Tower Records 「NO MUSIC, NO LIFE.」
Original Date:How many years has it been?
14.
It’s been 14 years and, how do you say… I suppose we've started to become established group.
In terms of how long we’ve been active, yes, but in the sense of how well-known we are…
By now, we're definitely a leading figure.
We've been a group of three since the beginning; that’s right, we've never had a change of members. We like recording more than performing live, and we enjoy it so much that we started our activities with an interest in it from the start. We’re a bit of an introverted group. In terms of instrumentation, we're not like a normal band, each of us is in charge of different instruments and we don't have a specific one that we’re dedicated to. We usually play the songs that Nagai writes, and when I write a song, we all play it together, including the musicians around us, and record it.
We've always wanted to make something that was better than anything we've ever done before, and we’ve always been able to accomplish that. The last album we made was called "Tokyo Utopia Tsushin". When we finished making it, we felt like we didn't have the confidence to make any more good music. But we still had to move on. In a way, we were caught in a quota or a challenge that we had set for ourselves, and I managed to write a song called "Sachiko", which I like very much, or "Symphony", which is Nagai's song. It was around 2003 when we started working with the idea that it would be nice to make music that we could listen to even when we were older, which is idealistic, but that’s how we felt. We like to listen to music that we can listen to every day and not get bored of it; that's what we want to achieve, and that's what we've been working especially hard on for the last 3 or 4 albums.
This album has three songs by Kitasono, right?
Yes, arranged by him.
There’s a sense of incredible complexity to his sound, yet it’s very easy to listen to.
We’re very satisfied with him, and frankly speaking, he’s an amazingly talented person. I felt that his sense of harmony is very close to ours. I think this is very important when having an arrangement done, and we really felt no sense of discomfort with his work. It seems like it’d be easy to create something that we’d be able to listen to without any distress, but it’s really difficult. The fact that he was able to do that for us is the result of a miraculous combination of his talent and our own sense of taste.
What Kitasono is doing is something we don't have.
Especially in terms of skills.
That's right. From our point of view, everything is top-notch, it's really amazing. That's why we can't imitate or be influenced by him. Even if we’d try, it wouldn’t be possible. laughs
He’s very good, and very serious about his music. It's something to learn from him.
I think we live in an age where so much pop music and pop songs have been created. The more I think about the meaning of music and what it means to create something new, the more I feel like it's almost impossible. There is a part of me that feels like I have to do it in spite of that. Just recently, when I think back on the work on this album, when I listen back to the songs on it that we made, I think that it's a little bit different from us, that it's music that wouldn't have been told to the world if it wasn't for us. It's something that we're trying to achieve, of course, and we're trying to move forward as much as we can, and I've had the feeling recently that it's coming more naturally. I've been feeling more positive about making music lately. Until a while ago I used to lose sight of the meaning of what I was doing, but recently I've found a balance between the two, and although it's a personal problem, I feel like I'm able to work on my music in a positive way.
Kaori, you write more than half of the lyrics?
Which was the case this time, too. Usually Someya does a lot of the writing, but this time he said he couldn't write anything. So I said I would definitely do it, and I was able to. The lyrics of the past seven albums are almost the same in terms of what they say and what they express, and I’m sure it’ll continue to be like that in the future.
There's something mysterious about “Initial K”.
I like books quite a lot, so I sometimes imitate them. The letter "K" is just because of the first letter from my name, “Kaori”. laughs
As for the times and zeitgeist, at first I started to shut it out rather consciously, like it was better to shut it out, from about 2005. But lately, I spontaneously and consciously don't shut it out, and before I know it, I don't care anymore, and I usually make music with little, or none at all, awareness of the zeitgeist or the era or whatever.
We've been told that's not good. It's not a question of which is better or worse, but in our opinion, it's not about the times and it's more about what's inside of us, about our feelings, and more about pure musicianship and things like that.
In the lyrics, I try not to include too many keywords from the current era, for example, but there’s no reason for that. It's just too natural to me, and I never thought about the benefits. It's simply that I like old things, and yet, what about them? I wonder how people in the future will listen to the music of the 2010s, or even if they listen to something from the past, for example, the 60s, the 70s; every decade, the colour, the sound is usually different, isn't it?
In that sense, talking about lyrics and talking about music might be quite different, the way we perceive the times. As for the music, it's like what Nagai said earlier. But when it comes to the lyrics, if you ask me if I'm writing about other times, or if I'm writing about society, or if I'm writing about something other than myself, it's not the same. Well, I think the lyrics are more like an accumulation of things that we've done in our lives that we thought were good to express. That's why at the beginning we started our activities with the awareness that we were living in the 2000s, I think. [to Nagai] But gradually you've changed to the current direction, don't you think? In the beginning you were a bit more aware of the times, weren't you?
Even though I was aware, it was frustrating. It felt like it wasn’t working!
Well, there it is... I don't know, I can't remember. laughs But now I feel a great sense of fulfillment.
In that sense, I'm feeling rather positive, or rather, I'm feeling good right now. I don't know what I'm talking about anymore. laughs
As the creator, I want people to listen to it at home, alone. That’s the kind of music I want. I hope it's the kind of music that makes you want to press the play button again after you've listened to it once, the kind of music that you can listen to again and again. That's what I've tried to make.
Well, for me, I don't really think about how people will listen to my music. laughs I just hope they like it.
I think that music is something that people can think about and choose what they like, so I'd be delighted if people embrace Lamp.