I see. By the way, I heard you also work hard as leader, for example, you kindly made a rough of members’ final income tax returns and gave them to each member, right?
Ahahaha. Yes I did. Well all of members spend almost 90% of their lives on band activities, so I want them to use their free time for themselves efficiently. I know each of them have to do what they have to do by themselves, but if you can reduce other’s work, then it is good. I think it’s also good for the band. As we are doing the band together, there are many things that we can’t think of separating from the band. This time, Tora’s sickness is so too. Tora had the pains himself, but it wasn’t only his problem. It was a problem of the whole band. Iit was my problem and a problem for Hiroto, Shou, and Saga. So I think it’s better that we all do what we can for others and help each other out. My band does not like to depend on others, and all of the members think about others, so I really trust them, and I think that’s why I can work hard and get over hurdles with them.
So Nao, has each of the band members grown?
Yes, I think so. Hiroto has become calmer. Not in a bad way, but he has experienced various things and has became an adult, I think.
I heard his stomach also became more adult and he can’t eat his favorite Ramen anymore.(laugh)
Yes” He often say that.(laugh) But I’m like that too. When I eat a cup of Ramen, I feel heavy in the stomach. Am I getting older? (laugh) Ah, I remember, when I saw Hiroto for the first time, I thought his silhouette of him playing guitar was so beautiful and cool. I thought his figure was like a picture. I can feel his artistic nature so much, and I respected him musically even though he is younger than me. Recently he has quietness about him too.
I told him that he has quietness which old hard rock guitarists have!(laugh)
Ahahaha. I can understand that! I agree with you! When I see him from behind in our lives, I think so too.(laugh)Tora also grew up. Tora used to have difficulty with his feelings that he couldn’t fit into society. He seemed rather negative and sometimes acted without thinking well and he wasn’t cooperative, but he has started to be like me recently.(laugh) He became to be very cooperative.(laugh) And sometimes he is very social too! Sagareally loves bass. He is so concentrated on playing the bass. When we play instruments, we sometimes hit walls and loose our way about what we should practice at certain stages. But Saga seems to get over that. Sagais an ambitious man, I think he has high ideals and works very hard, continuously pressuring himself. AboutShou, honestly speaking, I have been watching over him from behind in our lives, but now I think that “I don’t have to worry about him anymore….”. I am the same, but he used to show his feelings in our lives whether good or bad. Before, his tension was uneven, but he has become stronger in this tour. I think that he has grown so much. I am digressing, but Hiroto is not uneven at all in lives. He has been like that since before. I think that’s great. Lives are not only sounds, so I want to do lives in which I can leave something in the audience’s minds.
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↓p51
It was really a great piece of work. I didn’t think that by their 2nd album they would have been able to get so good-.
They surprised us all by surpassing our expectations with 『Alpha』. Making an album as good as that does not allow you to go backwards. By creating such a good first album they themselves created a very high hurdle, one not easy to get over. But we, as humans, are always search for something better, even after what seems to be our best is already done.
This is the latest single after 『Alpha』, and I couldn’t help wondering what kind of work they would release.
The answer was「MIRROR BALL」. I took this song to be a positive song matching them well, also showing some of their darker, inner thoughts. I could feel that each member had put in a lot of effort into their part, creating the straight melodies heard in the song. Here we can see birth of something new; their growth.
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This work is the first single after 『Alpha』. Were you particularly conscious of showing a new facet of the band in this single?
Shou: No, we didn’t feel that at all. The original 「MIRROR BALL」already existed when we gathered songs for『Alpha』. This song became a single when we were offered the opportunity to make a theme song of a movie.
Was it 『Aquarian Age』?
Tora: Yes. The director who took our personal video「JEWELS」would direct the movie of 『Aquarian Age』too, and he asked us to sing the theme song and also asked us to appear in the movie.
So you mean you acted in the movie?
Hiroto: Yes. We acted in a role of a band. With the theme song, we made it after we read the script, imagined it and then shaped it.
Saga: We read the script and felt 【human’s light and shadow】so we discussed how to make the original song of 「MIRROR BALL」to go better with the movie.
Tora: It just happened that it really fit in with our image. The director really liked it too. So then it became the theme song of 『Aquarian Age』.
Did you make the lyrics matching to the story?
Shou: I didn’t write the lyrics matching it completely. I expressed 【human’s light and shadow】which I felt when I read the script. I didn’t want to make it by thinking too much that it would be a theme song, but I wanted to make a song which made good use of the characters of alice
I see. This single is very melodious for alice alice
Shou: Yes. This time, there isn’t so much violence and I think both songs have very like side A like qualities to them. The good point of alice nine. is that we keep the basic part firm and use the best points of our members at the right time. The part of chorus added on the chase is my thing now.(laugh)
How about the way of using C melody and D melody?
Shou: I hesitated a little bit because it’s too violent as it develops, but 「MIRROR BALL」is the theme song of the movie so I wanted to make the song have a story. So I wanted to develop the scene more, added C melody and D melody, aroused the last part to make it more dramatic, adding that part after I consulted Hiroto, who is a composer of this song. At first, in the original song which Hiroto brought, the main melody repeated after the 3rdmain melody, but I wanted to add one more push. Then I happened to think of a good melody.
Hiroto: At first, to connect it to the last main melody, I had to drop it a little, but when I put the melody which Shoubrought me in there, it made a very good flow. It became more of a story then.
I see. In this song, A melody is repeated twice so I feel like we read the story slowly from A melody to the main melody. But the variety of development in the later half makes the song run dramatically high.
Horoto: Yes. This time I arranged it so you can feel a story through the song. I wanted to make a song which had many developments that I could feel.
I see. In the later half, the rhythm is really shown off Nao, your main part would be the later half of D melody, right?
Nao: My main part is……Um…
Hiroto: Ahahaha. Do you mean “Mine is not there!”?
Nao: No I don’t mean that. My part is….. all of it!(laugh)
All: (silence……)
Nao: Huh?(laugh) Well…..what should I say…..(laugh)
(laugh) As a whole, my drumming is very busy in this song, but the accessory phrases after the brake in the later half of this song are very cool.
Shou: I like it too! It’s very cool!
Nao: Thank you! Hiroto too likes that part!(laugh)
It seems almost like the drumming twisted around the melody lines.
Nao: That’s right. This song is unexpectedly busy and I’m really serious in the main melodies. I tried to do various things. As a result, I decided to do 16 beats, then it was so hard.(laugh) I worked terribly hard at it.(laugh)
Shou: Personally I really like the drumming of the later half of the main melody. It’s very cool.
The bass approach of Saga in the latest part of the last main melody is quite cool.
Shou: Yes! That’s cool too!
Saga: Ahahaha. Thank you.(laugh) I wanted to do something there. The bass line sounds very uninteresting in this song, so I wanted to stand out a little bit.(laugh) It was like “Here, that’s here, It’s only here!”, “I can’t miss my chance!”. This time, I just wanted to stay in the song rather than pushing my bass line.
Hiroto: My guitar playing was like that too. 「MIRROR BALL」 wasn’t the type of song that was like “I’ll do something here!”. The drums don’t have to be 16 beat, but there was a big difference between doing it and not doing it that way. The instruments were also like that, we could make the mood of this song by mixing the sounds. I think it’s really cool that we can see different phrases in the music after doing that. I really think that being able to imagine different scenes while listening to the music is really important in this song.
Tora: I agree with you. This time we all looked at the song in its entirety, and progressed it by focusing on how we could make good use of different parts.
I see. And the guitar solo twisting with chorus in the interlude was very beautiful.
Nao: I like the guitar solo of this song very much, so I want make people listen to it carefully.
And the coupling song is [Kiseki](=Miracle). I can feel many changes in this song too.
Shou: Yes. 「Kiseki」was made by Saga, so it has many developments in the rhythm, and I sang it trying to fit that. I tried to ride on the ensemble, so to speak, making it the in the opposite way you do in a pop song.
Saga: After we made 『Alpha』, I had about three days off, and I made「Kiseki」with my acoustic guitar in a park near my house. Being in the middle of the resumed tour, and also being in the middle of coupling really made me think that I wanted to do something interesting and I think that I achieved that in the interlude.
Nao: This song is like a ‘decisive battle!’ in 『FINAL FANTASY』! The 2nd B melody is a little bit difficult!
Tora: Yes, it’s tricky!
Saga: We made that phrase when introducing members during our tour. That tricky phrase that we created was really cool, so we chose it.
Nao: The part which I really put a lot into was the D melody! It’s called ‘wind chime’. I wanted to put in a cute mood and I did.
Tora: It’s really fresh, D melody flows into the chase.
Shou: Yes. It’s the point of this song.
The guitar playing was very interesting. Did you process them in some way?
Tora: No, we didn’t.
May be it sounds like that because we used effectors in different ways throughout the song.
Hiroto: I made quite a lot of use of whammy and wah. I made good use of them and reproduced sounds which I heard in my in my head just as they were. It was very hard.
Saga: At the last part, we used a whammy in a way that we shouldn’t have!
Hiroto: Yes, we did.(laugh) In the last part, we connected 2 wahs, and connected a whammy in addition, and made strange sounds. I put my both feet on wahs, like I was riding a foot exercise machine and did a wah with my hands.(laugh)
How did you play guitar?
Saga: I played guitar in that part.(laugh) Actually I didn’t play but I played choking.(laugh)
Tora: And basically, we wanted to make a live mood in this song, so Hiroto and I chose the same sounds as we do in our lives.
I see. How about the lyrics?
Shou: As for lyrics, I wrote about doing your best in life. You know in life there are things that you should be thankful about, places where you trip and fall, and things that you lose and you can really see that in this song. Even if something painful happens in life, you learn to be thankful for the quiet peaceful days that would otherwise seem ordinary. The song has a positive melody, and I think this song will be a standard song in our lives.
What is the ‘sunny place’ you refer to in the lyrics?
Shou: It’s a place where your loved ones can be happy.
It’s a good expression. And the 3rd song is 「Eraser」which was already recorded in your album and rerecorded this time.
Tora: Because it was very good song, we wanted make many people listen to it, so we rerecorded it in a single. To be re-cut from an album does not happen so much now. I was hoping for that, so I’m very happy.(laugh) We also made a music video for this song, so if you want to see it, please buy the complete first edit-Type B! If you see the images, you can see why we re-cut it, so please buy it!
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↓p52-53
When we, people get over the trials in life, we become stronger.
This trial made alice
No one could have predicted that the guitarist, Tora, who was suffering from a hernia would suddenly got worse, meaning that the tour had to be cancelled. After the live in Sendai which was their first live of their tour, Tora had a sharp pain in his left hand. I heard from members afterwards that they were worried by the SOS signals coming from Tora who never usually complained about anything.
Maybe it’s not possible to continue the tour…
With this on their minds the tour continued on to the 2nd scheduled concert in Aomori . However, their worst fears were in fact correct, leading to the cancellation of all tours until their sixth scheduled live in Club CITTA inKawasaki . However, at that time Tora had not yet recovered and it seemed a little too early to be rescheduling lives. They decided to resume the tour as they believed in Tora’s words ‘Let’s do it’.
『Alpha』was the album which made me want to see one of their lives as soon as I could. I was so disappointed, as this was the tour after『Alpha』. However, I worried more about the condition of Tora, so I thought I would be satisfied if they could do their live with only about 80% of their usual power, and I went to the venue. I just hope that he wouldn’t work too hard in the concert.
However on that day, they showed me a concert with a gained momentum and had higher spirits than I had expected, and I was just ashamed myself. I wondered why I thought these guys were the type to play at just 80 percent of their ability. So often through their interviews, I heard directly from them what they were willing to do for their lives and I had thought that I had understood them……They did their live gaining momentum, like they didn’t have any barriers in the way, so much more than my predicted 80 percent.
After resuming their tour, they did concerts in country areas every second day, then returned to do a concert inTokyo . On that day, I was both concerned about Tora’s condition as well as felt ashamed about my expectations of the band in Kawasaki . So I decided to forget all of it, and just enjoy the live.
They didn’t betray me. In the SE of 「Cradle to［Alpha］」, members appeared on stage, and they played instrumental music like they were playing in a jam session and it connected to the 1st song 「ZERO」. This opening was the same as in Kawasaki , but their groove was much better than before. It was just the best! They played songs of 『cosmic world」「RED CARPET GOING ON」one after another, and involved the audience at different times throughout the performance. Even though it had just started, the audience had already heated up enough to cause an avalanche.
“I’m coming back to Tokyo !”
Shou’s voice sounded proudly in the venue. His voice was full of confidence. After his MC, 「TSUBASA.」was performed. I really felt that this song ‘grew up’ during their live concerts. It was much better then when I listened to it as a single and when I listened to it in Kawasaki . On that day, there were other songs which I felt were better than before, they were 「9th Revolver」「FANTASY」「Eraser」and the encore song of「THE LAST EMPIRE」.
There was a unified band feeling that I could really feel. Here, ‘unified’ doesn’t mean a feeling of a small scaled band that follows the rules. I mean that relationships in the band were built up through these lives. Each sound insisted to be heard one over the other, yet were separated respectively, but also together in a tight groove, creating a good comfortable space.
And what I felt grow most was the vocals of Shou. His vocals had become more stable, making their sound more driving than before, and sent their world depicted in their lyrics directly and deeply to listeners.
In「Aoi tori」and「Kousai」guitar sounded dramatically. Then「Blue Planet」was spread refreshingly before us. The heavy zone of the live started from「Velvet」 and dashed into「-Dice-」「Kowloon -NINE HEADS RODEO SHOW-」「Gokusai gokushoku gokudouka〈Ｇ３〉」. In such heavy zone, the audience raised their fists strongly and called “Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi!” which broke the pop impression of the band. Their sounds had totally different expressions song by song, and left deep impressions in each of the audience’s mind.
“I just thank not for the success of this live, but for making us able to achieve this tour.”
With these words Shou let us all know what he was really thinking, and I was very impressed to see the five members enjoying the concert fully, as he said it.
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