VELVET EDEN

Even though Velvet Eden has been on a hiatus (or even disbanded, no one really knows) for quite some years, they’re still very popular amongst visual kei fans because of their unique sound.

Velvet Eden made electronic music with visual kei aspects and it seems the genre 'dark-wave' suits them best. The band had a pretty eccentric vocalist, Dada, who has a lovely, deep voice. Dada was also the leader of the band and because the line-up changed quite a lot it sometimes seemed that Velvet Eden was "Dada and the others".

Their name "Velvet Eden" seems to come from a collection of pornographic photographs of the same name. This collection was prohibited in France in the thirties, but Dada claims he knows nothing about this...

Velvet Eden was created in November 1998. The band started as the duo Dada and Kalm, Dada on vocals and Kalm on keyboards and programming. He was also the composer of their songs.

On November 14th they had their first concert, at the Shibuya On Air West Event "Tokyo Chikashitsu". In March 1999 they started their own label called Arachne (spider) on which they released their first demo-tape "Street of Alice" in the same month. It contained 4 songs and there were only 1,500 copies released.

The band performed on a few events and on July 24th they released their second demo-tape "Madame Tarantula".

They continued to perform in several events, and on October 31st they participated in an event called "Yaneura dai Circus". Dada participated in this as the vocalist of Velvet Eden, but he also participated in a side-project called Mononoke unit. Other members of this band were Cali=Gari's Ao, Ya-su from Yafoo! and Onan Spelmermaid.

In December the band moved to the Castle Records label. On December 10th they released their first mini-album, called "Ningyou Shoukan".

On March 10th, 2000 they released their first video called "Sad Mask". It contained videos of several songs of the "Ningyou Shoukan" mini-album, some of the "Street of Alice" (which wasn’t released yet) mini-album and some new songs.

Kalm decided to leave the band a little later on March 27th. And even though Kalm wasn't a part of Velvet Eden anymore, the mini-album "Street of Alice" was released in May. Just like on "Ningyou shoukan" Kalm wrote all the music on this mini-album and Dada wrote all the lyrics.

Somewhere between May and June, Dada recruited new members. Masahiro (guitar), R.Y.O (bass), Abexx (drums) and Hora (keyboards) joined the band.

In the following months they performed quite a lot, and in October they released the single "Sute Neko". Now Kalm had left the band, the other members were writing the songs, and you can definitely notice this. On this single they sounded like a rock-band (save for one song), and from this moment their sound continued to change from electronic/dark wave to rock.

They participated in some events and they performed on the "Yaneura Dai-circus" event again. Dada also participated with Mononoke unit as well.

In December they changed back to their own label, Arachne. A little later they released the demo tape "Kumo Onna". On December 20th, Abexx and R.Y.O left the band and Hibiki became the new bassist. However it seems he didn't stay long with the band and left in early 2001 or so.

Hora left the band as well, but a little later in February 2001. About a month after, Lem (drums) joined the band, and in April Bera (guitar) and Mimi (bass) joined. Once again, there was a complete line-up!

In May they released the demo-tape "Opera-za no Kaijin". They had a few lives, but then it turned silent for a while.

In January 2002 they released the demo-tape "Kumo no Sujiro/ Kajuen". The demo, "Saigo no Bansan + Fushigi no Kuni no Alice" was released in February, and in March "Fan Letter Kurenai + Rouge de Noir" was released.

Bera was the main-composer of these demos, and there was a noticeable change in their sound once again. If you compare these songs to the ones that Velvet Eden released with Kalm, it's very hard to believe it's the same band! But although these songs sound very rock and not electronic at all, they're great nonetheless.

Around July Dada became very unhappy with their rock sound as he preferred electronic music and he suddenly didn’t appear on their lives, forcing the other members to sing. This is considered as the break-up of Velvet Eden although there was never an official statement.

After Velvet Eden:

Kalm kind of disappeared from the music-scene. There have been vague plans of him and Dada starting some band again, but nothing has happened so far.

Masahiro, R.Y.O and Abexx seem to be untraceable, but Hora started the quite popular band Schwarz Stein. However, that band disbanded as well after a short but very successful career and he started a solo project.

Bera, Mimi, and Lem found a new singer, Reina and they start the band The Velvet. However, Reina left the band and apparently Mimi took over the position as vocalist (it seems these guys are just unlucky when it comes to vocalists!)

And last but not least, Dada started the clothing label Arachnophobia. It seems he's not doing anything with music anymore, but there have been rumours about him and Kalm starting a musical unit again... · close