Aural Candy Vox

Monday, October 9, 2006

Phantasmagoria is too Damn Fantastic

I just discovered a new favorite band called Phantasmagoria!

*is giddy from excitement*

As I was reading D's Wikpedia entry, I came upon the name of the vocalist Asagi and guitarist Ruiza's former band Syndrome and the mention of Syndrome's leader KISAKI's current project, Phantasmagoria. I've seen Phantasmagoria posts around various J-Rock communities before, but never paid too attention. Now that I realized the existence of a link between Phantasmagoria and D, I decided to check out Phantasmagoria's Wikipedia entry.

This is when I realized that, oh my freaking god, KISAKI is actually the head executive of UNDER CODE PRODUCTION. The indie visual kei production company/record label that also produces popular bands like VIDOLL and 12012 (and not quite popular, but still beloved Karma-Shenjing). And! He was the leader and bassist of La:Sadies, the band that was to become Dir en grey (now under Free-Will's FIREWALL Div.)!!! And what's more, he was the executive of Matina before its dissolution. This was the label Gazette was on before switching to PS Company (a sub-label of Free-Will)! Jesus Christ, KISAKI is linked to everyone!

This "degrees of separation" intrigued me so much that I simply had to investigate Phantasmagoria's music. I just couldn't resist finding out more about this fascinating KISAKI's current band. All I did was type in "Phantasmagoria" in YouTube and went through the PVs that turn up in the results. And to my pleasant surprise, I actually love every single song featured in the PVs produced by this band. This is an amazing feat in of itself. The only other band who's achieved the same in my book is SID, not even my darling Gazette has done it because I dislike their earlier works. This is so ass-kickingly awesome.

Without futher ado, a Phantasmagoria PV...





What's really great about becoming a Phantasmagoria fan is: the band's releases are distributed by Free-Will America in the United States. I can purchase their releases directly from the record label right here in the good old US of A. Oh my god, this is too good to be true! Their first (and only so far) full-length album is a compilation that's only released in the US.

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