Hi, this is Jigsaw, welcome to my humble blog.
I'm a hopeless introvert who spends way too much time listening to all kinds of music (although mainly of the guitar-centric variety), so I figured why not do something creative with that, particularly considering my obsession with visual kei. I started this musical journey a good 17 years ago after all, and at this point it's safe to say that this love will stick.
But what the heck is visual kei?
If you found my blog you probably already know, but for clarity's sake, here is a short clear-cut definition: ...well uhh, this is where it gets a bit difficult.
Every few years the same debates surface in online communities on what exactly constitutes visual kei. Is it even a musical genre? Is it just fashion? To me, visual kei is a subculture that revolves around an interconnected network of artists with (more or less) extreme looks and melodramatic music. Both bands and fans operate within their own set of practices and mannerisms which separate VK from other rock-based music scenes (but I won't get into that here because I'm not writing a lame Wikipedia entry). Suffice to say, once you start diving deeper and deeper into the VK scene, you will soon start to pick up on these details instinctively if you have a good circle of friends and resources. For example, these days VKGY is one of the places to be.
The bottom line is, these VK dudes (and a small number of dudettes) are cranking out so much music all the time, it would be a waste not to highlight some quality releases. My plan with this blog is to go through a bunch of bands in alphabetical order, selecting works that I think are too cool to go unnoticed. The first post will feature an artist whose name begins with a number or symbol, then the next one with an A, then a B, etc. Once I get to the end of the alphabet I start all over again with different bands. Obviously I'll run out of artists that I'm familiar with after a while, but that will be a good motivating factor for me to try out new things... We'll see!
Even though this is just a small selfish endeavor for me to chronicle some bits and pieces of music to my own liking, I hope you'll enjoy reading, discovering or re-discovering these treasures along the way. I will try to post at least once a week (but the goal would be a post every few days), including both more prominent and less-known releases too.
See you in 2022!
