Distributed by VIZ Pictures
54 minutes (12 music videos)

Viz Pictures really ought to have the subtitle: Stuff Erin Likes. It’s uncanny. I should meet the guy who’s picking these titles and shake his hand - I should buy him a beer at SDCC. I just hope that my personal taste in film is commercial enough to last!

Last fall I was randomly thinking, “I should listen to some Gackt!” and suddenly, like magic, Viz releases a filmography of his music videos! Unfortunately Carlos didn’t like the Blue volume, and I didn’t either, because I don’t like slow love songs. The Red volume is definitely the way to go, (even Carlos admitted it). Red contains much peppier rock and pop songs.

The strongest music video in this 12 video compellation is “Metamorphoze,” wherein Gackt plays a (dead) Gundam pilot singing to his lost love. Live-action footage of Gackt floating through space in a Gundam cockpit is inter-cut with scenes from Gundam anime series, including mech battle scenes. Although it is a little cheesy, and I’m not a fan of Gundam, I watched this video three times in a row as soon as I got the shrink wrap of the DVD case.

It’s significant that Gackt is singing from the point of view of a dead pilot, as he plays a dead guy in over half of the music videos on Red. These aren’t murder ballads, per say, but if you are interested in murder ballads, I recommend the 1996 album “Murder Ballads” by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, wherein each song is sung from a murder victim’s point of view.

Gackt’s death is less obvious in some of the videos. In the upbeat song “Another World” Gackt is shot off-camera in a heist gone wrong. As he drives away (looking gorgeous) in a red VW bug at the end we see a brief shot of his bloody shirt. He’s probably not going to live, but it was a fun video, even if the details of the plot were hard to follow.

“Oasis” takes place in a post-apocolyptic desert. It seems like the blonde chick and little boy in the video may already be dead - Gackt’s cyber-armed character is pretty depressed about that. Maybe he won’t last much longer either.

In “Secret Garden” Gackt’s character disappears in a mysterious flash of light at the end after spending some time in a bus station filled with racial stereotypes. Was he dead before the video started? Was he a guardian angel?

“Redemption” features more fantastic visual-kei outfits with a lot of leather straps, shoulder guards, and feathers. The microphone is inside a huge ornate dragon staff. Gakct (looking hot) plays a dead character, although the reason for the death is not obvious (on first viewing) and the character stands up at the end. Perhaps he recovered?

In “Seki-Ray” Gackt (looking cute) dies of exposure in the snow. In “Never Forget You” Gackt apparently dies by drowning after riding his motorcycle a lot and also leaning against it in an airplane hanger. (Gackt is hotness in leather.)

“Dreams You Pursued” reminded me of Cibo Matto’s video to “Sugar Water”. Gackt (I didn’t like his jacket in this one) is going to meet his date at European café near a fountain. He can’t get the waiters’ attention and his watch is inexplicably smashed. It turns out Gackt’s character is already dead, hit by a car on the way to meet his date! The girl in the video is really cute, and the song is surprisingly cheerful.

Gackt does not die in “Mizerable,” wherein he’s carried around in a palanquin and the devil plays violin in a glam-rock version of medieval Europe. It’s hard to take the song seriously, as part of the chorus is sung in English, “I am ‘Les Miserables’!” Nevertheless, Gackt wears the most David Bowie like outfits in this video, and I mean Bowie from the “Spiders from Mars” era.

“Black Stone” and “Mirror” rock out (in a pop way). In “Black Stone” Gackt is accompanied by several dreadlocked guitarist in the back of a moving semi-truck. In “Mirror” the accompanying band and Gackt wear matching (and totally hot) red leather jackets and gold pants. This song is the most angry, with a couple of swear words thrown in. The guitar riff reminded me favorably of the riff in the Stone Temple Pilots’ song “Vaseline”.

“Vanilla” is the weakest video on the DVD, despite the upbeat, ska-like song and interesting futuristic outfits. Strange white-hooded nurses run up and down a hallway, occasionally carrying the type of ribbons used in rhythmic gymnastics and/or a pilates ball. Unfortunately, there are only three or four camera set-ups in this video, and the editing is random. The song never builds to much of anything and the future nurses aren’t great dancers. (Gackt wasn’t as attractive either.)

I really enjoyed almost every single song on this compilation, even if I found some of the videos a little too weird (or not weird enough). Gackt’s singing reminds me a little of Billy Corgan’s on the album “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness”. Fortunately for me, Gackt’s catalog was made available in the iTunes store around the time these DVDs were released.

This a great DVD to squeal over at your junior high slumber party. I would show it back to back with Death Note the Last Name if I was turning 13 or 14 again.

The only way Red could have been improved would be by providing some kind of DVD extras - perhaps a “making of” featurette or an interview with Gackt. The DVD booklet does not contain any information besides basic facts - a Gackt biography included somewhere would have been fun. The lyrics are available on the disc in both Japanese and English. I would have liked romanji lyrics so I could practice for karaoke, but I guess I could buckle down and learn the kanji if I was that serious about it.

I’m totally stoked that Viz is importing Japanese music videos. What’s next? M-Flo? The Pillows? Shiina Ringo? Shojo Beat magazine seems to cover more and more J-rock and J-pop. What is Viz secretly planning?

Distributed by VIZ Pictures
65 minutes (12 music videos)

After a hard day’s work, one crisp autumn afternoon, I walked to my car parked about a block away. Suddenly, from behind a lamppost far too thin for any normal human being to hide behind, a posse of ninjas appears, swarming me. I try to fight back using my trademark girlish shrieks and wild arm flailing, but to no avail. Using secret ninjutsu techniques that they likely learned from that wacky Naruto show, they teleported me to some undisclosed location.

I found myself tied to a chair, facing a television. Hooked up to it was a DVD player, its tray closing. I shuddered. What manner of vile imagery were these devious ninjas going to impart? It began: Gackt, it’s called, and it appeared to be about a Japanese band. Okay, fine; so far so good. If all they were going to show me was a bunch of Japanese music videos, how terrible could it be?

The first song, “My Story,” didn’t start off too badly. The video depicts an Advent Children cosplayer (I think; it might have been a really mannish woman) lamenting over the fact that he misses his old girlfriend. Not the greatest song I’ve ever heard, but certainly not the worst. Until just before the end, that is, when the main singer dude starts to convey his supposed desperation… by gesturing in a manner so overly melodramatic that Julia Roberts would shake her head in shame. I asked my ninja captors if there was something wrong with the man: clearly he was having an epileptic seizure. The ninjas laughed. Devious buggers.

The second video, “Everything for You,” was more of the same. This time, the Cloud-wannabe is singing about an unhappy girl that he wants to love. Or something to that effect. More spastic “dancing” ensued: really, this was just a different version of the first song. I suddenly realize the exquisitely terrifying reality of my plight. These ninjas, clearly hired by my mortal nemesis Anti-Carlos, are clearly trying to break my spirit through psychological torture. Their tool: Gackt: The Greatest Filmography 1999-2006 BLUE. (There’s also a RED version, apparently. Like Pokemon.)

Moving on to “Luna Hymn,” a computer-rendered piece of animation that would have been more at home in a first season episode of The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest, we find–wait for it–a broken man singing about some lost love. Big surprise! Sadly, the guy’s mechanical arm is used only to convey more emo-angst; if he had, say, killed a man with it, I could have at least answered that primal urge to bear witness to cartoon violence.

The videos continued, and each time, I desperately hoped that it would not be a song about tragic love. But then, the first or second subtitle would shatter that hope. Confound it all! Does this “Gackt” fellow/lady/genderless being not know any other type of song? Perhaps he’s/she’s/it’s a victim of fate, being typecast because of some past performance some bigwig producer saw money-making potential in. Maybe I’m just not getting it. Is there a cultural barrier at work, and is this noise that dares to call itself music infinitely more appreciable in the land of the rising sun? The questions could only preoccupy my mind for so long before more of Gackt invaded my brain. I thought I wouldn’t survive.

The videos’ settings ranged from predictable to outright absurd. One took place in New York City, and featured people of many different backgrounds holding up peace signs… yet the song is no less about “wanting to see you again” than every other one on the disc. Don’t get me wrong; there’s nothing wrong with showing the population’s wishes for a peaceful world, but the scenario and the song itself are wildly mismatched. Another video involved vampires and some of the most poorly choreographed swordfights I’d ever seen. It was so absurd that I was almost able to tune out the lyrics and subtitles. Almost.

Mercifully, there were a couple of times where I didn’t want to rip out my eyes and ears. “Because You Are Expecting Me” was a nice little tune, with guitars and strings contrasting nicely. It also really showcased Mr. Gackt’s very nice voice; it’s really too bad he doesn’t practice subtlety more often. “Because You Are Expecting Me” is shot in a Tokyo studio amidst a quiet audience, which was, at the very least, a nice change of pace from the vampires. “Last Song -Unplugged-” features some very pleasing piano work. The lyrics aren’t terribly impressive, but I could listen to that mesmerizing piano all day.

Eventually, it all ended, the pain finally over. The evil ninjas then, somewhat uncharacteristically, drove me home in a red Pontiac Sunfire, booting me out and speeding off. And that’s my story. But worry not, dear readers. Anti-Carlos is getting a very special present for his trouble: I’ve hired my own army of psycho-ninjas, and they will force him to listen to every song that Linkin Park has ever made. Or poison his tequila. Whatever’s funnier.

Believe it or not, I bought this EP without ever hearing anything by, or about, T-Love or her producer, This Kid Named Miles. The title caught my eye and something about the packaging just told me to buy it. (Maybe because she wasn’t using sex to sell). Seeing a couple recognizable and respectable names, Charlie 2na (of Jurassic 5) and Kool Keith, cinched it.

T-Love’s lyrics range from clever (”I get down as if I was in an armed robbery / Styles so fat they clog an artery”) to silly (”I rise like yeast, they crumble like toast”) but overall she gets over with her dynamic delivery. She shifts her emphasis and fluctuates her flow, which seperates her from many MC’s whose tone can grow boring to the ears; granted, this is an EP, but I have no doubt that T-Love would remain very listenable over the course of a full album. The live instrumentation — bass, upright cello, guitars and drums all played by This Kid Named Miles — complements T-Love perfectly. Throw in some scratching and you’ve got a complete hip-hop package.

The best example of how it all comes together is the title track, which is propelled by a plucked bass and held together by a couple samples (”wick wick wack” and “you’re so wack that it’s bound to show”) on the chorus. The KRS soundbite might be old, but with Kool Keith, you’re guaranteed the next shit. Though T represents, Keith steals the show, calling kids out as only he can: “Yo, T-Love, these assholes are dirt specks on my rugs”.

Return of the B-Girl’s old-school vibe and live, jazzy beats set it apart from the rest of the market. On top of that, T-Love is a female MC who isn’t obsessed with money, power or sex — she’s just a b-girl with skills. And her partner Miles is obviously multi-talented. Hopefully a full LP from these two is on its way.

While the lyrical preoccupation with eating (Cibo Matto means “food madness”) has been toned down a bit on their follow up dish, Stereotype A is still filled with the same engaging variety of musical tastes. From the samba-like “Flowers” to the heavy metal “Blue Train” to the Tokyo/NYC stomp of “Sci-Fi Wasabi”,Cibo Matto remain unstereotypable.

The two-part “Sunday” starts off with hip-hop attitude, propelled by rhythmic scratching, and slowly melts into a soft-spoken song that sounds like a lonely rainy afternoon. The seriously funky remix of “Spoon” and the free-spirited groove of “Lint of Love” (which brings to mind Dee-lite’s “Groove is in the Heart”) are both great examples of how the girls and their fellow band members can jam. Credit for successfully, and seemingly effortlessly, pulling off the dizzy array of styles goes not only to supa-producer Yuka Honda but to all the musicians (the band really consists of Miho, Yuka, Sean Lennon and Timo Ellis) who clearly form a tight-knit unit. The numerous, varied guest musicians blend in well while adding extra flavor.

Vocally, Miho has improved noticeably. On Viva Woman, she showed she had the chops for serious grrl power growling and the sugar to blow j-pop bubbles. On Stereotype A’s numerous ballads, though, she displays not only her voice’s range but its *feeling*. This is especially important since the meaning behind many of Miho’s songs can be very hard to get at, especially without the emotional clues. Honestly, with the first album, I frequently found myself wondering how often the food references were meant as sexual innuendo — ‘Is this just a cute Japanese girl writing silly stuff about white pepper ice cream or do I just have a dirty mind?’ Probably just the latter because Stereotype A certainly has its share of nonsensical lyrics (”Surely not Moby, Obi-Wan Kenobi told me in the lobby…”)

While nothing here really equals the more sublime moments (like the three part “Theme”) on their debut, repeated listenings will definitely reveal Cibo Matto’s second platter to be just as satisfying.

(Consider how the rawness of the Beastie Boys’ Licensed to Ill received was universally embraced while the Dust Brothers’ immense creativity on the follow-up, Paul’s Boutique, was completely ignored by the same heads. De La’s early material was/is similarly fronted on).

You might remember bugging off Ofra Hazra’s voice on Coldcut’s remix of “Paid in Full (Seven Minutes of Music)” back in the day. In the current age of Puffypop, using some Indian chick’s chant in the middle of a hip-hop song is something that only a certified mad scientist like RZA would be allowed to try. But as unthinkable as it seems, this joint (featured on the Colors soundtrack) got heavy rotation in clubs Stateside and across the Pacific. The second version of “Paid in Full” (”Derek B’s Urban Respray”), which samples Chuck Brown’s “I Need Money” and John Mellencamp’s “Jack and Diane” to equal effect, received less play but was equally dope.

Having been an avid collector of these joints on wax, I was hyped to see the inclusion of “As the Rhyme Goes On (Pumpin the Turbo - Chad Jay in Full Effect)”; the track gets a booster shot injection, climaxing with an out-of-control human beatbox. Sticking closer to the spirit of the original material are the two “Move the Crowd” mixes; both are nice but I’m partial to the Wild Bunch version, which has a bit more funk to it. (FYI: members of Massive Attack were part of The Wild Bunch collective, as was Nellee Hooper, who went on to work with Soul II Soul, Bjork and Madonna). The Richie Rich “megamix” of “I Know You Got Soul” is okay, but is ultimately inferior to the “Six Minutes of Soul” version by Double Trouble (Norman Cook, aka Fat Boy Slim) which is sadly not included.

Dub versions of “I Know You Got Soul”, “Eric B is President” and “My Melody” are great inclusions for DJ’s, but (and this is my biggest gripe) I would much rather have seen something like “Microphone Fiend” or “Put Your Hands Together” mixes instead. Guess we’ll have to cross our fingers and hope for a Platinum Edition of Follow the Leader.

For those with an appreciation for truly inspired sampling, (pre-Biz Markie lawsuit), The Platinum Edition collects some rare gems and makes them readily available on one disc. Buy it and give your original copy of Paid in Full to one of the neighborhood kids who don’t know any better.