All right, I've made my decision. I'm making the switch to Wordpress.

All future entries will be posted only to this blog: http://audiovisualstyle.wordpress.com/.

I'll also be moving some of my older entries to the Wordpress site. I'll still keep this blog online, but I will no longer be updating it. Not for the foreseeable future, at least. Please feel free to ask if you'd like further explanation; the reasons for the move aren't particularly interesting, really.

Thank you so much for your readership and comments. I hope you'll be willing to continue following Audio Visual Style at its new location. Work and personal issues have made it difficult for me to post as often as I like, but I truly enjoy doing this, and I want to continue for as long as I can.

See you at the new site!

I created a mirror (sort of) for this blog on Wordpress: http://audiovisualstyle.wordpress.com/.

It's a free account, so nothing fancy. But I quite like the features available on Wordpress. I'm seriously contemplating moving this blog over to Wordpress. I'd like to explore Wordpress's system more, though, to see if this is a good idea. I'm also open to keeping both blogs updated, but that would take quite a bit of work. If any of you have any feelings on this matter, I'd really appreciate it if you could share them with me!

Oh, I also made an Audio Visual Style Tumblr. It's less structured, and doesn't have the posts that I make here; it's just for photos I wanted to share and random thoughts. Oh, and Kalafina gifs.

After making some teasing posts on their Facebook page, the organisers of Anime Festival Asia (AFA) have announced some details for this year's upcoming AFA events. The second AFA Indonesia (AFAID) will be taking place on 6-8 September at the Jakarta Convention Center, while the sixth installment of Singapore's annual AFA event, AFA 13, will be held at the Suntec International Convention and Exhibition Centre on 8-10 November. An AFA Malaysia (AFAMY) event has also been mentioned in the announcement, but there no further details are available just yet. This would be the second AFA event for Malaysia.



Nice to see that AFA is continuing to hold events outside of Singapore.

It's also interesting to note that AFA Singapore will be going back to taking place at Suntec (AFA 12 was at Singapore EXPO). This is very welcome news for me, as EXPO was in the east of Singapore, while I live in the west of the country; Suntec is in a more central location, and a lot faster to get to. Dragging myself out of bed very early in the morning to make it in time for the 9 am screenings of the Madoka Magica movies at last year's AFA was kind of a pain...

I'm very much looking forward to seeing the list of guests that will be making an appearance. I hope they release those details very soon. It's no secret as to whom I'm most hoping to see again...Ka-la-fi-na!

Sources: AFA official site, AFA Channel

As part of HP's All That Matters Music Matters Live series, J-Rock bands flumpool and SID performed at Clarke Quay's Fountain Stage. Their performances came under a special segment called "J-Rock Matters", presented by the Japanese online publication BARKS.

It was a great show. Best of all, it was free.

I was considering doing a live report, but I noticed that the videos from the livestream of the concert were still up:




I think these convey the experience of the live better than any report of mine could. Any suggestions that I may just be too lazy to write a report will be huffily ignored. I'm not sure how long these videos will be up for, so if you haven't watched them yet, go get to it.

At around 11:30 of flumpool's performance, vocalist and guitarist Ryuta kisses the pick he was using and tosses it into the crowd, close to where I was standing. I normally don't bother going for these kind of things even when they come my way because I'm neither tall nor forceful enough to stand a chance. But this dude who hadn't even noticed what was going on got hit in the chest by the pick, and then coolly bent down to retrieve it. Lucky guy.

Fortunately for me, that dude happened to be the brother I'd dragged along to the show. He didn't really want it, so...


Couldn't have asked for a better souvenir.
So thank you, BARKS, for bringing flumpool and SID to Singapore. I hope you bring other Japanese artistes here as well! Also, hopefully, for free.

This post has been moved to the following URL: http://audiovisualstyle.wordpress.com/2013/05/24/album-review-kalafina-consolation/

So pretty. Waaaay bigger version of image at source.
Kalafina announced at their live concert earlier today that they will be releasing their fourth album, Consolation, on the 20th of March. EDIT: Kalafina's official blog has corroborated the information. UPDATE 25/1: The album will come in three versions (CDJapan pre-order links ahead): Limited Edition Type-A (with DVD), Limited Edition Type-B (with Blu-Ray) and Regular Edition. I can't actually read the Japanese text on the blog, but from what little I can decipher the songs to the beginning (Fate/Zero OP), Hikari Furu (Puella Magi Madoka Magica ~Eien no Monogatari~ ED), the title track for their single moonfesta and Yume no Daichi (their new song for NHK's show Rekishi Hiwa Historia) are mentioned. I think it's safe to conclude these songs will appear on the album.

Updated: Album covers (click each image for a bigger version)


Limited Edition Type-A


Limited Edition Type-B


Regular Edition
EDIT: According to CDJapan, the track list for the album will be as follows:

1. al fine
2. consolation
3. moonfesta~ムーンフェスタ~
4. Door
5. 未来 (Mirai)
6. 花束 (Hanataba)
7. signal
8. obbligato
9. 木苺の茂みに (Kiichigo no Shigemi ni)
10. 満天 (Manten)
11. to the beginning
12. ひかりふる (Hikari Furu)
13. 夢の大地 (Yume no Daichi)



Yay, an appropriate moment to re-use this gif!
Based on the Google's typically garbled translation of the source blog, what I'm getting is that the Limited Editions will include footage of their time at Germany's AniMagiC event, the PV for their song Yume no Daichi (yay, more PVs to make fun of recap) and "inclusion of special photo book Deluxe Edition specification". So...a photo book with the LEs? Oh, let's just wait until a competent translator can make sense of this.

I'll let the nice folks of canta-per-me.net furnish you with the few details that are currently available. If you'll excuse me, I'm about to get busy shrieking with delight and dancing with manic glee.

This post has been moved to the following URL: http://audiovisualstyle.wordpress.com/2013/05/22/pv-recapreview-kalafina-moonfesta/


Goat: "I