Gackt "Merveilles" Interview

 

- Now that you've finished your long awaited album, do you have any feelings of achievement or satisfaction?

Not really. I think I would have if our only objective was to make the album, but we've been using our experiences to create a concept since we began last summer so I can't say it's done yet.

- So it's only a fragment of a continuing concept?

Right. Both the singles and the album are.

- Making the music is one thing, but it was a meticulously boiled down recording wasn't it?

We came up with the image in the pre-production stage. Of course as we were recording I began to picture the things that I wanted to express differently, and I wanted to make changing them an important part of it too. But we had an abnormal amount of time to do the recordings so I couldn't. This time we didn't have enough time and no one cared if I objected, and in order to make the album under those conditions we had to make a proper schedule. During the pre-pro we ended up doing the songs at a 2-a-day pace. That seems like an insensibly fast pace to me, and since the image wasn't planned out to a certain level before we start recording everyone was pretty strict.

- Was there any standard for selecting the songs you recorded?

As you know, our big theme is "Ningen to wa?" (what is human?) and that can only be understood through a lot of different concepts. This time a lot of individual things make up the songs, so you can sense the ideas beneath the concepts for Merveilles* from them.

* well, he said it as "through your body", so I guess it's something to be felt at an instinctual level collectively throughout the CD, not thought about through lyrics and all.

- It sounds like each song has its own standard. Well then, when people hear the album what kind of sense do you want them to have?

The sound of the music on the album isn't everything, and I want people to feel that it's only an entrance into something else. It's not like searching for a word in a dictionary and thinking "what does this mean?", it's more like I would want people to listen to the entire thing and then try to capture the collective meaning. Upon hearing the sounds, I think people have created worlds individually, but clearly there is a part that I distinctly meant to create as well. I think those things together are the theme for those people. There's the part that each person is searching for and I'm not sure if it's the same thing we are, or if they can see it from a different angle, or if they're looking for the wrong things all together.

- So it's the entrance that surrounds those kinds of thoughts. Do you feel the same kind of nuance in the things you express during lives?

Well, on stage all five of us have different things that we're looking for. The audience is the same way, and because a feeling of chaos circulates due to the number of people we end up with one mixed space. If we only sent "electric waves" out to the audience in a one-way-traffic sense there wouldn't be a reason for the live; we get something back from the audience too.

- At lives and on the CD you are searching for the answer with the audience?

I'm argumentitive (hard to get along with maybe?), but my problem is that I feel parts of myself are becoming empty. So I'm hoping I'll find what I need to understand what I'm missing at the next live, or maybe in the next CD, but I still don't know. I think there are various things that I'm missing. It's not as if we're trying to do anything particularly difficult. But there are a lot of people in this world, and I want to be able to feel that there are a lot of other people who are the same way as me. If the people that like what we do come to like that, in extreme speech, the design is interesting so ~ but that's alright. All I want is to be able to feel that that our fans have a part in creating our world as well.

- I'm turning back to the album now. You said this production is an entrance to...

It's a matter of understanding "Merveilles." For example, you're going on a treasure hunt and you have a map. The map has been cut up. You collect all of the fragments and then you can make the complete map; the album and singles are like those fragments. We're also searching for a map. Maybe now there are people who will say "Huh, we have to search for a place that sells the album then?" (luahgs)

- In Malice's case, there's a part that seems like you'r doing a roll playing game that searches for the answer with the listener.

Yeah. So that's the way that the relationship between the band and the listener develops, and if they can catch "Malice" it will produce impossibility*.

* The text is "dakara, juurai no band to listner no kankei no arikata de Malice o toraeru to, soko ni muri ga shojiru n desu." If you can't read Japanese I apologise; that was the best I could do.

- This question is about your lyrics, but take "Syunikiss" for example. That's what it's called, but is the origin of the title "return to the lord"?

Ah. That's how you interpreted it? I think that's one way to see it. There are many, many ways...

- And that's how to use the lyrics?

I expresses in words the worlds that everyone else has created from their concepts. Because the things everyone had were still in a hazy state, it was my role to take them and make them less muddled. Because I wrote the lyrics my own voice certainly is a part of them, but it's really as if I were just a filter that took the haziness away.

- Using "Syunikiss" as an example, how does that work?

When I'm writing lyrics I listen to the song and then talk with the author, but it's very important to find what the song's feeling is and make sure that it is brought out in the lyrics. As I start saying "Is it this kind of thing? Is it that kind of thing?" my own views begin to come out. For this song I used this technique with the writer, Yuuki-chan, but he only had a lot of descriptive emotional adjectives. Still, a part of the concept for "Merveilles" was there, and we were able to understand it together. As I heard the things he was sensing the story came floating down from inside me, and that's how I came up with the lyrics..

- I see. You really are like a filter.

Maybe more like a teabag. But I'm a horribly evil person so I'd make a horribly evil teabag, and then the tea would taste bad (laughs). It would be dyed deep red.

- It's like the song becomes the hot water, and the writer adds whatever flavor teabag he wants?

It is like that, isn't it. That is, if the person who wrote it's feelings and other other things don't slip through.

- Above the songs, there are all of the songs that were admitted in, but are there other things that you meant to let slip in as well?

That is "ikouru", I am. Depending on the song, the teabag dyes the water a different color, but depending on the way that I write the lyrics and melody I guess I let some things slip through.

- With the things you write, is each one is delicately linked together?

Yes they are. In the album none of the stories are the same. All sorts of puppets appear in the poems, but when I was writing the entire cast floated out from the songs and I wrote them in. Oh, doesn't that happen other times too? It's like a collection of short stories in a manga, even though the characters that the writer draws have the same sort of faces, the title and the character's names and personalities are very different. It's like that.

- "Brise" sounds like the brightest song in the album, but contrary to the music the poem seems very heavy and the image has a deep meaning, doesn't it?

Ah....well, I was in the hospital for a long time. When I have the friends that I met there listen to the song they say it made them cry. The part about the white room came from the hospital. The lyrics create all sorts of different situations, but for me the white room, basically it's that sort of thing.

- I see. It's a hospital room...

For us the most important thing is what the songs become for the people who are listening to them, so I try to use as few distinct nouns as possible, but when I say something purposely it's because that's what it is....at that time the only freedom I had was being able to gaze at the sky through the window.

- Sky. You use that word often. When you announced the first song you managed, "Le Ciel", at the live, you talked about the sky didn't you?

There's a scene for the movie that we photographed in France, "Bel Aire", where I embrace the actress. While I was waiting to film it the world for "Le Ciel" floated down*. I think those who saw the video will understand, the sky and field just continued on far into the distance. Just then I was able to see myself falling down from the sky. I was thinking that maybe I had nothing to write for Malice but I was able to write a song with very important ideas in it.

* Everything floats down to Gackt. It's poetic and creates a nice image but I haven't heard anyone else use the words "furite kuru" in describing their inspiration for songs.

- Lastly, do you have any hints as to what the fortunate ticket holders will be able to see in your April 1st performance at the Budoukan?

Is it okey if I talk about "Le Ciel"? Think about why we put the song where it is on the album, and about what kind of feeling it has at the Budoukan. There's a meaning to it and I think it will be hard to figure out what it is.

- By the way, some time ago you said you were argumentative, but do the people you know often tell you that?

No, you see in private there are a lot of things turning around in the listener and I don't really have much to chat about. Even though women want to get to know me, I chose to listen to them first instead of talking. Because of that girls often say ", I don't know anything about you..." (laughs). But, really, what do you think? (laughs)