vol.171 Alice Nine Interview (p.44-63)
“It has been long time.....” Saga mumbled when the shooting of the magazine cover started. He had been waiting for this moment for 6 years. 6 years. Since he had been longing to be part of the Visual kei scene, he started playing instruments, made a band for the first time, and had been dreaming about the moment he would be on the cover of a magazine. Hearing these words of Saga, members nodded gently.
SHOXX, which started as the first special magazine for Visual kei, has kept watching various bands grow in the ‘Visual kei’ scene. The many artists who appear in SOXX now used to be reading the magazine looking at articles of their seniors. This is their chance to continue history.
alice nine.. They are the main artists who should lead the Visual scene anew. It was the first memorial cover of SHOXX for them. Their single [JEWELS] made alice nine.’s style, and has been concreted through this cover.
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This time I’ll ask you about your new single [JEWELS] which is released on March 21st. You released the single CD after about 1 year from the last single CD, and you had a quite long interval. Did you intend that?
Hiroto: We didn’t intend it like “We’ll have an interval for something.”, but after we released『Zekkei shoku』( released on April 2006) which was quite challenging, so I think we started searching for something ‘more likealice nine.’ naturally, moving forward.
Shou: Yes. We didn’t want to finish that album in only one tour. We wanted to prolong it for about 2 tours, and treasure it more. Usually after we finish our album, we do our tour playing songs from the album.
Of course you also play the album’s songs after the tour, but in the tour after releasing the album, the live set lists are usually composed mainly with songs of the album, and if there are single releases, you’re sure to play the single songs in the lives after that, so you also have songs which you don’t play in your lives.
Shou: Yeah. There was that and we didn’t want to prolong it forcibly, but we really wanted to treasure the album『Zekkei shoku』which was really a big presence or part of us.
Hiroto: I think so too. And in『Zekkei shoku』and the tour afterward, we had a feeling that we could see and catch the aspect like ‘how we, alice nine. should be’, then we released a single a little different to before, I think.
I see. So around when did you start creating this single? I remember you saying ‘We are creating a single now.’.
Nao: Yes. We started it around in last autumn. This time we had two meetings to select our songs. We chose from about 10 songs.
Did you have any theme?
Nao: Well, we just had a theme of ‘We should be really like alice nine..’. We wanted to make people really feel the present us.
Shou: We had something which we could see after we made the album and something which we held dear since we made this band, but we think our selling point is ‘catchy and melodious’ so we thought we wanted to research this part more.
Tora: When we say catchy, we mean not only bright, but also hard sounds that give dark impressions, you will find that melodies are always steadily present.
Saga: Yes. It might be ‘melodies matching to alice nine.’ or ‘catchy only in alice nine..
Shou: Yes. This time, we selected 3 songs, with pop among them.
I see. Well, let’s talk about the songs one by one. The title song [JEWELS] is written by Saga.
Saga: Yes. In this song I made the vocals and melody the most important. And we created the song mixing our originalities which we have made up until now and which we newly arranged. This time the way we created the song wasn’t usual. Usually I make the mood, or backgrounds, but this time I made codes and melodies of the song. I wanted to make a song that is comfortable to listen to, but a vocal song, with words that remain in your ears.
Tora: The original song was so pop that we really cared about how we arranged it as an alice nine. song. We didn’t want to make it just pop, and spent time to arrange rock to be in it. It’s not only for this song but for the other two songs, too. This song contains the most synchronization out of the three songs, so I made most of the synchronization and backing.
Hiroto: We showed the song off and really thought about band dynamics.
I felt the depth of the song.
Hiroto: That’s right! We wanted to make the sound three-dimensional in this song. We decided not to mix it all into one, but to have each sound stand out respectively. I played guitar feeling like it was ‘made by Hiroto’.(laugh)
‘Made by Hiroto’ ? What’s that?(laugh)
Hiroto: I played guitar feeling like I wouldn’t insist on doing it but ‘I’ll do this song.’(laugh)
Nao: When Saga let me listen to this song, I fell in love with the melody.
Saga: How you can say such a thing with a calm face?(laugh)
Nao: Ahahaha. It’s nice to see Saga smile. But I really felt so. I made it thinking that many people would listen to it, so I think it became to be a song that you really feel an expanse. Personally I played drums thinking about how the drums are put in our songs, so that was my first experience making the vocals the center and playing drums to make the vocals stand out. I was sure to be “Made by Nao”, too.(laugh)
Shou: Saga’s songs are so pure and clear, opposite to his image.
Saga: Wait. I’m a man of purity!(laugh)
Shou: Well, calm down all.(laugh) I felt pure like white in this song, so I tried to write the lyrics without complicated feelings. Anyway, I wanted to write about a pure love which I really want to do something for someone. At that time I read a book about parents raising a child who isn’t related by blood with their love, so I combined such a story and my good memories together, took the best, and like brilliant cuts of jewels, completed it like the image of sparkling angles.
Saga: Well, I’ll tell you, there wasn’t a song which people don’t die, until then.(laugh)
Shou: Ahahaha. Maybe so.(laugh) That’s because many of your songs are quite fantastic. In [DEAD SCHOOL SCREAMING] people don’t die, but it’s a story which a machinegun is shot around in a school, so surely someone dies catching a bullet…..(laugh) In contrast, Hiroto’s songs have more humanity in the lyrics, I think. They are so energetic. Most of Tora’s songs are stylish, so I can write lyrics freely. I think I can express my words very honestly. These days I start feeling different drawn by different composers. I really sing with my words really expressing this musical world in this song.
The 2nd song [ROSARIO] is the song which I really felt alice nine..
Tora: Yes. This song is most like alice nine. among the 3 songs, I think. I confirmed its arrangement in my head soon after I listened to the original song without thinking about it.
Saga: This song was made by me too, which was nominated as a lead song in our first meeting to select songs.
Hiroto: Since hearing this song for the first time it really sparked my imagination. In [JEWELS] I played guitar to show off the song, but in this song I played guitar to stand out, like I was playing on my own. I felt like I was expressing the images of my feelings using my guitar.
Nao: I think this song is like a hidden A track. The theme of the drums in this song was ‘drumming freely and comfortably’.
Shou: I wrote the lyrics about feelings not about concrete things. But the theme was a ‘sparkling’ feeling connecting to the 1st song, and I think it expresses strongly the sincere feeling which I want to give to others. The flow from [NUMBER SIX] came out strongly, I think.
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[ “13”] is the song made by Tora, so it’s a kind of dark song.
Tora: Yes. This song is only included in the normal edition, and straight rock. We also wanted to play music which anyone can play, but play it like alice nine..
Saga: We had difficulties because it’s simple. But we could pursue and complete the coolness just because it’s simple. It’s a strong song I played heavy and hard sounds with 4 strings.
Hiroto: It’s more like a live song, so we cared about playing together, and pursued a live feeling in a flow. It’s a song where you can feel our live performance, I think.
Nao: In this song, we also pursued speedy and free feelings. I could play drums as I wanted to in this song too. The16 beat rhythm is great I think.
Shou: As I said before, this song was made by Tora, and I wrote the lyrics straightly and freely. As I’m interested in the Middle Ages recently, I wrote lyrics about ‘memories, feelings, relations’ comparing with stories about Christ and Judas. I felt a decision within the chaos in this music, so I put such a message in this song. After this single was finished, I realized what we got from our tour of last year. It’s the single we expressed so much of what we learnt from our tour. But what we learnt was so much that we couldn’t express all of it yet. So we think we will be able to make good use of what we learnt last year. If we’ll do so, we could grow in different way, and we could see something new, I think. Such new growth would continue to our next year, and then the year after when we would grow even more, which I hope would continue forever. I hope we can bring the band: alice nine.up not in haste, but slowly and firmly.
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