togheter like that, she androgonys and Kaya looking like a woman (looking a bit like an amazon woman when standing next to a Japanese woman *cough*) really made me feel like Kaya is such an interesting character in today's VK scene. He's not just a VK guy in a dress, but I feel like he's acctually on a more LGBT side, sort of. I really get the impression from him that he truly feel like everyone, no matter what gender or fashion style or sexuality is welcome in his world.

Anyway, they all waved good bye and left stage, Kaya was left alone thanking everyone who came, and as the lights went out and only one focused on him following Kaya as he gracefully walked/danced towards the exit of stage. Just before he was about to exit he freezes, the song pauses and he turns around asking if we really thought the evening would end like that. He then announced Dance Macabre, a song everyone enjoys. I love Dance Macabre so I was more than thrilled to be able to hear it live! It was great and it created such a good atmosphere. Like I haven't felt lucky enough with the setlist, after that one of my other favorites, Addict began! For this I got a bit suprised. Listening to it I've just heard it as one of Kaya's normal, fast electronic, popish songs, but his fans seriously headbanged to it O_o I'm sorry but I'm still not getting how fans create bands parapara. Sometimes I almost wonder if they're deaf, or if I'm listening to the same songs because I can't hear headbaning when I listen to Addict... The fans almost created a moch pit infront of stage where they threw themselves towards the stage and Kaya came close touching people's hands (I got to hold his hand too for a short while) and also kissing some. A bit strange to me, but whatever, it was a nice ending!

Kaya of course sold cheki's, I bought two and of course I got one of Kaya and one of one of his dancers... I felt kind of bad feeling disapointed since Kaya had happily announced there would be chekis of his fellow "helpers". I'm sorry but if I pay for cheki's I want them of the band or vocalist I'm paying to see =/ I'm just happy I wasn't unlucky enough to get TWO with his crew...

１：Hydrangea
２：Marionetto
MC
３：Nouvelle Mariee
４：Ophelia
５：BABYLON
６：Masquerade
７：＜Dancers Solo＞
８：Kasha - shining flowers -
MC
９：Padam padam（シャンソン）
10：愛の讃歌-Remix-
11：ショコラ
12：Epicurean
13：Transmigration
MC
14：Sink
MC
15：夢路

encore
16：Frosty Rain (with 鈴木結女)
17：Glitter Arch (with 鈴木結女)
18：Danse Macabre
19：Addict

Vamquet

I'm not a bit behind anymore with all the live reports, I'm a million years behind. I personally don't like to read livereports concerning a concert that was weeks, or even a month ago, it feels outdated. But unfortunately it just has to be that way for now!

So on march 25th the event HAUNTED XDAY #3 took place at Shibuya Glad, featuring the bands Vaniru, Speed-iD, Vamquet, Der Zibet and Madame Edwarda. It was a sort of goth evening and I went to see Vamquet! I also like Madame Edwarda so I was really looking forward to seeing them for the first time.

The club wasn't hard to find at all as it was part of the Vuenos "chain" of clubs in Shibuya. If there's anything I dislike about clubs in Tokyo is that most allow smoking. Knowing that there would probably be a chainsmoker attending like at most clubs, I felt like I could arrive a bit later so I didn't see Vaniru at all, I just heard them play their last song as I entered Glad. I also found out Glad don't allow smoking on the actual floor, but they have a smoking area on the first floor, in which I found Sadie at the minute I walked in.
For this live Vamquet sold a new sticker and a t-shirt. As the t-shirt was really big (like they always are :P) I didn't get that, only their CD which I hadn't bought yet.

I came to see Vamquet obviously, but I found myself enjoying the other bands as well, especially Madame Edwarda. I've been listening to them for a couple of years now and I like their sound, so it was really fun seeing them live. Most people there seemed to be Madame Edwarda fans which surprised me, infront of me a group of "older" fans (when I say older I mean perhaps between 30-40) arrived. The funniest part was that two women stood there, and they did the funny thing where they sort of book the spot. One of them went for drinks and then the other stands with an arm out or something to mark the spot as taken. I find this behaviour to be kind of odd at clubs and concerts, since I think in most other genres (not bands related to VK in any sense) and countries the floor is for people to dance and move around at. Only in Japan does people stand, with extra space too, looking at their favorite band. So when these slightly drunk and older fans arrived they basically just marched into that womans empty space, and I couldn't help but to find her face extremly funny X) It was so obvious she was offended but she didn't dare say anything so she just grabbed her bag and left. These people were a bit annoying but I just hate people who mark their spot. It's not a line, it's a gig, without seats! Madame Edwarda had a lot of energy and the vocalist, Zin was really into the performance entering with a cain and a cape, dancing around the stage. They ended their setlist with Orpheus, and it was awesome!

Madame Edwarda acctually was the last performance, so let's skip back to the main event, Vamquet!
Vamquet was in the middle of the evening, and since I'm used to Közi being the guitarist I got myself a spot on the right side of the stage, then when the members came out on stage to put their stuff togheter I just remembered that Közi plays bass in Vamquet :P Yeah, bad fan. Anyway, the club was tiny and the stage too obviously so it wasn't as if I couldn't see him. And like always, his group of fangirls filled up the space infront of him (I wish Közi could get a group of drunk fans who could destroy the fangirl-pit...). I had not heard anything besides the trailer for Vamhaus before going to this live, but I really liked what I heard on that trailer so I was excited to hear the full songs. And I wasn't disapointed! I've never been a fan of Art Marju Duchain, but Kai was really good live. I wasn't expecting him to be so dramatic as he was, dancing along to the music, he wore a long black dress really completing his goth look. Közi wore one of his black poncho looking garments if I remember correctly. Since the live I've listened to the album, and eventhough I really like it the songs acctually became better live. It felt like their setlist was over in no time and I wish they had more material/longer playtime. Both on the cd and live my favorite songs are Wonders and Vam Marsch.  Despite Közi not having written any of the music, I feel like it's very Közi:ism. Like a mix of XA-VAT (because of Sadie maybe) and ZIZ, going dark.
Of course as always Közi just did his thing and left the stage, badass :P
I know this project isn't so serious (concidering they've had like two gigs this year) but I'd love to see them release and perform more! Hopefully they'll get some more acknowledgment and keep going.

Next gigs: D on Wednesday and Dalle on Sunday!

(On my to-do-list, I still need to write livereports for D, Kaya and Kamijo :P Slowly progressing)