Visual kei

Visual Kei, or Visual Style, is an artistic movement among Japanese musicians that is characterised by the use of make-up, elaborate hair styles and flamboyant costumes, often, but not always, coupled with androgynous aestheticsvisual kei, in the style of David Bowie. You can see more of the history over on the Useful Notes visual kei, if you like.

The artists wear makeup, have elaborate hairstyles and costumes, usually coupled with androgynous aesthetics. The word used was "bijuaru shokku kei" visual shock style. Other terms often used at that time was "okeshou kei" make-up style. Inspired by the punk, glam metal, and gothic-rock movements, the first wave of bands put emphasis on shocking visuals, often done through elaborate stage performances, eccentric hairstyles, and flamboyant attire, traits that would become staples of the entire movement. The mid's has been known as the band boom period. Indie labels mostly FREE-WILL and its subsidiaries and artists started receiving mainstream attention, and most prominent bands of the decade had major debuts.

Visual kei

Or, perhaps, even an unexpected run-in with a niche Japanese rock band at a music festival. For myself and many others, a niche within Japanese rock called v isual kei in which kei means style was the initial force that drew us toward Japanese culture and later directly into Japan, all over the country, into concert halls large and small. Characterized by visual appearances just as much as music, visual kei is a hallmark of Japanese culture. It blends fashion, bold lyrics and themes, and musical styles seamlessly into a genre that you can truly only find in Japan. While never becoming mainstream, the genre gained popularity steadily in the 80s and 90s. The 90s saw arguably the most growth for visual kei, with tons of new bands forming. Bands that formed between the s and early s grew steadily both in Japan and, eventually, abroad. Several subgenres such as Nagoya kei, a darker and more music-focused subgenre founded in Nagoya, also took off around this time. They either joined music festivals or held their own international tours. Their CDs could be found in most music stores, and in America, visual kei magazines were even sold at Hot Topic. Popular visual kei band Dir en grey performing in Paris in

Idol Singer : Visual Kei has the gender-inverted version: young men that sparkle.

Originally influenced by glam rock and other s rock music styles, visual kei musicians incorporate varying levels of make-up, elaborate hairstyles and costumes, often coupled with an androgynous aesthetic. The term visual kei was coined in the s and is sometimes also called a music genre or style, similar to Shibuya-kei. However, there are no defined characteristics for the music played by visual kei acts, and whether or not one is considered a part of the movement is based solely on their having an emphasis on visuals and performance. Many acts tone-down their appearance upon achieving mainstream success, calling into question whether they are still to be considered visual kei. The term "visual kei" was derived from one of X Japan 's slogans, "Psychedelic Violence Crime of Visual Shock", seen on the cover of their second studio album Blue Blood

Popular bands including X Japan, Buck-Tick , and Dead End are credited with being the early pioneers of the distinctive style. Visual Kei, with its many substyles, is the product of all of these influences combined. It is a style most often characterized by androgynous outfits, over-the-top hairstyles, and dramatic makeup for both women and men. Global awareness of Visual Kei has spread primarily through the ever-increasing popularity of Japanese anime, and its biggest communities around the world are in the United States, Russia, Brazil, Germany, and Poland. With no real style rules to follow and not many shops catering specifically to this genre, the only limitation is your imagination. Here, we take a closer look at several of the eccentric Visual Kei substyles and offer some guidance on how to make them work for you. While there are some common elements among the many Visual Kei substyles, such as shocking hairstyles and makeup, the overall emphasis is on individuality and freedom of expression through fashion.

Visual kei

Last Updated: May 11, This article was co-authored by Joanne Gruber. She has worked in the fashion and style industries for over 10 years, specializing in educating people on the art of re-purposing existing clothing to freshen up a wardrobe.

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Label closures, for bands on a label that's suddenly ran afoul of the tax authorities or that's really too broke to pay them, for example. The Rival to Extasy Records , and the rivalry has ranged from open fighting between artists early on to mostly friendly, since it is the only active of the two labels currently. By Bunny Bissoux Picture the scene: the bass player is dressed in a silver crop top and hot pants paired with thigh-high, heeled boots. Lareine note Also see Versailles and '' The Rose of Versailles - Neoclassical pop rock band notable for drawing heavy inspiration from French royalty, never mind that Ryoko Ikeda designed everything from the band's costumes to their album covers. Man on Fire : Visual Shock bands and some modern bands tend to use a lot of pyro. They gained mainstream awareness, although they were not as commercially successful, except for L'Arc-en-Ciel and Glay whose later huge success was accompanied by a drastic change in their appearance and are often not associated with visual kei. Archived from the original on 1 January Visual kei has been moderately popular in Southeast Asia and Europe, with some underground bands being described as visual kei or inspired by the visual kei image. Some good examples are pretty much all of Taiji Sawada 's life until his death, Yoshiki , who survived sustaining a broken neck onstage without dying or being paralyzed and carried off by roadies with no idea of how to handle spinal cord injury, only because he was lucky enough that what broke wasn't essential to breathing or neural connections to most of his body, and Atsushi Sakurai of BUCK-TICK , who survived abdominal peritonitis from a burst appendix which is nearly impossible to survive No OSHA Compliance : Obvious, since there's no OSHA in Japan, but even according to the Japanese equivalent of OSHA, there was very little worker protection in Visual Kei for a long while and there still isn't much. Thrash Metal band Sex Machineguns also belongs here. Some of the more famous are: X Japan being sued by the American punk band X over its name which was at the time, also X - forcing it to change its name and not perform in the West for several years Extasy Records being sued by a hearing aid company, Ear Extasy, over its logo and name - forcing it to not use the name Extasy officially in the US Dir en Grey being sued by a concerned mother, who took her 10 year old daughter to a concert in the US where the uncensored version of Obscure PV was on projector. Alcoholism is the second most common addiction in the Visual Kei scene, only second to nicotine addiction. Along with Post-Visual and Oshare, it's one of the fastest-growing new genres. What Links Here?

The glories, the tragedies and how these glammed-up rockers have kept their fans coming back for more. Picture the scene: the bass player is dressed in a silver crop top and hot pants paired with thigh-high, heeled boots.

Retrieved 14 November Which was bad if he even did it, he was found not guilty , but which wasn't raping or savagely beating them. A great many songs come across as jarring and hard to appreciate for the uninitiated; it is not helped by the fact that most songs are written in Japanese or nigh-unintelligible Gratuitous English , and sound like a mix of different and disparate musical styles. List of best-selling music artists in Japan List of best-selling Western artists in Japan List of best-selling albums in Japan List of best-selling singles in Japan. For mental handicaps, there was hide Bipolar 1, alcoholism, bulimia and Jasmine You major unipolar depression and Taiji dissociative disorder, temporal lobe epilepsy. She points out that "visual kei" literally translates as "visual style" and spans a wide range of musical genres. In Ian Chapman, Henry Johnson ed. Expy : It is quite common for s and late s-era Visual bands to have members that resemble other Visual kei artists. Deaths in general are a topic for discussion in all rock subgenres, but in Visual Kei, deaths are a touchy, touchy subject; to avoid causing controversies, many bands never disclose the reasons for their bandmates' deaths though this practice is an equally controversial move, since it would attract curious fans and cause rumors to pop out. Notable examples are Lily designed after and voiced by Yuri of m. Los Angeles Times.