Aural Vampire

Emerging from Tokyo's goth underground and its hidden dance-music circles, synth-pop duo Aural Vampire offset their absence of mainstream chart success with an extravagant live spectacle that eclipses even the most visually fixated J-pop acts. Vocalist Exo-Chika, who presents herself as a “vampire” by displaying fangs in videos and appearing onstage in Alexander McQueen-inspired haute-goth attire, first encountered songwriter and producer Raveman while still in high school, where the pair quickly became close. They connected through mutual passions for new wave, post-punk, 1990s techno, and low-budget horror films of the 1970s and 1980s—an influence reflected in Raveman’s own striking stage look, which centers on a hockey mask styled after Friday the 13th. The two launched Aural Vampire in 2000, performing regularly and issuing their own CDs. Their first proper album, Vampire Fantasy, appeared in 2004 as an independent release that nevertheless sold 2,000 copies.

The following year the duo made their initial foray abroad, performing in Germany, where they had already appeared on the cover of the goth magazine Astan, and adding dates in the Netherlands and Finland. Despite the language gap, their distinctive gothic aesthetic found an overseas audience, yielding nearly 50,000 MySpace friends, a period as the platform’s most popular Japanese indie act, and Top Ten rankings in the industrial and new wave categories. They returned to Europe with the Tokyo Decadence goth-and-fetish club night on its tour of France and Germany. In September the pair played before thousands at Germany’s three-day inMotion Asian-Pacific music festival. Domestically, they strengthened their dance-music credentials by appearing at Tokyo’s Studio Cube, a venue celebrated for its psych-trance and hardcore events. Also in 2007, Aural Vampire signed with Avex Trax, Japan’s largest independent label. Their first U.S. performance took place the next year at Anime Matsuri 2008 in Houston.