Japan is known for his strong music economy. Prices are usually higher than in western countries. In addition a lot of artists dont release their music outside of Japan, which results in additional shipping costs and taxes for the import of Japanese CDs and DVDs. Fans have to pay like 20 Euro for a single or 30 Euro for an album, while DVDs can even go up to 60 - 80 Euro. Some criminal companies want to profit from this. They produce cheap pirate copies in bad quality to trick their customers. These unofficial releases are called bootlegs. The artists wont have any income from them. If you want to support your favorite bands, you should avoid them!
Official Releases
Dir En Grey released all of their CDs and DVDs on East-West Japan (in their early days) and Firewall Div, a sublabel of Free-Will Records. There are some limited releases and fanclub items, which were sold under the management banner of Sun-Krad. These are the only official labels! As their success began to spread over the world, they started to give licenses for labels outside of Japan. These pressings were made by foreign labels, but still count as official, as the Japanese label and the band make profit from them. For Europe their post-Vulgar albums were produced by Gan-Shin Records, while American releases were made by an American sublabel of Free-Will. Later they got a deal with The End Records to release their albums in America.
To identify the official release, you can have a look in the discography page of this website. Important are the barcode (EAN-Nr) and and the Catalogue-Nr (a number given by the label to sort their releases). The EAN can be found on the Obi (that small paper strip around Japanese pressings) or the backcover of a CD or DVD. This is the easiest way to identify an original copy. You should still check, if the quality of your product has a high standard. For rare fan club releases you should check the pictures too. The packaging of unofficial bootlegs looks often completely different.
Counterfeits
Counterfeits attempt to mimic the look of officially released products. Usually the cover and backcover try to look like the official pressing of a release. For example the cover art or the layout are similiar to the original. The booklet got often copied in bad quality, however sometimes it is even missing. There are different pirate companies that specialized on these counterfeits.
Miya Records
Best known example for unlicensed pirate pressings of Dir En Grey is the taiwanese label Miya Records. If you find the their logo on your CD or DVD, you have a bootleg pressing. The quality of their releases is different. E.g. "The marrow of the bone" doesnt include a booklet with lyrics, while "Macabre" has a scanned/copied booklet in bad quality. The "Blitz 5 Days" box looks completly different from the original. The Miya pressing has 5 black DVD cases in a slipcase, while the original pressing comes in a digipack holding all 5 CDs. Some of the CDs like "Withering to Death" come in a slipcase, which the original copy doesnt have.
A list of their Dir En Grey bootlegs contains the following:
MIBP-1067~9 Uroboros (2CD + DVD)
MIBP-1080~3 Uroboros -with the proof in the name of living - At Nippon Budokan (3DVD+1CD)
MICP-0001 Gauze
MICP-0005 Vulgar
MICP-0008 Six Ugly
MICP-0055 Withering to Death
MICP-0076 Macabre
MICP-0162-3 The marrow of a bone (2CD)
MICP-0179-80 Decade 1998 - 2002
MICP-0181 Decade 2003 - 2007
MICP-0222 Dum Spiro Spero
MIDP-0001 Rettou Gekishin Angya Final 2003 5 Ugly Kingdom
MIDP-0043~7 Blitz 5 Days (5 DVD Box)
MIDP-0056-7 Tour04 The code of vulgar[ism]
MIDP-0074 Tour 00>>01 Macabre
MIDP-0107 Kimon
MIDP-0119 Average Fury
MIDP-0130 Average Psycho
MIDP-0164 Tour05 It withers and withers -Bootlegged-
To show the differences, I took some pictures from the bootleg tutorial of the Candydive-Blogspot. Here you can find their complete article (with some examples from other artists and deeper explanations).
On the bottom left side you can see the Miya Records Logo. You can see the catalogue number MICP-0076 next to it.
The CD layout is completely different. Again there is the catalogue number MICP-0076, which is different from the official pressing (SFCD-0001).
The original has sharper colours and thicker paper.
The bootleg booklet has missing edges of the orginal layout.
Alion International Records
Another big bootleg company. For now I only know about the "Kisou" Bootleg with the catalogue number ALCP-6008, but I am sure there are more. It is one of the better bootlegs as it contains the standard booklet and the limited edition extra booklet. It comes in a slipcase, which the original first press doesnt have. The CD is in a standard jewelcase, while the jewelcases of original Dir En Grey CDs are usually thicker than standard jewelcases. The extra booklet is in the slipcase, while it is behind the CD tray in the original first press. Another difference is the Alion logo. If you look closer you will notice small differences in the booklet material/paper, the layout and especially the colour quality isnt as good as the original. The CD looks different too.
Ever Anime
Couldnt find much informations about this label. It seems to specialize on soundtrack bootlegs. However there is a bootleg of "Gauze" with the catalogue number NP-016. As you can see the logo is very dominant. It should be easy to identify their bootleg pressings. The sound quality should be very bad too.
Source
Other Companies
There are some other companies that produce counterfeits of Dir En Grey releases. Always watch for missing barcodes, wrong/missing label informations, wrong catalogue numbers or layout/artwork differences. Here is another bootleg example by an unknown company:
Unofficial Releases
Beside the counterfeits exist another kind of bootleg: Unofficial CDs or DVDs, which were never released by the band. Usually these are live recordings or compilations/best of´s. You find wrong or fake labels named on these bootlegs. In the discography page you can find some examples like "Singles Collection" or "Complete Singles". These compilations were never released by the band.
Keine Kommentare:
Kommentar veröffentlichen