I previously mentioned this already, but now more info has surfaced regarding this event titled Makoto Koshinaka Birthday Event 2010 ~Datenshi na Yoru~. In case you weren’t aware, Makoto’s turning (just) 30. Crazy to think he was only 18 back when Datenshi BLUE was recorded!
This dinner cruise type deal in Tokyo will be held on July 24th from 19:10 to 21:30 (so punctual!). It’s a pretty pricy deal at 29,800￥ (around US$325 — ouch!) but people attending will get to enjoy a private screening of a video that I assume will be prepared specifically for the cruise, a chance to buy a T-shirt designed by Makoto, special prizes by raffle, as well as a two-shot photo op with Makoto among other fancy things. Sweeeeet.
Applications to the event will only be accepted from June 14th through June 22nd, so for anyone planning on attending, I do suggest hurrying it up. Browse here for more info in Japanese.
On an off-topic note, still no word on what Λucifer did during their TV appearance a few days back.
For the first time in who knows how long, Aucifer are set to make a TV appearance on TBS network’s 「BLITZ INDEX」 on June 11th! No info as to what sort of appearance we should expect but seeing that it’s a 10-minute slab of airtime, we could possibly be looking at a little talk and — fingers crossed! — a live performance. You can never have too many performances of “Datenshi BLUE.”
If you’re desperate to try and catch this live, you might have luck with KeyHoleTV or freshverse for example, but the quality is going to be pretty lousy. The best livestream I’ve found is the gundam.eu one but unfortunately it appears to be down for the foreseeable future. If there’s any goodness in the world, someone will later put up a good quality version on the ol’ Tube or elsewhere.
In any case, for those of you with access to Japanese TV, Aucifer will be on air this Friday – Saturday night at 26:55 – 27:04 Japan time, which of course translates to Saturday 02:55AM – 03:04AM.
In other news, Aucifer are to be featured in the upcoming August issue of the Arena 37°C SPECIAL magazine which goes on sale on June 27th. Meanwhile, you can also catch Rayflower in the June issue of the standard edition of Arena 37°C which is already on sale.
By the way, did any of you hear the Rayflower single? Just as I expected, it’s pretty damned good! The riffs on “Uragiri” are gnarly and I kind of dig the vocals. And hey, while we’re on the subject of Yuki, Acid Black Cherry are releasing their second cover album “Recreation 2” on June 30th. Apparently they’re also releasing their next single “Re:birth” in the near future. No release date on that one yet.
With less than three months to go, we’re getting closer to the main event here, folks. As a sign of that, there’s several of these little guys starting to pop up on Yahoo.jp auctions:
Just as a quick reminder to you guys, Rayflower‘s single is now out. Still haven’t got my hands on it actually, so here’s to hoping it’ll pop up somewhere sooner rather than later. The full PV can now be found (in disappointingly shitty quality) on YouTube. The tune does sound absolutely rocking though!
One more quick bit of news: though they just barely got their first release out, looks like they’ve already set a date for their follow-up single! It’s entitled Inishie and will go on sale on August 4th. Hope it’s as good as their first!
In my foolishness I forgot to post the full line-up of the band. In case you weren’t aware, it’s:
In other news, Makoto‘s site reports that he’s planning a birthday concert/event. More info to come in June, I’ll keep you updated. Speaking of Makoto, here he is sporting his meganekko style with cool actor Tamaki Hiroshi (Nodame Cantabile, Love Shuffle)!
Finally, I’d like to talk a little about the blog. It’s been up for three months now and honestly so far I’m really happy with the amount of hits it gets. I mean, when I started out, I knew I’d be sorely disappointed if I expected any real popularity to speak of. Hell, it’s a band that’s been dead for a good seven years now! Still, even averaging ~5 visits daily (on a good day) is more than enough to make me go “wow.” Last month I even had a day with 26 visitors! What the hell! Sure, on my other blog I often have days that surpass the amount of this site’s visitors in total, but to me seeing people actually reading this blog makes me significantly happier for some peculiar reason. Especially the fact that I even have a few commenters on this site, that to me just feels surreal. I’d just like to thank everyone who comments here, links this site somewhere or even silently reads up on the latest Aucifer going-ons. I’m happy if it helps anyone keep up with them.
I’d like to ask you guys something. As readers, is there anything more you’d like from Silent Melody? Anything you’d like me to do differently? More news on related artists, or just more focused on Aucifer? More opinion pieces? More, err, eyecandy? Simply just more/less posts? Want more of anything, less of anything? Or if not, if you’d just let me know that what I’m doing now is fine as is, that’d be sweet. Comment and let me know what you think!
One thing I have been wanting to do is reviewing Aucifer’s releases one by one. Not only that, but I’d love to also gather up anyone else’s reviews on Aucifer and post them here, as I know not everyone can be bothered with setting up a blog and all that. Would there be any interest in that, or would that be just about me satisfying myself?
Finally, have some pics of Atsuro who’s rehearsing for Minori Chihara‘s live tour right now.
For those of you not in the know yet, Λucifer have scheduled an additional show to their previously reported tour. The fourth show is set for 09/01 at the Akasaka BLITZ, Tokyo where they’re also playing the preceding night.
On a sidenote, I’d just like to say that I hate anyone and everyone who’s going. Alright, alright, I don’t hate you, but I do want to go. Anyone care to sponsor me the flights to there and back? Fingers crossed for at least that live DVD recording!
In other news that were deemed too minor to write up on their own:
Yuki‘s band DUSTAR-3released a new album on 04/28 called Trike.
Also check out this cool little promo for Aucifer’s tour from TNB’s site.
Aucifer’s site now also has little congratulatory messages written by various people such as Kaikan Phrase creator Shinjo Mayu, cool actor Hiroshi Tamaki, and musicians of MUCC, 12012, kannivalism, BREAKERZ and SHUSE. Nothing too exciting, but here’s the Google translation.
Makoto was a guest on Towa‘s net radio show on April 20th. I managed to record it for you but I’m not going to attempt a translation right now. Be warned though that due to my internet connection being an asshole, this recording cuts off at around 1:15 and at 13:55 — in total there’s perhaps around 30 seconds of the show missing. That’s the best I could do, sorry. Still, it’s a good opportunity to hear Makoto’s voice again after a while. Here it is:
Finally, an unrelated picture of Atsuro taking a picture of himself in admiration. Or disgust. Not sure.
As you can see, the site is finally up. A couple of minutes early, might I add! I was waiting for the countdown timer to get down to zero just for the hell of it, but it opened around five minutes early. Boo!
The main news here is that they’ve announced theRinne (“Death and Rebirth“) 10th Anniversary Live Tour consisting (so far?) of three shows:
08/25 @ Shinsaibashi CLUB QUATTRO, Osaka
08/26 @ E.L.L., Nagoya
08/31 @ Akasaka BLITZ, Tokyo
Tickets to all shows can be bought here and are priced ￥6,300 (~$68).
After you’re done with your refresher course on the members’ blood types, there’s a contact form that encourages you to send messages of support to the band. It’s simple enough to figure out, but for the nihongo-challenged, here’s how you send in your message:
Aucifer were on today’s Sponichi with a brief history and notice of their reunion, including a quote from Makoto saying he wants to stand on stage again and get together with the members as well as the fans. As for the fingers, that’d be Makoto and Towa. I’m guessing Makoto’s are the girly ones. Those two will be on net radio livecast today from 11 P.M. Japan time, so be sure to tune in if you can.
That’d be all for now. Lastly, look at this bitchin’ promo picture!
As if the Aucifer news wasn’t good enough, it was also recently reported that Yuki is in a new band called Rayflower who have a double A-side single titled “Uragiri no Nai Sekai Made / Aoi Ito” coming out on May 26th. Their site can be found at rayflower.jp. Do check out this Tokyograph article for more info. What the article doesn’t mention though is that the anime in question is of the “boys love” variety. Just thought I’d mention that. There’s a preview out that doesn’t sound half bad!
Pretty excited about this, actually, as Yuki’s been my favorite member to follow after Aucifer. While I’m not the biggest fan of DUSTAR-3 I can’t lie about occasionally bursting into “Mckeekee” on my guitar every once in a while, and Acid Black Cherry, yasu’s (Janne da Arc) solo project where Yuki plays support guitar, is just great. If you haven’t checked them out yet, what better time to do so than right now? Try not to mind the crossdressing at the start too much — unless that’s your thing, of course.
Speaking of DUSTAR-3, they have a new album called TRIKE coming out on April 28th. Looking forward to hearing Yuki’s soloing! Oh, and this reminds me: if anyone wants to sponsor me with Yuki’s bitching custom ESP Lizard Special guitar, I’d be pretty happy about that.
On a completely unrelated note, I’d like to share a quick piece of Atsuro news. Well, it’s not so much news as it’s just “a quick Atsuro spotting“. Atsuro’s played guitar for several names that I’m a fan of (Hello! Project, Shokotan, etc.) but this is one I wasn’t aware of before. I was watching the Kouhaku 2003 show the other day and look who was playing guitar for aiko of all people:
I’m unsure if he’s featured on any of her recordings but it’s probably safe to assume he’s just played in her live band before. In any case, this is cool for me as I’ve been seriously getting into aiko lately. Another artist I’d highly recommend to anyone, by the way.
Thanks to GN-0015 for letting me know about Rayflower!
Things were looking grim after my last post, but I’m very glad to have been proven wrong!
Aucifer now has a new site that promises to open in a bit over a week from now, on April 20th. For now, the site has links to the members’ respective sites. Looking pretty snazzy! There’s also a mobile version.
Aucifer 10th anniversary
Finally, they’ve announced it!
I already wrote about it in a previous blog, but as their website was in preparation and none of the members posted any official statement, a lot of fans must’ve thought “is it for real?”
However, after lots of fine-tuning, their site is up.
This time, I can announce it loud and clear:
For a limited time, Aucifer are back!
On a related note, and this might just be entirely my imagination (or my limited Japanese skill), but Mayu might be hinting at some possible upcoming Kaikan Phrase activity. Whether she means another game, the manga or even — dare I say it?! — more anime, I know not. But again, this could just be nothing, so take this bit with a grain of salt.
Atsuro, Towa and Santa also posted messages about this on their blogs, all basically just throwing the announcement out there and saying they’re looking forward to it. However, there is one thing of importance all of them seem to be saying. I’m sorry to say this to all those hoping for new Aucifer songs (me included!), but for now it appears that it’s going to be a live reunion in nature. I’m hoping they change their minds because while I’d love to go catch them live, I don’t see that happening.
Ah well, if nothing else, we can at least hope for a live DVD, right? According to Towa’s blog, their rehearsals have already begun. Behold, this is where the magic (supposedly) happens:
Lastly, TNB Entertainment has also posted an apology on their site, basically saying they’re sorry for the wait. I don’t know about you guys, but considering the nature of the news they’ve just given us, I’m alright with forgiving them!
What might be an ominous sign, Aucifer’s new site has been down for a good week or two now. In addition, though Aucifer/Makoto’s new agency’s site has this flash on the top with rotating Aucifer PV screencaptures that used to have the words “Λucifer revival” slapped on them, they’ve now taken that out from all the pictures.
This does feel alarming and frankly if what I fear is true, what a huge crock of shit. However, remember that this is all just guesswork and observation on my part. There’s no official word that they’ve decided to not do the comeback. The good news is that Aucifer are still listed in the Artist-section of the agency’s site. Why would a defunct, largely forgotten band like Aucifer need agency backing seven years after they stopped all activities? So that’s a glimmer of hope for you.
I’ll keep you posted in case the site pops up or anything else happens.
