– At last, the album is complete. First, I’d like to ask about your impression of it as a whole. Could you make some general remarks concerning your personal thoughts about it?
[From the start, I was thinking I wanted to make this one a pop album. So, I kept that in mind for all the songs I came out with. The song THE BLACK ROSE might not quite be pop though, but to me it’s a playful tune, and I think it puts a nice accent on the whole thing.]
– Let’s see, this time there are three songs by you, but those songs carry the accent of the entire album, right?
[Yeah, I guess so.]
– It’s the case with SEVENTH HEAVEN as well as with Hurry Xmas. I get the feeling that you were very deliberate about composing them.
[Yeah. I was thinking that I wanted it to become a pop album, right, so maybe that’s why I wrote such colourful songs this time around. But, I also wondered “Can I really pull that off?”. You can’t tell without laying them all out in a row. Then, when we did have all the songs laid out, I said to myself “Oh good, it turned out to be (a pop album) like I wanted”, which made me happy (laughs).]
– Your wanting to make it pop, did that also become an unyielding idea during the recording process?
[Hmmm…… More of a hope. Of course, I kept it in mind for the songs that I had written, but when it comes to the songs the others brought in, it’s not just about what I think anymore. My hope that when the songs were all brought together, the album would turn out that way, it was there normally……. I worried a little.]
– I think that AWAKE was an introspective piece of work, where all the songs came together to illustrate a single scene. Do you think that this fact directly influenced the current album, or something along those lines?
[The way I feel now is that what was done last time is over with. For the lyrics, too, I made myself set my sights lower so I could come up with easily likable songs about ordinary things, with a nuance of closeness, thinking that I wanted it to be a pop album.]
– I believe the theme of AWAKE was anti-war. I think the lyrics and songs were all written to reflect that idea as much as possible, but this time the theme seems to be jumping around. To you, hyde, is that a part of the pop feeling?
[Hmmm… well of course, that’s partly true… It’s a warm expression of love, perhaps. That’s what really jumps out at me. I think the last one was a more exasperating expression of love, but this time the thing that jumps out at me most is that gentle love, and an ordinary-life atmosphere that strikes me as being very wonderful. Like I said, I really wanted it to take that shape.]
– This is album is quite wonderful, isn’t it? SEVENTH HEAVEN and Hurry Xmas are so straightforwardly expressive, it makes for a gorgeous atmosphere. I mean, some other rock bands have aimed for a flatter sound in order to better express the ordinary, but as stadium bands go, trying to express the spark of the gorgeous ordinary in the entertainment world just doesn’t seem to be happening, so that leaves it up to you, in my mind. What do you think?
[Ah, I see what you mean (laughs). Yeah I do think that’s somewhat true. After all, I do think it’s one of this band’s strengths. Each one of us writes songs and thinks up the image he wants, freely…… Even if I’m thinking I want to make a pop album, that’s not something we recognized as a group. ……And this band has some history, too (laughs). As an individual, I dissipate. That conscious awareness of making hard rock like in my solo work dissolves, and I’m left feeling very happy that we are this band that can make any kind of music. Until now, I admired rock more, I was even tying myself down that way, but now I’ve gotten to enjoy not being tied to one genre, and I thought about how this is a great thing about the band. This time…… it feels like we’re blossoming, much more than before. The seed has gone wild (laughs).]
– (laughs).
[What kind of band are we!? I feel like we’ve gone crazy with that, and I think other bands probably couldn’t do this, anyway.]
– L’Arc~en~Ciel lives up to the meaning of its name (i.e. rainbow) with this album, right?
[That’s right (laughs).]
– I think this album’s music has a wonderfully positive special power that isn’t heard anywhere else. Why do you think you have been able to make such a thing?
[……… How did we do that, I wonder…… Rather then asking how, I feel that we just made what we had to make. Of course, there was that solo period, so each of us built up his image of what L’Arc~en~Ciel is, and got ideas about what he’d like to have the other members play, so we all wrote songs with that idea in mind, and in that sense I think all of our minds became one, this time…… In the end, things that were at the back of our minds made their way to the front, I think that’s the same for all of us.]
– ken-san mentioned that making this album reminded him of True quite a bit, so I’m wondering if the rest of the band thought the same thing. In other words, I’m wondering if there was a bit of a sense of gearing up and taking notice that there are still higher goals to aim for. How about you, hyde, how do you feel about that, compared to the past?
[Hmmmm………. (Thinking extremely hard) ……… Even though it’s our eleventh album, I don’t feel like we’re seeing the “bottom” at all. This time, once again, we’ve put an album together and I think it’s a good one. This is our sixteenth year together, and I don’t know if we’re changing gears or not, but this atmosphere is there. This band hasn’t stalled yet. We’ve still got plenty of energy (laughs).]
– Hahahahahahahahahaha.
[That’s how I feel.]
– Does this connect to a feeling that you will still go on for a long time?
[Rather than say we will go on, I think it’s closer to the correct nuance to say that we can still go on. ………I’m sure our feelings aren’t gone, that somehow we might be getting to be a band we can admire.]
– I see. hyde-san, was it you who came up with the title of KISS?
[Yes. This is essentially what I said before, but it’s not the kind of meaning that AWAKE had, it’s more of a likable meaning, and I wanted it to be something that can represent the links that people have to each other. So coming from that…… with the idea that it would be nice if everyone could be tied to each other closely enough to kiss, I gave it that name.]
– That sounds like a challenge.
[Yes.]
– Do you like kissing?
[Oh, you know, the essence of kiss is that it’s an expression of love. I think of a kiss an action that gets the blood pumping. Of course, I do think there are kisses whose sole objective is to move on to sex, but for those we love, those we want to hold closely…… I think a kiss is what gets the most blood pumping. So, it’s what sprouts from the links between people. I think that’s a fantastic, wonderful thing.]
– More than love or hate, it’s about feeling the quality.
[Of course it’s about love (laughs). But thinking about it sexually is a bit…… Well of course I do like that aspect too (laughs), but it’s not only about that, and I want everyone to know it.]
– Now, lastly, I’d like to ask you for a brief review of each member, concerning the recording. Start with yukihiro-san.
[He played with wonderful smoothness, this time. Of course there were some annoying songs in there, like Hurry Xmas. Before, he used to take two, three days for a single song, recording hundreds of takes, really intense, you know. Then, in the end it would be the very first take that got used (laughs). Now, he doesn’t waste his time like that anymore, he’s OK with the first take, and a lot of the time he didn’t even play the song more than once…… In that sense I think he’s grown up, and become more gracious (laughs).]
– Now tetsu-san.
[I guess tetsu-chan is the same as he’s always been. I didn’t get the feeling that anything about him had changed… He has this dispassionate image about him, doesn’t he? But, I did notice that his capacity for direction had jumped way up. He grasps what’s good and bad right away, but I think that’s normal. I think his leader traits come out, even in recording.]
– And ken-san.
[ken-chan has always had this “music teacher” vibe to him (laughs). I get the feeling that he sees music on a higher level than the rest of us do. This time I felt the influence of that side of him even more than before. So those aspects of music that are beyond the rest of us, those are left up to him. I felt that this side of him deepened quite a bit this time, also in how the demos he made were already almost perfect. In that sense, I think we relied on him a lot even for songs that he didn’t write. It’s like he’s above us, in a sense.]
[From the start, I was thinking I wanted to make this one a pop album. So, I kept that in mind for all the songs I came out with. The song THE BLACK ROSE might not quite be pop though, but to me it’s a playful tune, and I think it puts a nice accent on the whole thing.]
– Let’s see, this time there are three songs by you, but those songs carry the accent of the entire album, right?
[Yeah, I guess so.]
– It’s the case with SEVENTH HEAVEN as well as with Hurry Xmas. I get the feeling that you were very deliberate about composing them.
[Yeah. I was thinking that I wanted it to become a pop album, right, so maybe that’s why I wrote such colourful songs this time around. But, I also wondered “Can I really pull that off?”. You can’t tell without laying them all out in a row. Then, when we did have all the songs laid out, I said to myself “Oh good, it turned out to be (a pop album) like I wanted”, which made me happy (laughs).]
– Your wanting to make it pop, did that also become an unyielding idea during the recording process?
[Hmmm…… More of a hope. Of course, I kept it in mind for the songs that I had written, but when it comes to the songs the others brought in, it’s not just about what I think anymore. My hope that when the songs were all brought together, the album would turn out that way, it was there normally……. I worried a little.]
– I think that AWAKE was an introspective piece of work, where all the songs came together to illustrate a single scene. Do you think that this fact directly influenced the current album, or something along those lines?
[The way I feel now is that what was done last time is over with. For the lyrics, too, I made myself set my sights lower so I could come up with easily likable songs about ordinary things, with a nuance of closeness, thinking that I wanted it to be a pop album.]
– I believe the theme of AWAKE was anti-war. I think the lyrics and songs were all written to reflect that idea as much as possible, but this time the theme seems to be jumping around. To you, hyde, is that a part of the pop feeling?
[Hmmm… well of course, that’s partly true… It’s a warm expression of love, perhaps. That’s what really jumps out at me. I think the last one was a more exasperating expression of love, but this time the thing that jumps out at me most is that gentle love, and an ordinary-life atmosphere that strikes me as being very wonderful. Like I said, I really wanted it to take that shape.]
– This is album is quite wonderful, isn’t it? SEVENTH HEAVEN and Hurry Xmas are so straightforwardly expressive, it makes for a gorgeous atmosphere. I mean, some other rock bands have aimed for a flatter sound in order to better express the ordinary, but as stadium bands go, trying to express the spark of the gorgeous ordinary in the entertainment world just doesn’t seem to be happening, so that leaves it up to you, in my mind. What do you think?
[Ah, I see what you mean (laughs). Yeah I do think that’s somewhat true. After all, I do think it’s one of this band’s strengths. Each one of us writes songs and thinks up the image he wants, freely…… Even if I’m thinking I want to make a pop album, that’s not something we recognized as a group. ……And this band has some history, too (laughs). As an individual, I dissipate. That conscious awareness of making hard rock like in my solo work dissolves, and I’m left feeling very happy that we are this band that can make any kind of music. Until now, I admired rock more, I was even tying myself down that way, but now I’ve gotten to enjoy not being tied to one genre, and I thought about how this is a great thing about the band. This time…… it feels like we’re blossoming, much more than before. The seed has gone wild (laughs).]
– (laughs).
[What kind of band are we!? I feel like we’ve gone crazy with that, and I think other bands probably couldn’t do this, anyway.]
– L’Arc~en~Ciel lives up to the meaning of its name (i.e. rainbow) with this album, right?
[That’s right (laughs).]
– I think this album’s music has a wonderfully positive special power that isn’t heard anywhere else. Why do you think you have been able to make such a thing?
[……… How did we do that, I wonder…… Rather then asking how, I feel that we just made what we had to make. Of course, there was that solo period, so each of us built up his image of what L’Arc~en~Ciel is, and got ideas about what he’d like to have the other members play, so we all wrote songs with that idea in mind, and in that sense I think all of our minds became one, this time…… In the end, things that were at the back of our minds made their way to the front, I think that’s the same for all of us.]
– ken-san mentioned that making this album reminded him of True quite a bit, so I’m wondering if the rest of the band thought the same thing. In other words, I’m wondering if there was a bit of a sense of gearing up and taking notice that there are still higher goals to aim for. How about you, hyde, how do you feel about that, compared to the past?
[Hmmmm………. (Thinking extremely hard) ……… Even though it’s our eleventh album, I don’t feel like we’re seeing the “bottom” at all. This time, once again, we’ve put an album together and I think it’s a good one. This is our sixteenth year together, and I don’t know if we’re changing gears or not, but this atmosphere is there. This band hasn’t stalled yet. We’ve still got plenty of energy (laughs).]
– Hahahahahahahahahaha.
[That’s how I feel.]
– Does this connect to a feeling that you will still go on for a long time?
[Rather than say we will go on, I think it’s closer to the correct nuance to say that we can still go on. ………I’m sure our feelings aren’t gone, that somehow we might be getting to be a band we can admire.]
– I see. hyde-san, was it you who came up with the title of KISS?
[Yes. This is essentially what I said before, but it’s not the kind of meaning that AWAKE had, it’s more of a likable meaning, and I wanted it to be something that can represent the links that people have to each other. So coming from that…… with the idea that it would be nice if everyone could be tied to each other closely enough to kiss, I gave it that name.]
– That sounds like a challenge.
[Yes.]
– Do you like kissing?
[Oh, you know, the essence of kiss is that it’s an expression of love. I think of a kiss an action that gets the blood pumping. Of course, I do think there are kisses whose sole objective is to move on to sex, but for those we love, those we want to hold closely…… I think a kiss is what gets the most blood pumping. So, it’s what sprouts from the links between people. I think that’s a fantastic, wonderful thing.]
– More than love or hate, it’s about feeling the quality.
[Of course it’s about love (laughs). But thinking about it sexually is a bit…… Well of course I do like that aspect too (laughs), but it’s not only about that, and I want everyone to know it.]
– Now, lastly, I’d like to ask you for a brief review of each member, concerning the recording. Start with yukihiro-san.
[He played with wonderful smoothness, this time. Of course there were some annoying songs in there, like Hurry Xmas. Before, he used to take two, three days for a single song, recording hundreds of takes, really intense, you know. Then, in the end it would be the very first take that got used (laughs). Now, he doesn’t waste his time like that anymore, he’s OK with the first take, and a lot of the time he didn’t even play the song more than once…… In that sense I think he’s grown up, and become more gracious (laughs).]
– Now tetsu-san.
[I guess tetsu-chan is the same as he’s always been. I didn’t get the feeling that anything about him had changed… He has this dispassionate image about him, doesn’t he? But, I did notice that his capacity for direction had jumped way up. He grasps what’s good and bad right away, but I think that’s normal. I think his leader traits come out, even in recording.]
– And ken-san.
[ken-chan has always had this “music teacher” vibe to him (laughs). I get the feeling that he sees music on a higher level than the rest of us do. This time I felt the influence of that side of him even more than before. So those aspects of music that are beyond the rest of us, those are left up to him. I felt that this side of him deepened quite a bit this time, also in how the demos he made were already almost perfect. In that sense, I think we relied on him a lot even for songs that he didn’t write. It’s like he’s above us, in a sense.]
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