I've been lax with all sorts of posting. But in a flurry of Gackt catch up, here's the news...

Gackt's video for Ghost - a theme song for the Japanese release of Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles - has a darkly dancey acid pop sound, like a mirror world version of Cher's Believe. Dig the Papa lapped a pap lopped style of group animatronics.

Justified, Gackt's song for Bounty Killer on PS3 has been out for awhile too, sounding basically like indeterminate old Gackt songs - eerie falsetto, crunchy metal and minor major melody - relabeled as one headbanging new meal.

Finally, there's the new track, Journey through the Decade, created for the 10th Kamen Rider series, a typical chocolate era production of growling guitar angst and driving redemption. The video features a dizzying 360 degree rotomatic shot of Gackt on a high platform behaving Gackt-like, with a lycra transmogrified youngster dueling a hollow-eyed samurai suit below in classic live action tradition, but with razor sharp Magic cards flying. I have no idea what Kamen Rider is about, but Gack't giving the lackadaisickal f-you to our psuedo Power Ranger protagonist at the ending seems proof positive our winged auteur has become a man entrenched in his own iconicism, glaring down the paltry effects of his once stunning fireball, and turning with a bugger-it-all and back to our faces.

Or not.

In any case, I suppose it's impossible for an artist to recapture fully the flavors of their own inception. An audience's impetuous demand to Return is something like a death knell, one that needs to be re-recorded in some grander discovery, some bigger persona, or set adrift in some paradigm shift. For now, Gackt's new songs, his ripe voice, aren't overwriting the tape for me. I still have Cains Feel on my memory.