XA-VAT's Origin

Közi (XA-VAT 2010)

Oi! This post is gonna be an english version of a brazilian Portuguese article I wrote for this blog four years ago, more specifically in 11/Feb/2013. It was the first post and I want more people to be able to read it. Click here for the original link.

It's a really huge post so you probably won't enjoy it if you don't have any interest in the band I'll be talking about, which is of course, XA-VAT. At the time I was thinking a lot about how did the bandmates meet, so there's a lot of links between all of the members for me to talk about.

There isn't any biography about the band anywhere, and if there is, it's probably in japanese and I'd take ages to translate everything, so I decided to look up for stuff about each of the members by myself, grab everything I got, and put into one single article, and indeed I found a lot of stuff that can put together a story and speculate how these four awesome guys predestined to create this amazing band met.

 (XA-VAT 2010)

Before they started with XA-VAT itself, they had a band called "Killer Session", which was a session band (not official).

It's really a bummer that XA-VAT didn't make it to be a super-famous band, considering it's a 'Supergroup" because of the member's past musical history. Even more knowing that the band reunites two of the japanese "musical gods" (well, at least for me), Közi and Ishii Shuuji.

Another notable member is Sadie from SPEECIES, which is also an amazing band, following Sigue Sigue Sputnik's steps not only visually but also musically. The 4º member is Takao Koma, a long time friend of Ishii (and a former goatbed member along with Ishii).

SPEECIES ♥

XA-VAT's sound/audio quality is something outta this world, amazing production and record company (FlyingStar Records). My favorite song is "VAT-DANCE" and I always catch myself thinking about how many hours/days did they spend on that song only, because it's really incredible in any aspect, from the beginning to the end.

We can totally say that this is Közi's most different project so far. He has always been a fan of the new wave, but this was the project where he could show and manifest his passion for it the most. In my opinion, there's nothing gothic on their lyrics, not in the visual.

After listening to goatbed and cali≠gari (both bands where Ishii is the vocalist), you can see and listen to his influence that he has put on this project. I had a hard time finding the SPEECIES-factor in it right away, but you can totally see it after a few minutes (if you really know them well).

Let me talk about the day I got suprised because something I found out, about Mana AND Sadie: I almost died after I saw that they both appeared in a magazine article about "gothics" a long time ago, TOGETHER. You can see the pictures bellow. Maybe that is the link between our Sadie for XA-VAT, considering he knew Mana since ages ago.

The guy right behind them is Art Marju Duchain's vocalist Kai, another awesome band (what a great world that we live in!). At the time, Sadie was guitarrist from a band called J U B I LE E, after a while he became the vocalist, and that was a very gothic band, I can assure you that. You can even see a little bit of it on Sadie's official YouTube channel here. He's so nice he keeps posting his old shows in VHS quality for us. ♥ We probably found out Közi's link to the band we know today, everybody knows everybody!

I just love those pictures, it really tells us that Mana knows EVERYBODY from the VK world and we probably know nothing about it. Still that was the last thing I expected to find out, and it helped me to connect the friendships, like I was expecting to do.
Something cool that I wanna say only for trivia's sake, Mana has appeared on a show for Art Marju Duchain as a guest once. Also, J U B I L L E looks a lot like Art Marju, musically speaking. There was even a time where I only listened to both of those bands, but I had no idea about all those connections.

cali≠gari

Even more interesting is that, theres a caption for a picture I saw on the internet at the time, saying that Ao (from cali≠gari) mentioned ＪＵＢＩＬＥＥ in another magazine article a long time ago. Ishii said in an article from 2011 "[...]I met Közi for the first time when we were both teenagers. 15 years later we met again in a show of a common friend of ours last year. I didn't think about anything like "let's make a band" right away, but we did think we could make something fun!"


And that's another connection for Ishii. I don't know for sure what friend is it that Ishii mentioned, it can be anyone... I hate math but I made some calculations here: the interview was in 2011, that show that happened a year before, was in 2010, so, 15 years before that, was 1995, where Ishii's first band (cali≠gari) made 3 years (even tho he only joined the band in 2000), and he was 22 years old in 1995, while Közi was 24 (already in Malice Mizer), wow, ok, so many connections. I don't know if everything I saw is only a coincidence and nothing else, but I can say for sure that everything helped XA-VAT to happen in 2010.

And here we are at the end of 2017, they disbanded, but, we still have their masterpieces to listen to. ♥

Recebendo as Aquisições

As aquisições mencionadas no post anterior, já estão aqui em minhas mãos, na verdade, já faz muito tempo. 💦 Só hoje consegui arranjar um tempo para escrever com detalhes esse post, e peço desculpas pela demora.

JEEZSO8DOVEDOPE

Eu não poderia me sentir mais satisfeita do que já estou com esses CDs. A última vez que comprei um CD original foi no ano passado, e eu já havia esquecido de como é ótimo esse sentimento de apoiar aquele artista que você gosta, mesmo que ele mal compreenda a intensidade da influência que ele conseguiu criar em sua vida. Algumas pessoas podem considerar exagero, mas tudo depende do tamanho que ela tem do amor pela banda/artista.

Tirei umas fotos no momento em que os itens chegaram, e foram duas ocasiões, até porque eu encomendei os dois de lugares diferentes, como (também) explicado no post anterior.

JEEZSO8DOVEDOPE

Mas vamos em partes. Primeiramente, o CD do ZiZ, "JEEZSO8DOVEDOPE" chegou no dia 27 de Dezembro de 2016 (sim), em época de Natal, o pacote conseguiu sobreviver intacto até a minha casa.

Junto com ele, eu tinha encomendado outro CD de outra banda que eu gosto, embora não venha ao caso, aparece em uma das fotos abaixo. (💙)



Eu ainda penso em fazer uma resenha/review das músicas, mas ainda não escutei todas elas o suficiente pra isso. E no final do post, estarei mostrando fotos dos meus charts no LastFM, mostrando a quantidade de execuções que tive até agora, de cada álbum. Não é suficiente pois não ando tendo muito tempo livre, para minha infelicidade. Mas foi maravilhoso chegar do serviço e ter uma encomenda dessas no meu aguardo.

JSDD / MAGICAL MISFITS FANTASY

Encarte e CD do JEEZSO8DOVEDOPE

Quanto a outra ocasião, com o CD do VAMQUET, "VAMHAUS", que chegou no dia 20 de Janeiro de 207, foi literalmente o oposto do que eu falei acima. Realmente um pesadelo, pois eu tinha acabado de acordar, então a encomenda chegou, mas já tinha dado o horário pra mim sair para o trabalho e não tive nem tempo de sequer abrir uma encomenda! Foi um dia terrível durante todo o tempo no serviço, mas tudo bem. O outro pacote veio assim:

Nunca demorei tanto pra abrir uma encomenda! Usei faca, tesoura, unhas e tudo isso porque eles embalaram com a própria sacola da TEKNOPOLICE tamanho gigante (como se o cliente tivesse comprado direto da loja física) e obviamente eu não queria estragar porque gosto de guardar todas comigo, de compras anteriores no site.

Veio tudo em um pacote super fino de papelão. E claro, deveria ter vindo somente o CD, mas eles foram incríveis o suficiente de enviar um adesivo brutal do SPEECIES, e outro da Glamtronik, que é o nome da gravadora, tanto do VAMQUET, quanto dos próprios CDs que o SPEECIES lança.
Fiquei incrivelmente feliz com esses adesivos, sério, eles não tem a mínima noção, mas não vou nem usar. Vou mostrar uma foto mais detalhada abaixo.

Os CDs estão realmente autografados, como combinado, hahaha, gente. Consegui reconhecer a escrita de "Sadie" no primeiro autógrafo, então o outro só pode ser do Kai. ❤️

E para finalizar o post: uma mensagem subliminar para os fãs, do lado de dentro do Obi do CD do ZiZ.

O CD do VAMHAUS não veio encarte, o que me chateou um pouco porque é realmente só aquilo que você viu na foto, com o Obi normal, mas quem se importa, afinal são seis músicas!



E falando nelas, aqui estão os meus charts (até o instante). É muito divertido fazer reviews, então eu definitivamente os farei em breve. Considerando que eu sempre tento adivinhar qual música será a minha preferida quando sai um novo CD, vou estar revelando se eu, de fato, acertei ou não, então vai ser divertido! Enquanto isso, escute as músicas assim que tiver a chance, tenho certeza que ninguém vai se decepcionar.