lolita media library: ALI PROJECT

General info
A progressive rock/neoclassical darkwave duo consisting of vocalist and lyricist Arika Takarano (宝野アリカ) and composer Mikiya Katakura (片倉三起也). They debuted in 1988 and are still active today; this year will be their 30th anniversary! Their music started out with mostly lighter and more cheerful sounding songs and has continually evolved to be darker and harder as time has gone by, but it always was and continues to be classically inspired.
Official website: https://aliproject.jp/

Relation to lolita
Their music, especially from the 1990s and early 2000s, fits the gothic, lolita, and aristocrat aesthetics wonderfully. Takarano has a personal interest in fashion and especially lolita. She has appeared in the Gothic and Lolita Bible as a model for lots of brands (examples: Triple Fortune, Angelic Pretty, Innocent World) and collaborated on items released by Triple Fortune and Innocent World. She has published multiple books of her personal poetry, essays, and photos (血と蜜 Chi to mitsu in 2003, 蜜薔薇、棘薔薇 Mitsubara, togebara in 2010 and 繭百合、骨百合 Mayuyuri, honeyuri in 2015). She also started a lolita and art aesthetic magazine called Lolicate, which appears to have been short-lived at only 2 issues, but had a lot of quality content.

Comments
I first heard of ALI PROJECT in the early 2000s. Back when Napster was a wee babby my dad taught me how to get music with it, and I looked for anything and everything related to Studio CLAMP. I was into CLAMP’s art and manga (the authors of Rayearth, Card Captor Sakura, and more) and downloaded all kinds of music from their series. ALI PROJECT had songs in Wish and CLAMP School Detectives, and those were the first that I heard. In particular there was a song called “Water Drop” that I absolutely loved. While hunting for more information I also saw that CLAMP illustrated the cover for ALI PROJECT’s 1998 album Noblerot. I was miraculously able to find someone that had a digital copy. I eventually got a physical copy at Bookoff on a trip to Japan and got to look inside the booklet. The photos look so incredibly plain next to the kind they regularly do now. :)

I love their inspirations from opera and classical art. I am fond of the cover of the album (贋作師, Art Forger), which (appropriately) features Takarano’s head pasted onto the figure of the princess in Diego Velázquez‘s painting Infanta Margarita Teresa in a Pink Dress. They occasionally cover opera songs, sometimes even with Japanese lyrics! My favorite is Das Veilchen (Mozart). You can see Takarano’s giant Triple Fortune Lily of the Valley print dress in the video. The opera influence extends into Takarano’s stage outfits. They’re dramatic and theatrical, like lolita mixed with classical stage performance costumes, a sort of ultra OTT. One of my favorite outfits of hers is the one she’s wearing on the cover of the album Violetta Operetta. (image credit: wikia.com)

Suggested songs
Overall I prefer what they’ve termed their “White Alice” sound style (light and sweet), which generally means their earlier work up until the mid 2000s or so. However, there’s plenty of other good songs in their harder, darker style too. Click the links for a song sample – it goes to a page with a video or play button.
- Deep Forest (mostly acoustic guitar + vocal, unusual for them but very pretty)
- Fräulein Rose (this song was featured in the Rozen Maiden anime series)
- Lolicate
- Lolita in the garret
- Narcisse Noir
- Only Love Song
- Pastel Pure
- Rose Moon
- Royal Academy of Gothic Lolita
- Sacrifice
- あたしがアリスだった頃 (When I Was Alice)
- 雨のソナタ〜La pluie〜 (Sonata of Rain)
- 少女貴族 (Girls’ Aristocracy)
- 聖少女領域 (Girls’ Holy Land)
- 桃色天国 (Pink Heaven)
- 闇の翼ですべてをつつむ夜のためのアリア (An Aria for Nights that Enfold All in Wings of Darkness)