Harbringer of ascension @ 高田馬場AREA
Despite our many daily earthquakes, everyday activities are starting to go back to normal. This includes lives, and yesterday was the first live with Art Cube in more than two months.
The only other bands playing were VII-Sense, Secilia Luna, and a session band with Vidoll members, so each band had more time on stage than usual :)
I snagged Art Cube's setlist off the stage after they finished, so here are the songs they played:
The first and sixth songs are new, and both of them are fun! For Akatsuki Seiji had told us to bring fans to wave around. He had his own fan made with fluffy black feathers, and said he might consider creating an official Art Cube fan that they'll sell for the lives. Until then some of us have agreed to use Kaya's fan with pink feathers just for the fun of it (it doesn't exactly fit the band's image), so I hope they play this song during the next live on the 28th. The song's coreography definitely goes best with fans, but Seiji gave us a few alternatives to wave around: "You can wave fans, or handkerchiefs...... or..... fans..... and handkerchiefs. And shoes!" lol. As usual he forgot a lot of the things he'd planned(?) for the MC. He blamed it on his age and said he had some sort of eraser inside his head.
The other new song is my favourite of the two. It's called Test Tube Skeleton, and sounds completely different from all their other songs. Definitely want this one as part of a release soon. There's a lot of fist pumping going on during the live performance where we are supposed to shout along to Seiji's shouts. As long as we joined in, we can shout what we want, and examples of shouts given were "baka" and "aho"... (oh Seiji)
As promised, the band came on stage in brand new costumes :) They're not as colourful as we're used to seeing them anymore. The designs are similar to their previous looks, but all four of them got black outfits now. The only colourful elements are Shizuki and Seiji's hair, both bright red. Seiji used the head-piece from his first costume (the feathers and roses), and dyed all of his hair red. First time he doesn't use a wig for this band. I hope he'll change the current head-piece eventually so he can finally join in on some headbanging (His headbanging skills really are amazing). He had elaborate rings on all ten fingers. Suddenly one of them was gone, and was later discovered to be stuck in the tulle of his skirt x)
Some good news during the second MC was that they're planning on bringing Rem to the oneman next month! :D I love her, so it would be great to see her up close again. But her appearance depends on how willing she is to cooperate, and if her owner can actually safely handle her on stage now that she's gotten so big and heavy. Hope it works out!
By the way, though it was one of the things he forgot to announce, Art Cube has a new website now. Looks like it's finally up to date too - http://artcube-web.com/
Satoshi also joined us in the audience last night. And he had brought an interesting new flyer.
Judging by the flyers we received upon entering the hall, it looks like a certain polkadot-clad vocalist dropped by on his way to rehearsal too.
THE VELVET's sponsored event is taking place tomorrow. Been looking forward to it for a while now, so I'm really happy it didn't end up being cancelled like previous events despite the recent increase in big quakes. Missed the guys during this past month, and tomorrow chiro and Mai will return to the stage together with the other two, so that'll be fun :)