TWISTED LOVE: Media
=====Pictures of the Concerts Here=====
Fritz Interview... After the May 28th Concert in Columbia Hall passed, Dir en grey (actually, Die and Toshiya) were interviewed by the German radio station Fritz. The Dir community was lucky enough that Fritz has a livestream, and we were able to record it thanks to the efforts of Zucci_zookeenee and several others.
Celebration! We have an interview with Dir en grey! A...German....interview. My German is nonexsistant, but luckily some people just know more that I do. Youneko, mi~ya, and K C KiriyamA all helped to translate the interview to English, the day of/after the interview was aired!
Download Interview (14.8MB, .mp3) Thank you Pieces for hosting!
Pictures of Kaoru and Shinya from Germany! Can't get much more updated than this!
An article on Dir en grey in a NOT VERY CREDIBLE newspaper ^^
Translation available here. (scan is partial)
Rock am Ring Livestream... A webpage shows up at Rockpalast that says the festival RaR will be streamed. Dir en grey was not streamed; see About for more info.
First person reports of the festivals.
Media from Rockpalaste Site
They look happy! :) The signature paper, from upper right to lower left corner, reads, "In Doitsu (Germany), Toshiya, 6.3 (date), Dir en grey, Rock am Ring, Shinya, "Doistu saiko-" (Germany rules)!
A small audio clip was also posted of Toshiya and Shinya addressing the fans.
Download the clip. (.mp3, 395kb)
Japanese (change your browser encoding to Japanese Shift_JIS if you don't see Japanese characters)
Toshiya: （え。。。）日本から来ましたDir en greyのToshiyaです。（え。。。）Rock am Ringこれから始まります。 （え。。。）???????ＲＯＣＫＰＡＬＡＳＴを楽しみ下さい。
Shinya: Dir en greyのShinyaです。 （え。。。。）今から出ます。
English Translation
Toshiya: umm....Coming from Japan, this is Toshiya of Dir en grey. um....Rock am Ring is starting. um...??????Please enjoy ROCKPALAST.
Shinya: This is Shinya of Dir en grey. um...We are starting now.
Dir en grey in German Newspaper
Original Article (German)
Translation:
"Music from another world: The succes on the internet of a band without a record label brings them to "Rock am Ring", where they meet the giants of the music industry.
The Australian band go-betweens were quite surprised, when on this day they arrived at the Columbia Club in Berlin: hundreds of teens had assembled in the afternoon heat outside the doors of the neighbouring Columbia Hall-dressed in black, many with whitewashed and bloodred faces. But this mass had not come because of the go-betweens, who with their new album had made it through to the german hitparade. They went past unnoticed. The calmness found an end when the van of another band arrived: Dir en grey. The first teens fell unconcious. Into the night more and more ambulances arrived at the concert hall.
Dir en who? Behind the complicated name lies a hard rock band from japan, gothically dressed in the manner of the us-shock rocker Marilyn Manson. In japan the five are megastars. Here in europe you can't even buy their cds, no poster is to be seen on the berlin fences. Nevertheless, the 3500 concert tickets were sold out in a matter of days, around 1000 other fans stayed outside: Dir en Grey's first concert outside of japan was a triumph. A succes, for the manga-scene admired band, who didn't need the help of a record label, nor the help of radio stations or music magazines. All discussion forums of internet sites dealing with japan's pop-culture were enough to make the band known world wide. Seen this way, Dir en Grey's distribution machine works by mouth-to-mouth propaganda: the oldest success scheme in the world, on thatnks to methods of world wide communication. This expalins, why Dir en Grey's european concert debut attracted fans from all over europe.
The "dinosaurs" still rule.
At first there was the internet. That a band simply skips the usual methods of cd-releasing, radio singles and concerts, and gain their debut on the net, is a novelty. How far this new way will go, is shown in the performances of Dir en Grey at the biggest German music festival Rock am Ring, that will be celebrating it's 20th year this weekend. The "dinosaur" bands like R.E.M or Iron Maiden still dominate at "Rock am Ring". But alternatives to the traditional music carriers may accumulate for the future." [the article goes on to talk of other bands]
Kyo at Rock am Ring
Thank you sefie_sama for another great translation! :)
As more happens, keep checking back! For now though, go home.