Goodbye Alice
Oct. 14th, 2023 03:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
haii2uFor a while now I've been really into the band Velvet Eden, a Japanese darkwave band from 1999 - 2016. I don't really listen to Japanese music outside of that, I tried getting into Malice Mizer and their stuff is nice but not really my style (I like Mana and Gackt though, who doesn't?).
The vocalist Dada has a very unique voice that just can't be replicated! He's really pretty too. It's hard to find good pics of him, but my favorite look of his is either from the Igyou Hime music video or as the stunning Madame Tarantula. You can tell it's her because of the long, spindly finger gloves.
Speaking of Madame Tarantula... a lot of Velvet Eden's songs are loosely connected to her. I've never done a true deep-dive (I should!), but based on the translations I've seen, she's a brothel mistress who lures young people in through a mirror or dream world and turns them into "Alice"s, prostitutes modeled in her image.
The song SAD MASK is an example of this I think, where Madame Tarantula offers a mask to a "faceless" young man which I take to mean she gives him an identity as Alice and a purpose in life. It hurts him, but he won't take it off since he has no other option. The song ends with her saying, "You're not the only one without a face" maybe alluding to the other Alices?
So why does she do this? I'm not really sure, I wanted to find maybe some old forums talking about the album but info is super sparse. Maybe she feels like she's helping people. In the song Jailed Prince, she (revealing her name used to be Arachne) tells a story of falling in love with a prince long ago who was falsely imprisoned and tortured by the guards. Wanting him to die "nameless" and without any identity, they burned his face with an iron mask. In revenge, Arachne kills the guards, taking their skin to fashion the prince a new face, but he dies anyway. Now alone, no longer innocent and without anyone to love, she tries to help other "faceless" people in the only way she knows how. That's my interpretation at least!
If you want to listen to Velvet Eden, a good portion of their discography is on Spotify! BUT... Street of Alice, my favorite album of theirs, is only available on YouTube, so here's a link to that playlist. Here's also a wonderful website that has excellent translations for pretty much all of their songs so you can come up with your own interpretation of the story of Alice and Madame Tarantula.
Dada is retired from singing now, but he still does other stuff like fashion design, illustration and making little model cars.
Also, I wanted to brag that he follows me on Twitter & Instagram... soooo.... YEAH!!
The vocalist Dada has a very unique voice that just can't be replicated! He's really pretty too. It's hard to find good pics of him, but my favorite look of his is either from the Igyou Hime music video or as the stunning Madame Tarantula. You can tell it's her because of the long, spindly finger gloves.
Speaking of Madame Tarantula... a lot of Velvet Eden's songs are loosely connected to her. I've never done a true deep-dive (I should!), but based on the translations I've seen, she's a brothel mistress who lures young people in through a mirror or dream world and turns them into "Alice"s, prostitutes modeled in her image.
The song SAD MASK is an example of this I think, where Madame Tarantula offers a mask to a "faceless" young man which I take to mean she gives him an identity as Alice and a purpose in life. It hurts him, but he won't take it off since he has no other option. The song ends with her saying, "You're not the only one without a face" maybe alluding to the other Alices?
So why does she do this? I'm not really sure, I wanted to find maybe some old forums talking about the album but info is super sparse. Maybe she feels like she's helping people. In the song Jailed Prince, she (revealing her name used to be Arachne) tells a story of falling in love with a prince long ago who was falsely imprisoned and tortured by the guards. Wanting him to die "nameless" and without any identity, they burned his face with an iron mask. In revenge, Arachne kills the guards, taking their skin to fashion the prince a new face, but he dies anyway. Now alone, no longer innocent and without anyone to love, she tries to help other "faceless" people in the only way she knows how. That's my interpretation at least!
If you want to listen to Velvet Eden, a good portion of their discography is on Spotify! BUT... Street of Alice, my favorite album of theirs, is only available on YouTube, so here's a link to that playlist. Here's also a wonderful website that has excellent translations for pretty much all of their songs so you can come up with your own interpretation of the story of Alice and Madame Tarantula.
Dada is retired from singing now, but he still does other stuff like fashion design, illustration and making little model cars.
Also, I wanted to brag that he follows me on Twitter & Instagram... soooo.... YEAH!!
