In case you hadn’t noticed, you can find some fan-taken video of Λucifer from their Bangkok performance on YouTube. Just do a search for Λucifer, sort by upload date and you’re all set. Or, just click here. Here’s a couple of cool ones to get you started:
Here’s one from earlier this month when Makoto went to Thailand early for a little promoing.
Just something cool I found in one of Aucifer’s mixi communities. These are scans of the first ever magazine (fanzine?) for the official Aucifer fan club ENERGY, published back in February 2000. A translation just isn’t going to happen with my current level of Japanese and the quality of these scans, but to give you a small idea of what’s here… it has pics and reports of various happenings in late 1999, such as the filming of the C no Binetsu PV, their appearances on PopJam and Music Station, a LIMIT CONTROL talk event, their first live tour and — most importantly — a glimpse into the necessities Makoto needs to have in his room. Perfume? Geez…
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.
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!
Hello and welcome to Henkka’s Aucifer blog, hereafter referred to as Silent Melody. How original…
In case you weren’t aware, Aucifer are a band. Actually, they’re a pretty damned good band in my books. If you’ve no idea what they’re about, the Jpopstop article on them would be a good place to start investigating — I would know, I’m the one who wrote it!
I’d call Aucifer my all time favorite J-rock band. I got to know them like anyone else: through the awesome Kaikan Phraseanime. I loved it! Since I’m a huge music fan, it was a very entertaining watch: whether it was the silly animated playing scenes, the ridiculous band rivalries, the “releasing five singles on the same day” schemes or the 24-hour live shows (what the hell?!), I thought it was magnificent. More than anything though, it was the music that stuck with me. It didn’t take long for all the songs to be completely burned into my memory. I started investigating, quickly dug out their whole discography and, well, here we are.
As to why this blog exists? I have another blog where I occasionally wrote about Aucifer but I figured, why not just make a new one focusing entirely on the band? Hey, they’re my favorite after all. Some might argue that there’s not much to talk about a band that’s been dead and largely forgotten for a good seven years now, but as it just so happens, there’s very strong reason to believe Aucifer are going to be back soon (more on that in the next post.) Even if that never happens though, I don’t mind: I like to occasionally check what the members are up to and then write about my findings. And hell, even if they stop doing anything at all, there’s still all those old songs to fangirl over, right?
Please join me as I write about anything and everything having to do with Aucifer, its music, its members’ recent activities and about how much I want to engage in sexual activity with Yuki‘s hair. Please bear with the site as I try my best to not make it look like shit!