UROBOROS

FUCK YES.
I know the Jing made a post about this already, but that was BEFORE we heard it. This definitely deserves a post purely to proclaim its win-ness. So, Jing and I listened to this a couple days ago @_@ and so did the Laura. <3

And wow was it WAY BETTER than anything I expected from Dir en Grey after Marrow of the Bone and Withering to Death. Don't get me wrong, Kodou was <3....but the album as a whole wasn't notable enough to me. [Though this may also have to do with the fact that I heard most of the stuff I liked on the singles "The Final" and "saku"...and wasn't that interested in what was only on the album...]

I really love their change of direction.
This is what I would've hoped Dir en Grey would've come out with after Vulgar. Kyo's voice is absolutely beautiful in a lot of the songs. Especially the ninth track @_@ I very much approve of the way they used drums in that track...and I think they used them in some other tracks as well but its late and I unfortunately can't comprehensively go through each one again and figure it out. My favorites were the ninth track, Glass Skin, and Inconvenient Ideal. But! That is only one day after listening to the whole album and I basically listened to those three songs repeatedly today...who knows what other songs I may discover the beauty behind over some time. Dir en Grey songs do at times take some time to sink in, and I think that may very well be the case with this album where so many of the songs sound really great at least at some part or other. The sounds have a very interesting complexity and there are a lot of things going on in them. I've read they used a "mandolin" to create some of the more unique sounds...will look into that later.

And for anyone that hasn't looked up or doesn't get the title at all, Uroboros refers to the symbol of that dragon/snake creature that's curled up in a circle devouring itself starting at the end....a reference to the idea of "reincarnation" or so, according to the wiki article...
and YES! reincarnation indeed, I am very pleased with this new revival of old DeG greatness. I had started to give up on them especially after Marrow of the Bone was completely horrible. I mean completely horrible. I honestly didn't like any of the songs on it...except Ryoujoku no Ame was OK-ish [tolerable anyway].

Furthermore, on a more personal level I was very excited with the way it was a reincarnation of old DeG fangirlyness which worked as conversational material and a means of connecting us further through our common DeG fangirlyness. Remember those good old days? When we were rabid little j-rock fans that ate up anything Dir en Grey or j-rock related? When we sought out magazines, pictures, interviews, similar bands to satiate our thirst? When we would readily be shrieking j-rock loving banshees if it was intended to promote what was godly to us? @_@
Yes, they were perhaps...*Ahem* embarassing times to recall personality wise, but they were fun! I know it was mostly Jing, Laura and I that tended towards j-rock [though if i recall correctly, Oli and Maggie had the hots for Miyavi or something], but I think it was around then that was the height of the friendship of the WTB as a whole as well. Something about the interconnected feeling and having something to talk about together really helped me feel closer to Jing and Laura especially, and to have something to blab about to the others as well. Especially since I'm not generally good at blab-ing what with the whole tending-to-be-quiet thing. I remember that j-rock collage or so that Laura made and put up in the locker we shared at the time to make it more "homely" <3 that was so cute. I really appreciated the way things were at the time. I appreciated how much we all talked together and met together and spend time together as a ball of friendshipful goodness. It was around the first term of sophmore year, and I'm seriously not making this exclusive to my friendship with Jing and Laura, but including all of WTB [aside from Jimmyn I suppose], we used to meet by our lockers in that little niche across from the cafeteria DAILY afterschool, and I remember Hyo used to bring in her tarot cards and once, was it Veronica? brought in travelpack monopoly <3. Then there were times we used to leak into that room right next to those lockers and draw on the board, all sorts of other nonsense...trekking off to Book Off or Kinokuniya or Chinatown even on a gloomy day....THOSE WERE THE DAYS <3

I honestly felt like we were becoming a wonderful little family of our own back then, and I fucking LOVED you guys. *Ahem* sorry for the profanity, the emphasis was needed to highlight the GUSHING INTENSITY of the feeling. Perhaps I just looked too stupidly apathetic at the time for any one else in WTB to understand how incredibly much I loved that time, or valued the friendships of the WTBians [I was going to type "Boobians" but....err...that seemed too strange] this lack of understanding, clearly proven by how easily I was later dropped...haha xD but that's not a story for this post! This post is about LOVE! and reincarnation.

My newfound love for Dir en Grey and j-rock was a highlight of that time, it was a reason why it was easier for me to connect with Jing and Laura and it's the reason why the WIN-ness of this new album reminds me of all that was in those times. Listening to Uroboros for the first time through, getting excited about it's goodness, and conversing with Jing and Laura about it was very awesome, indeed. I've missed the times when we used to converse even remotely like so and those conversations were probably the most I've communicated with either in some time...
At this rate, let's just hope their next album refers to and inspires a complete revival eh?

- a n k i - ?!

1. http://anki.nce.buttobi.net/
2. Manually append /archives/ to the url once the above link loads.
3. ????
4. PROFIT

(You must do it this way; direct linking http://anki.nce.buttobi.net/archives/ does not work.)

Surprising turn of events.

I don't know how many of you have been up to date with SamBakZa's flash series (a.k.a. "the really cute flash vids of that bunny chasing around this cat"), but I only found out recently...and it's nothing short of shocking, to say the least. =/

(Please actually click on the link and wait to watch before reading any further. Unless the seemingly randomness of the following semi-memoir doesn't bother you...in which case, please watch anyway.)



Hedgehogs.

There once had been two in our rather-ghetto cellar in China. I was a bit too young to have understood its exact architectures then; in retrospect, it was perhaps just a simple square hole dug into the ground lined with bricks, covered by a pile of logs. In winters we'd store white cabbage there, though we did have a real refrigerator-- there was just something special about the taste of nappa stored and dug out from underground.

And one year, instead of bringing inside another cabbage, my father motioned me and Mother to come out. There, under the space made by logs. There were they: two gray-brown ball-shaped masses, huddled close together and not a muscle shifting. Especially impressionable had been their spikes, the tips of all of which a bleached color fading close to ashen white.

Not the same at all as I'd seen them in books and cartoons.

We laid out food for them, small pieces of meat and yam among other things, and checked at weekly or biweekly intervals. My mother had forbidden me to disturb them on a daily basis after we'd carefully removed all cabbage from around them, still enclosed in plastic bags, though they never seemed to notice anything we do. The meat, however, was always gone. The other foods, not so much.

We kept the area quiet through all winter. Dogs, children, meddling neighbors; none had known about our pair of spiky visitors sleeping under a pile of logs.

'Til one early spring day, of course. They had gone, as quietly and unobserved as they had come, leaving us a gift of an empty cellar now smelling ever so slightly of certain odors left by wild animals.

The cellar had been empty since.