There is a certain difficulty that comes with writing about artists that were essential to forming your taste and identity as a teenager once you become well entrenched in adulthood. I am often reluctant to do it, unsure I can separate feelings of catharsis or soothed angst from a genuine affinity with their artistic output. There is a reason I haven’t gone long on Lady Gaga or David Bowie, for example, and it’s mostly not wanting to come off like a puff piece technician. Miyavi is a name that I am more than happy to include among the aforementioned ones when talking about my musical upbringing, but I think a critical element in keeping a safe distance came in the form of his post-visual kei run, a period of his art that was all about departure and abandoning expectations. Miyavi’s career fundamentally changed lanes even prior to partnering up with Japanese mega-conglomerate LDH, and his music began to focus on collaborations with western songwriters and talents rather than the seemingly singular and glamorous world he created with his mid to late 2000s run. This is an article about something that came at the start of his career, fresh off the dissolution of Due le quartz, the “Gagaku” album - a beautiful concentrated outburst of punk attitude and hard rock rebellion that existed in direct opposition to the more theatrical output of DLQ.

When “Gagaku” was released, Miyavi was free from the expectations that would come from his old band’s output and art form. He was reintegrating himself into a music industry that had shifted considerably in a few short years, at the time more open than ever to music with truly punk sensibilities. From the word go, it’s clear that “Gagaku” was not created with the intention of releasing a technical masterpiece that represented the theatrical beauty often expected of members of the visual kei scene. Punctuated by screams, guitar chugs, and even at points sirens or wailing babies, “Gagaku” was ugly and proud (to borrow a phrase from a certain childhood cartoon). It was this abandonment of norms that drew me in, moreso than any of the subsequent albums Miyavi released in the 2000s, most of which are great for completely different reasons.

One of the consistent musical anchors of this album is the explosive approach to its mixing. Every song - even the acoustic stuff - seems determined to use the full spectrum of sound with a particular emphasis on low end, commanding attention and hitting you like a truck. Tracks barrel into each other, with the deep pulse of distorted guitar sometimes giving way to a clearing of the fog in the form of acoustic arpeggios, or yielding the sonic stage to clumsy but heartfelt piano. It is dramatic but not theatrical, convicted but not quite chuunibyou. Even before my own lived experience and hindsight allowed me to identify this work as something of a cathartic coming-of-age focused piece, I got the feeling that I was listening to someone who had strong feelings and good reasons for them.

The album opens with the invocation of something familiar with a group singing “happy birthday,” but rather than providing comfort, it is done in a way that invokes the mixture of fear and frustration that comes with truly growing older. What you hear is a well-punctuated chaos, a sound that never fully devolves into cacophony but instead utilizes the threat thereof to make you take some incredibly slick hooks and snotty vocals more seriously. It’s part of a series of several tracks of heavy-hitting, bassy, nu-metal informed rock that gives way to “Night in Girl,” a sly and bratty acoustic number where Miyavi muses about women of the night with the kind of wry and knowledgable understanding that can only be afforded to people who have actually had sex and had to make financial decisions before. Unsurprisingly, this album was the start of a career defined by vacillating between extremes and toying with expectations, although it’s easier to say this with hindsight than it was at the time of release. Despite having had some non-album singles released prior, “Gagaku” still very much felt like Miyavi drawing a line in the sand and establishing context.

Eventually, “Night in Girl” relents and gives way to “Girls Be Ambitious,” a track that manages to deliver on what was clearly a goal of being somewhat inspirational without relying on the dramaticism and shlock of J-Pop conventions. This was the first “one of those” for Miyavi, but it became a type of song that he would go on to find a great amount of success with. Before YouTube existed for the music video to be illegally hosted and shared through, fans from the western world over managed to get their hands on tracks like this one, helping to establish Miyavi as a voice for the broken and lost. Several tracks later, on a more nakedly emotional “Onpu no Tegami,” Miyavi sings over simple plucked piano keys that build up and coalesce into the perfect entryway for a pounding guitar-driven crescendo. Once again, this is the work of someone who understands the power of contrasts.

“Gagaku” does not wear out its welcome, clocking in at a tight 10 tracks total, but with the 9 songs prior to the closer it manages to establish a paradigm for what to expect from soloist Miyavi - which he then shatters on track 10, closing with an acoustic version of a song from his former band Due le quartz. The effect of “Dear…from XXX” is enhanced greatly by the nature of the track prior to it, “Shokubutsu Ningen M no Theme,” perhaps the heaviest and most foreboding song on the record. “Dear…from” is comparatively low-key, packed with the kind of emo-adjacent crooning that American teenagers were obsessed with at the time, and it served as a fitting and emotional closer for both “Gagaku” as an album and a chapter of Miyavi’s still-blooming career. Its guitar work was decidedly complex, showcasing the virtuosic streak that fans would continue to fall in love with over the coming years, with time signature changes and layered melodic lines acting as a detailed backdrop for the jam-packed lyrics.

Miyavi has marched into the future mostly unconcerned with revisiting his past work, but I think he could learn a thing or two about himself by reconsidering what made the songs on an album like “Gagaku” come together. Throughout this album and this period of his career, Miyavi was straddling the line between angst and confidence with a kind of devil-may-care attitude that made his music organically fun. In comparison to the focus-grouped sound of his last several projects, his first several albums feel like they captured moments of true spontaneity and experimentation.

Well past the twenty year anniversary mark at this point, “Gagaku” is worth a listen now more than ever because it presents a version of Miyavi that did not cater to western audiences, instead showing someone so distinguished and unique on his own merits that he managed to capture the world’s attention without major label PR money and English language lyric contributions from lifetime professional writers. You might not find it on streaming any time soon, but it is worth every effort you may have to put in to hear it.