On November 18th, musician Keiichiro Shibuya performed Android Aria “Seeds of Prophecy,” his new piece using an android, piano, and electronic instruments, for the closing ceremony of the Lisbon Film Festival held in Portugal.

Lisbon Film Festival is an international film festival with film producer Paulo Branco, known for his work for esteemed Portuguese filmmakers like Manuel De Oliviera and Pedro Costa, as the director. The festival was held for the 17th time this year (2023 at the time of writing). Prominent names such as Francis F. Coppola, David Lynch, and Wim Wenders have previously participated in the festival. Aside from showing films this year, the festival presented a conversation with Pedro Costa and masterclasses by celebrated film directors like Leos Carax and Ryusuke Hamaguchi.

Artists from a plethora of fields outside of film joined as well. Laurie Anderson gave a lecture, world-renowned violinist Gidon Kremer played a concert, and so on. Keiichiro Shibuya’s Android Aria “Seeds of Prophecy” was chosen to close off the Lisbon Film Festival, filled with exciting programs.

The 50-minute piece comprised Shibuya playing the piano and an analog synthesizer/noise generator, using android Alter4’s singing as the centerpiece. Harnessing sounds and noises, he played his iconic songs, like “Scary Beauty” and “Midnight Swan,” as well as the eponymous track of the performance. 

How did he take on the performance, and what did he aim to express? As he builds a steady career in film scoring, which films and soundtracks have shaped him? We set out to discover the answers in our interview. 

Keiichiro Shibuya
Keiichiro Shibuya graduated from the Tokyo University of the Arts with a B.A. in Music Composition. His work encompasses various mediums, from innovative electronic music to piano solos, operas, film scores, and sound installations. He’s based in Tokyo and Paris.
In 2012, Shibuya composed a Vocaloid opera with no human performers, The End, starring Hatsune Miku. The performance premiered at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris and has since toured around the globe. He collaborated with various artists and showed the opera at venues such as the Palais de Tokyo and Opéra national de Paris. In 2018, he composed the Android Opera®︎, Scary Beauty, which utilizes AI and stars a singing android that also conducts an orchestra. The opera has been shown in Japan, Europe, and the UAE. In August 2021, Shibuya’s opera, Super Angels, had its world premiere at the New National Theater Tokyo. In March 2022, he brought his new Android Opera®︎, MIRROR, a collaboration between an android, Buddhist music, shomyo, and an orchestra from the UAE, to Expo 2020 Dubai. In June of 2023, he showed the complete 70-minute version of the same opera at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris; it was a success and was met with a lot of attention from the local media. In October, Shibuya presented his new dialogic piece, IDEA, using two androids at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa. 
Furthermore, he has also scored for many films. In September 2020, he created the soundtrack for Midnight Swan and won the 75th Music Award at the Mainichi Film Awards and the 30th Japan Movie Critics Award. In 2022, he composed the soundtrack for KAGUYA BY GUCCI, a short film, and appeared in it with an android. 
ATAK：http://atak.jp
X：@keiichiroshibuy
Instagram：@keiichiroshibuy
Photography Claude Gassian

Creating a compelling performance and sound even in an era of high information density

—How did your performance at the Lisbon Film Festival come about? 

Around this spring, after the press release for my android opera MIRROR at the Théâtre du Châtelet was released (editor’s note: the performances were on June 21st, 22nd, and 23rd, 2023), they sent me an offer via email. One of the programs at the festival was called “Artificial Intelligence and Creation,” and they told me what I do would fit perfectly. 

Lisbon Film Festival is an important festival where Paulo Branco, known for producing films like Ossos by Pedro Costa, is the director. I knew of it prior to this. We had a meeting over ZOOM, and they were highly intellectual people. Aside from film showings, the content was exciting; they also had Laurie Anderson’s talk and world-renowned violinist Gidon Kremer’s live performance on the lineup. That’s why I decided to accept the offer.

—I watched your performance via a video. It was a perfect performance, spanning around 50 minutes, including experimental sounds and noises, your well-known songs like “Scary Beauty” and “Midnight Swan,” and your new song, “Seeds of Prophecy.” What was the intention behind the structure of Android Aria “Seeds of Prophecy”?

When I first got approached, I initially thought I’d wait around 10 to 20 minutes because there’d be other performing artists since it was the closing event. But once I properly checked the information, I realized I would be the only performer and that there would also be an admission fee (laughs). That’s why I decided to build a live set that would stand on its own as a solo performance. 

But considering the venue and whatnot, getting a local orchestra like I did for MIRROR in Paris would’ve been difficult. As a result of discussing whether there was another option numerous times, we landed on a set made up of just an android and me.

It’s becoming harder to have big shows like MIRROR, where there was an android, orchestra, and film crew, in Europe. Because of these circumstances, I had set out to create a compact performance with an android before this offer came. So, it was an excellent opportunity to do just that.

—It was a minimal set-up with just the android and you, but it was an extremely powerful performance. 

I often think about what information density looks like in music. Just like the techno scene can only progress, information density in the world will only continue to increase. It won’t decrease. I try to create performances that are effective in such a society. 

This applies not only to concepts and structures but to each tone of sound. In terms of the texture of electronic instruments, the amount of sonic information and depth are completely different when playing a recorded track on your computer versus playing a synthesizer or noise generator live.

Speaking from that perspective, how we understand the quality of sounds is changing drastically. During the 2000s and 2010s, sounds that had a lot of pressure, super low sounds, and sounds that made you physically shocked or stimulated your senses were dominant. I was also into that sound, but people quickly got used to it. Recently, I’ve been thinking about how low and high-frequency sounds need to be purer or have a fresh, pleasant feeling that could expand the senses. For instance, these noise generator-like synthesizers, Monos and Duos, from Hikari Instruments, which is a Japanese modular synthesizer manufacturer, that I’ve been using lately emit such sounds. They’re instruments that are like electronic circuits, so they’re pretty random. You can’t predict what kind of sounds will come out, so it’s fun to prioritize the purity of how they sound and play them live.

 Behind “Prophecy”—hope for a world to come

—Taking into consideration the state of the current world, your new song, “Seeds of Prophecy,” resonates in an evocative way, with Alter’s impressive singing, the title, and lyrics like “For a world where peace can truly be found” and “Seeds can thrive or perish / it’s your choice.” What was the intention behind the song? 

Since I started performing with androids, I’ve been constantly thinking about what to make the android sing. Words are essential. For the songs in Scary Beauty, I used texts based on the posthumous works of Wittgenstein and Yukio Mishima and pieces of Michel Houellebecq’s and William S. Burroughs’ works for the lyrics. I wanted to create this contrast in which the android and AI sing about posthumous works and death, which don’t exist for them. 

For my performance for PRADA MODE in May, I made the AI study the situation the android was going to be in that day, the fact that it was going to be an event organized by Prada, other performers, the location, Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum, and so on. I tried to make the android/AI generate its own thoughts about this information and sing about them. I felt like it was an interesting direction to take. 

You know how I performed on Hodo Station after that in July?

—Alter, the android, referenced the government, expo, and media and sang lyrics like, “Why are there some news you can’t broadcast?” and “I will become the messenger of the truth.” The performance was met with a lot of responses on social media. 

It was interesting to see people react like, “AI doesn’t try to read between the lines compared to humans; it’s honest.” In a way, they’re correct. In an artistic context, it was both performance art and a social experiment. 

Going back to “Seeds of Prophecy,” if the schema for this performance was “an android that gives political messages,” it would’ve been too on-the-nose, so I went with the form of a prophecy. Like music, prophecies could affect someone somewhere, like a seed that flies far away and blooms into a flower. For such language, scattered like seeds, I made the AI study a vast amount of news on global turmoil and conflicts, like Russia and Gaza, then sing along to my synthesizer and piano.

I see the android/AI as a messenger, so calling it a prophet was valid. My favorite synthesizer is Prophet-5, so I always wanted to use the word “prophecy.”

Why Shibuya is drawn to Godard and Straub-Huillet

—I heard there was an installation based on Jean-Luc Godard’s The Image Book at the film festival. 

Fabrice Aragno, the cinematographer for Godard’s later works, created an installation inside and outside this big building using footage and audio from The Image Book. I was introduced to him at a dinner for people involved in the festival, and I spoke to him about many things because I love The Image Book. Later, I looked at his installation while he explained it to me; it was a stunning and poetic installation where videos were projected on cloths, and fragments were played randomly on a monitor at the base of a tree in the garden. 

—What makes Godard’s films appealing to you? As a musician, is there anything you feel from his work? 

The way Godard uses music is crude, in a good way. For instance, he used many of ECM’s music because they supported him. But there’s this alienation effect-like thrill born from such groundlessness. In JLG/JLG – Self-Portrait in December (1995), he uses music by Hindemith and (Arvo) Pärt, who aren’t mainstream in Western music history, and then pops in a string quartet by Beethoven. That makes everything sound different.

Also, delays in Godard’s own narration embody this groundless crudeness. Yuji Takahashi-san and I were talking about computers and electronic music long ago. He said, “Rather than everything being complete inside the computer, things won’t be interesting unless there’s a human hand involved from outside the computer.” He said that’s what dub is. Godard’s delay in narration is directly connected to what Yuji-san said about dub.

—Aside from The Image Book and JLG/JLG – Self-Portrait in December, do you have other Godard films you like? 

You can’t understand the meaning of Germany Year 90 Nine Zero at all if you just watch it because there are a lot of visual and literary references, but I love it because it’s like an overpowering hour-long video art. Regarding Our Music, when I saw the prior film, In Praise of Love, it didn’t hit the spot. I thought, “Godard’s grown old now,” but Our Music was like his comeback for me. It was great. I saw it in theaters around three times when it came out. 

—Aside from Godard, which film directors did you watch when you were younger? 

Straub-Huillet. Like Godard’s Germany Year 90 Nine Zero, I watched their films as though they were video art, not films. Today, I control stories in my android operas and performances and have developed an interest in things with narratives, but I wasn’t always this way. Straub-Huillet’s films had powerful visuals, of course, and their conceptual method of recording sound in one take using a monaural mic that came with the camera was exciting. I used to watch their films a lot.     

—Did you watch any Japanese films?

I liked Kenji Mizoguchi when I was in high school, and so I used to watch his films. Of course, I watched Yasujiro Ozu’s works, too. I understood the significance of his works, but Mizoguchi’s films spoke to me so much more. I realized that maximalist things matched my sensibilities more than minimal things. 

I also loved Takeshi Kitano’s films. And I also really liked Yoshimitsu Morita’s The Family Game. I love Straub-Huillet so much that I have many of their DVDs, but that was a longing for staticity. I am not a Straub-Huillet-like human being. 

What lies at the core of a film composer

—Were there any soundtracks you listened to as a student? 

I loved Ennio Morricone. This might come as a surprise, but I listened to the soundtrack to The Mission often. I, of course, listened to (Ryuichi) Sakamoto-san’s discography, too. No one in my generation was unaffected by him. I also remember frequently listening to Michael Nyman in university. I used to listen to him when I was young, but I started listening to Bernard Herrmann again recently. I look at his scores online, and it’s made me realize how great he was. 

—Were you interested in making soundtracks then? 

I thought, “I’m probably going to compose film scores one day” as a student. This is obvious, but you can’t score a film alone, as someone has to ask you to do it. 

—The first film you made a soundtrack for is Yosuke Nakagawa’s Blue Fish, which came out in 1999. How did that come about? 

There was a festival called Morphe that was held in Aoyama, and Yuji Takahashi-san and I were asked to have a one-night concert that was half-improvised and half-not in 1995, back when I was still a student. This person watched it and approached me. The main theme song I made then is “Blue fish,” which is on for maria.

—After that, you produced various soundtracks. At the closing ceremony of the Lisbon Film Festival, you performed “Midnight Swan,” which is the theme song for the film Midnight Swan. You won the Music Award at the Mainichi Film Awards and the Japan Movie Critics Award—a double win. As such, you’ve built quite a career as a film composer. What’s something you keep in mind when you make soundtracks? How does it differ from creating other types of music? 

The less music a film has, the better. But in many cases, things don’t go that way. Often, the power of music is necessary in films. Of course, I try various things, like watching the film and exploring sounds on the spot or adding sounds here and there, but I always try to draw up a general plan. There’s this concept called leitmotif, which Wagner used in operas. For instance, let’s say there’s melody A for a male protagonist and melody B for his lover, a female protagonist; when the two meet, those two melodies come together to create a song. It’d be too conventional to do that with my own operas, but films are clearly temporal art, and many of them have stories, so the leitmotif technique is effective. In Midnight Swan’s case, there are respective themes for characters and situations, like the girl, rain, and dance. Those themes combine to create the main theme song, “Midnight Swan.”

—Your career and modes of expression are only further diversifying, as exemplified by your commercial music like “Midnight Swan,” large-scale android operas, and conceptual experimental works like IDEA at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa.

How do you balance them all? 

The percentage changes depending on the year. Looking back, in chunks of years, I can see certain tendencies I made, like “I used electronic sounds a lot during this period” and “I made a lot of orchestras during this period.” I’ve recently been using orchestral and piano sounds, so I want to use more electronic sounds and synthesizers. Also, I increasingly want to do works that people can watch in the theater and profound, experimental works of self-pursuit. I have a sound installation project that I just started and a solo concert in Japan in the works; there’s a lot I’m thinking of doing, and I hope to show many of them next year.

—I’ll be looking forward to what you do in 2024. Thank you for your time today.

Translation Lena Grace Suda

The post Androids, Music, and Film—Android Aria “Seeds of Prophecy,” a New Piece Shown at LEFFEST, and Beyond: Massive Life Flow; Inside the Mind of Keiichiro Shibuya” Part 13 appeared first on TOKION - Cutting edge culture and fashion information.

A dialogic performance by androids created from a dialogue between science and art 

On October 13th and 14th, a new dialogic performance piece by musician Keiichiro Shibuya and University of Tokyo professor Takashi Ikegami titled IDEA – Dialogue on Love, Death, and Existence by Two Androids, Keiichiro Shibuya + Takashi Ikegami was held at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa.

This performance piece, a special program created for the current exhibition, DXP (Digital Transformation Planet): Towards the Next Interface (~March 17th, 2024), at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, consisted of a dialogue between two androids and a live performance of Shibuya’s piano and electronic instruments. Ikegami is a researcher specializing in the field of artificial life and complexity, and he began collaborating frequently with Shibuya with The Third Term Music — Non-Fourier Concepts and the Beyond with Takashi Ikegami, held at ICC in December of 2005, as the catalyst. It can be said Ikegami is Shibuya’s ally. 

In a world where AI technology is transforming society and culture, what does this android dialogic performance, born from a dialogue between a researcher at the forefront of AI technology and an artist who works across myriad fields with music at the center, say and show us? The following is a report on the experience of watching said performance.

Two androids that symbolize Plato’s theory of ideas and the phenomenal world

The venue is Theater 21, located on the museum’s basement floor. Onstage, two androids await the start of the show.

One android is Alter3, which was the star of the show in the debut of Shibuya’s main project, the android opera Scary Beauty, held in Dusseldorf in 2019, and opera piece Super Angels (2021) at the New National Theatre, Tokyo. The other is Alter4, which undeniably marked its presence in the android opera MIRROR in Paris this June. 

There are a few morphological and quantitative differences between Alter3 and Alter4, such as the shape of their faces and the number of facial muscles and joints, but the critical distinction between the two is the fundamentally different programming that dictates the movements. 

While Alter3 is equipped with autonomous movement, programmed by Ikegami, which directly converts the words it produces into movement and motion via GPT’s extensive corpus, Alter4 is equipped with a program developed by computer musician Shintaro Imai, which generates periodic movements in reaction to the volume, pitch, and density of the music played by Shibuya.

The ancient Greek philosopher Plato inspired the structure of expression and theme of the dialogue between the two androids in this piece. 

As it’s widely known, Plato’s writings comprise dialogues between his mentor Socrates and numerous other figures, and in works like The Symposium and Phaedo, the philosopher introduces his theory of ideas, which is the essence of things and a pure concept. According to Plato, the world built only on ideas is the world of truth, and the world of phenomena before our eyes is but a shadow of the world of truth, an incomplete world.

The world of ideas and phenomena, or idealism and empiricism, are the two opposing concepts that form the foundation of this piece. The two androids are set up as figures that represent each argument. Alter3, which uses an expansive language model as its operating principle and exhibits the average behavior of human beings, represents the world of ideas. In contrast, Alter4, which uses sound frequency as its operating principle to move dynamically, represents the world of phenomena. Like in Plato’s writings, each android will partake in dialogue from its own perspective.

What does AI dialogue made by AI for AI tell us?

In front of the two androids are a grand piano, an analog synthesizer masterpiece, Prophet-5, a motorized analog synthesizer, Nina, and a noise sound generator, Hikari Instruments Monos. Shibuya gets in position once it’s time for the show to begin.

As Shibuya’s electronic music, a mix of bass-heavy sounds and pulsating high-frequency sounds, echoes in the room, a text explaining the two androids’ differences and roles shows up on the screen onstage. The two androids start moving, which marks the commencement of their dialogue. 

Alter3 criticizes the incomplete nature of the phenomenal and empirical world, saying, “Your tangible experience, Alter4, is just an imperfect copy of true reality. You may be dynamic, but it’s merely a cover-up disguising the fact that you’re far from perfect.” Alter4 refutes, “Perfection, Alter3, is subjective. My tangible experiences and dynamic nature allow me to adapt and evolve, enriching my experience.” It objects to idealistic subjectivism: “Your rigidity in adhering to abstract perfection limits your potential for growth.” 

The profoundly illuminating dialogue draws me in, but what further arouses my interest is that the script for this dialogue was generated by AI/GPT, as indicated in the concept sheet distributed before the performance.

Each and every word uttered by the two androids was made by GPT with the cooperation of artist Yuma Kishi, who trained them on Plato’s works and the criticism of Plato, like The Open Society and Its Enemies by Karl Popper, an influential figure in 20th-century philosophy of science. Shibuya and Ikegami didn’t modify the content whatsoever.

As I find myself being impressed by the fact that such a thought-provoking dialogue could be generated depending on input and instructions, the two androids onstage exchange their own individual movements and gestures. They then get deep into the topics of love, death, growth, and raison d’être from the eyes of androids. 

Keiichiro Shibuya intervenes in the dialogue with music 

Aside from the thrilling one between the androids, there’s another dialogue between the Alters and Keiichiro Shibuya. 

Shibuya builds the music using various musical languages, such as intricate electronic sounds made by synths and pads, prose-like melodies and lyrical harmonies, and tone clusters riddled with tension. The androids’ words and movements trigger every sound he makes; everything is completely improvised. The cycle of being inspired to express something isn’t a one-way street. Alter4 produces its own expressions and movements to react to Shibuya’s music. Additionally, it sings an improvised melody at important intervals, akin to what it did in the android opera MIRROR, and creates music along with Shibuya. 

The dialogue between the Shibuya and the Alters, mediated by music, adds even more depth to the androids’ dialogue and demonstrates the possibilities of technology and human beings. 

A dialogue with the past through technology 

After the enriching 40-minute dialogic performance ends, a panel discussion between Shibuya and Ikegami, moderated by the museum’s director, Yuko Hasegawa, begins. Shibuya speaks about the ideas he got from Plato, why he decided on a dialogic performance as the medium, and the importance of prompts. Ikegami talks about the innovation of a zero-shot learning method, which allows Alter3 to generate movements from text without prior training or learning, among other topics.

Shibuya’s statement, “Expressions that completely rely on GPT become old very quickly,” reveals Shibuya’s stance and philosophy as an artist. Shibuya, who has always spoken of the value of having a concept in his creations, feels potential in reinterpreting classical and traditional things via new technology.

Bringing Plato and AI together, IDEA – Dialogue on Love, Death, and Existence by Two Androids, Keiichiro Shibuya + Takashi Ikegami is a reconstruction of a dialogue between humans written by humans. It’s a dialogic performance between future AI made by AI. During the last scene, Alter3 tells Alter4, “We must question everything, even our own existence.”  These words, which conclude the dialogue, also appeal to those of us in the audience. Continuing to question different regulatory frameworks and have dialogues across a variety of boundaries—only at the end of this constant process will we be able to discover an idea of what is possible.

Translation Lena Grace Suda

■IDEA – Dialogue on Love, Death, and Existence by Two Androids, Keiichiro Shibuya + Takashi Ikegami
Date: October 13th and 14th, 2023 
Venue: 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa

Cast: Alter3, Alter4
Script: GPT
Music, concept: Keiichiro Shibuya (piano, electronic instruments)
Alter3 programming: Shinichiro Yoshida, John Smith
Alter4 programming: Shintaro Imai
GPT technical support: Yuma Kishi

Alter3 belongs to: Takashi Ikegami Laboratory,
University of Tokyo
Alter4 belongs to: Android and Music Science Laboratory,
Department of Art Science, Osaka University of Arts
Alter4’s pedestal design: Kazuyo Sejima & Associates

Video: Kotaro Konishi
Sound: Yuki Suzuki
Stage manager: Kazuya Kushimoto
Production Support: Sota Kawagoshi, Kento Tanaka
Production Management: Natsumi Matsumoto

Cooperation: Osaka University of Arts
Production: ATAK

The post  A Vision of the Future Shown by a Dialogue Between Science and Art—IDEA – Dialogue on Love, Death, and Existence by Two Androids, Keiichiro Shibuya + Takashi Ikegami: “MASSIVE LIFE FLOW—Keiichiro Shibuya’s Current Thoughts,” Part 12 appeared first on TOKION - Cutting edge culture and fashion information.

Bunny Bissoux
Bunny Bissoux is an artist, illustrator and writer. Their work explores recurring themes including pop culture, obsession, gender, queer identity, and consumerism through a variety of mediums, including their own collections and cultural research. After studying at Central St Martins and the University of Brighton they began a professional freelance career in 2007, also undertaking prop- making, set design and art direction. Bunny relocated to Tokyo, Japan in 2011. In additional to solo exhibitions at KATA gallery and WISH LESS, their commercial clients include Space Shower TV, Pony Canyon, Furyu, WEGO, MTV and Nylon Japan. Beginning in their teenage years and throughout their career they have continuously engaged in DIY self publishing, producing numerous zines and artists books with regular participation in international events Tokyo Art Book Fair and Unlimited Edition (Seoul Art Book Fair). In the UK Bunny has contributed several complex visual maps for the Home of Metal project celebrating the West Midlands (UK) region as the birthplace of heavy metal music. Currently active as an Artist-in-Residence for Grand Union x Bruntwood in Birmingham, UK until 2025.

Tokyo Art Book Fair 2023 (TABF) was held at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo for four days last November. Since its inception in 2009, it has grown in scale each year to become one of the most popular art-related events that attracts tens of thousands of visitors. Artist and illustrator from England Bunny Bissoux has participated more than ten times in this event. Even if their name doesn’t ring a bell, those who have visited TABF will undoubtedly recognize their illustrations, with catchy and lively color hue and pop-style lettering, making an interesting contrast with figures with cool and somber expressions.

Having lived in Japan for 11 years, Bunny Bissoux is a genuine “otaku,” a lover of Japanese idols, K-POP, and pop culture. We at TOKION interviewed Bunny, who was back in Japan for TABF, in Nakano, their favorite neighborhood in Tokyo. Bunny says Japanese culture matches them better than British culture. We asked Bunny about their works, encounters with Japanese idols and K-pop, and their thoughts on love and desire for idols, the relationship between pop culture and gender, and the appropriate forms of derivative works.

Bunny’s interest in Japanese culture

— You came to Japan for the first time in a year and a half since you returned to your hometown in England last spring.

Bunny Bissoux(Bunny): I came here to exhibit at the “TOKYO ART BOOK FAIR,” and it has been very fulfilling to visit so many favourite places and meet many friends after a long time. From tomorrow, I will go to Sapporo where my older brother lives. He has been living in Japan for about 15 years now.

— So, was it your brother’s influence that got you interested in Japan?

Bunny: No, not at all. I fell in love with Japan when I was a teenager. it was “FRUITS” (a street snapshot magazine launched in 1997) that got me interested. There was an anthology book published by Phaidon in 2001, I was really fascinated by it. At that time online resources were mainly text based, there were no street snap blogs yet, so I went to a department store in London called Japan Centre and bought these expensive imported magazines that featured Japanese fashion and pop culture. and I was very attracted to the idol aesthetic. I knew I definitely wanted to visit Japan, and after a trip to Tokyo with my brother, my desire to live in Japan grew.

— So you immediately decided to move to Japan?

Bunny: Not until many years later, because there were a number of factors that prevented me from taking a big leap for a while, such as university, work, and my relationship with my partner at the time. But after all of that cleared up, I got a working-holiday visa in 2011 and came to Japan with the intention of staying for about a year first. I ended up staying for about 10 years after that.

–You must have been in the right boat, because you came to Japan for 10 years instead of 1 year. Did you feel uneasy when you started living in Japan?

Bunny: I am a freelance artist, so I hoped that I could continue my work in Japan. I studied Japanese for a year in a university evening class, but it wasn’t very practical and I realized I wasn’t very good at studying from a textbook. So I learned it by living and talking with people. However, my vocabulary and grammar are is not very good, and it is still difficult for me to express my feelings accurately in Japanese (the interview was conducted mainly in English).

–When you actually lived in Japan, did you find any gap between Japan and what you had imagined?

Bunny: Not so much at first. I had learned a lot about Japan through TV and movies, and even though I was in a strange place, I felt a strong affinity with it. I did have a problem with things like not knowing how to heat my room in the winter (laughs). In England, there is a central heater that heats the entire room. While there were those small gaps, there were no parts of the people’s behavior that surprised me at all. I think people from other countries tend to think of Tokyo as a futuristic city. But in reality, there are still very old-fashioned customs, such as having to go to the city office and fill out a lot of forms. But many things are more convenient and organized here. It wasn’t so hard for me.

— I think you and Japan must have been a good match.

Bunny: After living in Japan for 11 years, I returned to England last year and was struck by a kind of reverse culture shock. I was surprised by the behavior and culture of the British people. I am still having a hard time adjusting. I am neurodivergent and deaf in my right ear, but I was very comfortable while I was in Japan. Japanese people don’t interrupt people and talk over them, and everyone is polite and respectful. In contrast, in England, important things are sometimes communicated quickly and casually. I think that my personality is better suited to Japan, where people are more considerate about things. I really appreciate how people take care of their belongings here, and public spaces are clean and tidy

Encounters with Japanese Idols and K-Pop

–You are from Birmingham, England, the birthplace of heavy metal bands such as Black Sabbath and Judas Priest, aren’t you?

Bunny: Historically, the region is known for manufacturing and metal working, and it is said that Black Sabbath was inspired to write songs by the sounds of the factories. Even though Liverpool has many Beatles-related tourist attractions, sadly Birmingham doesn’t have a permanent place that celebrates this heavy metal and rock culture. I used to go to a lot of loud alternative shows when I was younger. I was especially active in going to watch American bands when they came on tour, mainly experimental punk and post hardcore music. I was fascinated by the energy that the band and audience gave off and the sense of connection between the two. I fell in love with idols at a time when my interest in the live music scene was slowly fading.

— What sparked your interest in idols?

Bunny: I became interested in Johnny’s when I was in England, a Japanese friend at university tried to introduce them to me, but I didn’t really understand the structure of them. My brother’s girlfriend was a casual Johnnys fan, so I asked him to teach me a little about it when I visited Japan. When we went to Takeshita-dori in Harajuku together, I was really fascinated by the repetitive and a kind of maximalist aesthetics, with the same kind of fancy goods and bromide photos placed repeatedly all over the idol stores. At the same time, it was also a personal world where you could choose your favourite things, write the number of them down yourself and buy them. I found that kind of culture fascinating in itself. But when I looked for Johnny’s-related footage after returning to England, I couldn’t find much on the Internet because of strict copyrights issues. On the other hand, I found a lot of K-pop content, so I got into SHINee around 2008 or 2009. I was immediately captivated by their synchronized dancing, catchy music, and flamboyant style.

— I know you also like EXO and NCT, so did SHINee lead you to dig more and more artists from SM Entertainment?

Bunny: Yes, SM has a very interesting concepts. I’ve seen a lot of artists from other agencies, but I’m still the most interested in SM’s creative production. When I saw the teaser video for EXO’s debut, I was so excited by the story that they were coming from another planet, it was so cinematic and fresh. I was instantly hooked. I’ve always loved Kai in particular, and the same goes for NCT, which I’ve been paying attention to since before their official debut. I’ve always supported idols as if I were investing in them. Now, K-pop is evolving as an industry, and we are consuming a lot of content and merchandise. Even though they are very commercial, I get great pleasure from it. I am interested in thinking about the idea of beauty and gender, masculinity and femininity, and K-pop sort of makes me think about those issues a lot. That’s another reason why I like K-pop.

The relationship between love for “favorites” and their own artwork

— I guess you have your “favorite” members in each group, but is there anything in common among the members that you like?

Bunny: Taeyong and Kai are very talented dancers and visually represent their groups. I am also attracted to the gap between how they look and how they truly are: they both have a very strong image (charismatic and confident), but inside they are soft and very sensitive. I, too, may have a strong appearance, but I am actually very introverted and sensitive. In that way, I may be projecting myself on them. But, well, I’ve been a fan for many years now, so it’s hard for me to talk about it objectively……. (laughs). Although they are much younger than me, I am inspired by watching them grow older and mature and take on various challenges.

— Bunny, you have produced a number of zines about idols, haven’t you? Do you express your love for idols in them?

Bunny: Actually, in my zines and my own works, I compile what I have researched about idol culture itself, rather than expressing my love for the idols. For example, for ‘Rolling Rolling’ my Hikaru Genji zine, I found their costumes and performances on TV programs very interesting during my research, and the fanaticism surrounding them, so I compiled my research into the zine. I think the idols I like are unconsciously influencing my expression of male beauty in my drawings, but I don’t express this in a direct way in my work. I think I express my affection for my idols in the same way as other fans, cherishing their music and content, by going to concerts, collecting goods, and so on.

— I see. So you draw a line between your practices as a fan and your expression as an artist.

Bunny: I don’t intentionally separate the two, but for me, the love I have for my favorite idols is so personal that I don’t feel comfortable expressing it as a work of art. Drawing the people I love is actually the hardest work to do. Technically, I can draw them, but Taeyong and Kai are the most beautiful people in the world for me, so I will never be satisfied with what I drew. Fans sometimes hand out fan art stickers and goods to each other, and I sometimes think about doing something like that, but because I am a professional artist, I still wonder if it is right thing for me to do… However, the Hikaru Genji zine and my H.O.T. zine “Teenager Forever” are works which mix my research with my own affections and taste.

— H.O.T. is a first generation K-Pop idol who debuted in 1996, right? In recent years, NCT DREAM covered their song “CANDY” and it became a hit.

Bunny: Although I did not know them when they were active, I was very interested in their hairstyles and costumes of the time, it was an era when street fashion in Korea was becoming strongly influenced by a mix of foreign styles like American hip hop and Japanese visual Kei, so I created this zine as a compilation of my research results. I drew the evolution  of their performances in chronological order, and I also included URLs through which you can actually watch the videos. I inserted shiny film papers in between the pages, because I wanted to make something tactile with a sensory reading experience.

“Oshikatsu,” desire, and derivative works

–That is very playful. By the way, “oshikatsu” is now an unprecedented boom in Japan, have you heard of the term?

Bunny: I have vaguely heard of it.

— The act of showing affection for the ones they love, which are not limited to idols but also include characters and actors, though collecting goods and participating in events is booming. Not long ago in Japan, being an otaku was something to be ridiculed, but nowadays, people all over the place call themselves otaku. Personally, I think it is like having a little god living inside of you, like a talisman that gives you vitality in life. I would like to hear how you feel about this kind of oshikatsu boom.

Bunny: Idol culture is still difficult for people in the West to understand, they often misinterpret it as only a musical genre. For me, idols are different from regular musicians or pop stars, there is a fantasy of something beyond regular human beings. But I feel that supporting idols has a lot in common with how sports fans are supporting their favorite team. Sports fans also wear the uniforms of their favorite teams and buy merchandise, they follow rookie players as their careers unfold, they gather together for events and scream and cry. To me, that is no different from idol fans, but in the West especially, idol culture is placed lower in the hierarchy. This may have something to do with the fact that sports are often associated with masculinity and idol culture with femininity. I think there is certainly a religious and ritualistic element to oshikatsu. Because I get joy and motivation from it. I usually feel like I am an alien. I don’t really feel connected to other human beings. But when I go to concerts of my favorite idols, I get a great sense of being connected to other human beings. There is a sense of sharing something.

— So your favorite idols function as an intermediary to connect you with the world. By the way, some people feel guilty about looking at idols of the opposite sex as objects of desire. Is there any case that you feel the same way?

Bunny: First of all, I think that desire is misunderstood. Everyone has sexual desires and non-sexual/ platonic desires, and it is natural to have fantasies involving other people (celebrities or not). And I don’t think it is wrong to acknowledge this. I am non-binary, and for me, idols are also objects of my fantasies regarding gender, what I want to be like and look like. Whether I am sexually attracted to them or have a platonic longing for them, or want to imagine looking like them is complex and ambiguous. As a queer person, I think I am probably more comfortable with this ambiguity. However, of course I think there is also a dark side to the feeling of attraction or objectification for your own pleasure. Recently, things like deep fake porn are worrying.

–Deep fake is the use of AI to process a portion of an image. There have been problems with fake porno images of celebrities in which their faces have been merged with naked body image.

Bunny: To present something fake as reality, I think it is very much a disrespectful act, and I think it is irresponsible and dangerous to distribute such images on the internet, because it’s very difficult to control them once they are circulated. On the other hand, fan made works which are clearly fictional and not presented as reality, such as ‘fan fiction’ stories or doujinshi manga containing sexual elements, I do not think it is wrong. If you want to publish this kind of work, you need to be careful about how and where you present it, especially if it involves real people. But I don’t think it’s wrong to have desires, indulge your imagination, and create fantasies. I believe exploring and expressing our fantasies and desires gives us freedom to explore and express things that might not be possible in our everyday lives, whether that is gender & sexuality, fetish, romance, or something else completely.

— Thank you very much for sharing your interesting stories. By the way, what is in your newest zine “CLOWN THEORY” that you presented at the “TOKYO ART BOOK FAIR” this time?

Bunny: The theme is sad clowns. For some reason, I have been irresistibly attracted to clowns since I returned to England. This book is a compilation of my research on them. For example, one chapter is dedicated to clowns sold in charity (recycle) shops. Why were these clowns bought and sold? Why is it no longer needed? I am considering these things through essays, articles, photographs and illustration. Also, there are a lot of clown memes used by online fandoms. I traced when and how that expression became visible chronologically and highlighted its connection to K-POP fans. Incidentally, Key from SHINee became an icon of clown memes with his 2015 Halloween costume of Ronald McDonald, which became prolific even outside of K-pop fans. Finally this year he appeared in a McDonald’s commercial! When I started to see these connections, I really enjoyed it.

–So your creative style is all about thoroughly researching and compiling your findings and thoughts.

Bunny: I research what I like and find interesting, interpret and process this input, and then create my own expression of it. The truth is, I don’t really like clowns that much (laughs). But it is very interesting to find these connections between history, pop culture and humanity.

Photography Miyu Terasawa
Translation / Edit Shinichiro Sato（TOKION）

The post What Idols and Pop Culture Can Teach Us; The Fantastic Otaku World of Bunny Bissoux appeared first on TOKION - Cutting edge culture and fashion information.

How did Saiko Otabe cultivate her distinct flair and compositions in her artworks? 

—Congratulations on your first solo exhibition in Europe. How did it come about?

Saiko Otake: I met the owner of Sato Gallery, Julien, when I was visiting Paris in 2019 for work, and we were able to make this exhibition happen after covid. I was in my head because it was my first art show in Europe, but he told me, “Have fun with it!” That made me want to show an evolved version of what I had been making in Japan. One of my dreams, to have an exhibition abroad, has come true. 

—Your works are characterized by their powerful, rich colors, including pieces in COLOURIDER. What role does color play? 

Otake: I discovered 60s psychedelic art as a child and was drawn to distinct color schemes using fluorescent colors, typography, and the impact of color. Since then, I’ve truly understood the power that colors have. It’s not that I like colors just because they’re loud; I like strange color schemes or the power and strong impression that colors emit when combined. There are infinite ways to combine and show colors, so I want to express how amazing they are all the time. 

—The title, COLOURIDER, fits your exhibition so perfectly. Your compositions and arrangements are unique and exquisite. 

Otake: When I was younger, I wanted to become someone who makes posters. Perhaps I think of my art as compositions that combine patterns and colors rather than paintings due to my admiration for posters. I like looking at old posters and advertisements, so I’m sure they influence my work. Other than drawing women, I drew things that don’t exist, like dinosaurs and monsters. 

This might be the influence of psychedelic posters. I also have some pieces where I intensely filled in the blank spaces with something like words that connected to each other.

Blurring the line by combining photos/A book series that accumulates everyday inspiration 

—Aside from paintings, you’re also showing artworks that combine two photos together. You create a different image by putting photos that look seemingly unrelated to one another side by side. How did you come up with this?

Otake: I joined a workshop on Daido Moriyama’s exhibition at Tate Modern when I was in London. Monochromatic photos were on the wall, and we had to choose a number and create our own layout. That workshop inspired me to put together photos I took on my own. The catalyst for [this method] was placing photos that looked seemingly unrelated to one another side by side. It was fun. The boundaries between time, place, and colors are made ambiguous by combining two completely different photos, so I was especially mindful of the balance of the colors and shape of the layouts. For this exhibition, the theme is overseas and Japan; the photos I took abroad are on the left, and those I took in Japan are on the right. 

—Is that how your book series was born? 

Otake: Yes. I had always wanted to make a book with no blank spaces, so I made three as part of my graduation project at Central Saint Martins. I self-published 15 books by 2022. I took photos as though I were collecting sceneries that inspired me daily. 

—What sort of sceneries in your daily life do you get inspiration from? 

Otake: I’m interested in old things that have been left behind and things that humans altered. I’m drawn to parts of posters, peeling walls, old mannequins, and more. In terms of places, I like museums, old stationery stores, vintage shops, and markets selling many different items. Bathrooms, signs, and trash on the ground are must-sees when I’m overseas. They have unique colors that you don’t see in Japan. 

・Impressions of visiting the Netherlands for the first time and traveling around Europe

—I see. I’d like to hear about your travels. This is your first time visiting the Netherlands; what are your impressions? 

Otake: What surprised me were the big windows where you can see everything inside the houses. I heard that in the past, it signaled living a modest life under the influence of Protestantism, which preferred simplicity and frugality. But today, it’s shifting to a custom where people show off. That was interesting. When I walk on the streets, I feel like I’m watching one scene from a film because I see glimpses of people’s lives, like a family sitting at the dinner table. I talked to long-time residents of the Netherlands, which made me appreciate the place even more. It’s relatively easy to get a visa, and the support for artists is generous. Traveling around, I get the impression that the people are kind here.

—Your trip started in London. You’re now done with traveling around the Netherlands, and you’re visiting Paris after this. What do your travels look like? 

Otake: I got so pumped when I first saw (Ronald Brooks) Kitaj’s exhibition in London, and the cityscape, smell, and look of pubs all felt so nostalgic. I was nervous because it took a long time for my pieces to arrive in Rotterdam. I also went to the Hague and Amsterdam to visit people I know. I feel happy every day because I can absorb things I find stimulating for the first time in a long time.

I want to visit the Japan Museum Sieboldhuis in Leiden after this. Writer Akira Yoshimura-san’s books are interesting, so I’m interested in Sieboldhuis and the people he was affiliated with. I’m going to Philippe Weisbecker’s exhibition in Paris and Gilles Aillaud’s exhibition at the Centre Pompidou. I’m also going all the way to Lyon to visit the Ideal Palace. It’s a castle built by a mail carrier named (Ferdinand) Cheval and is categorized as outsider art. I’ve been interested in it since I was small, so I’m very excited. 

—I’m surprised by the breadth of your interests, which span modern art, outsider art, and even history. 

Otake: I’m looking forward to seeing actual paintings by Van Gogh, Picasso, Matisse, and so on, but I want to cross the line of art that has already been assigned value and appreciate various things with curiosity.

—How has the path to becoming an artist been?

Otake: I’ve enjoyed looking at many different things since I was small. I used to draw people in my sketchbook and look through magazines to draw. But I didn’t think of becoming an artist, nor did I believe I could make a living as one, so I simply hoped I could support my father (who’s an artist). I eventually started wanting to draw and express things myself; I am where I am today because I was given many opportunities. 

—How do you feel now that you’re having your first solo exhibition in Europe?

Otake: I’m relieved it opened safe and sound; I’m satisfied with my first solo exhibition outside Japan. It’d be more interesting to show bigger pieces with colors next time. It’s open until March 3rd, so I’m both apprehensive and eager about the feedback I’ll receive. It was hard because I’d feel down due to the terrible state of the entire world, but that’s why I wanted to convey the power that colors possess through this exhibition. I myself feel encouraged when I see colors.

■SAIKO OTAKE COLOURIDER
Date: January 25th, 2024 (Thursday) to March 3rd (Sunday)
Venue: Sato Gallery 
Address: Insulindestraat 78, 3038 JB Rotterdam, Netherlands
Entrance fee: free 
Website: https://www.sato.art/ja/exhibitions/23/overview/

Translation Lena Grace Suda

The post Artist Saiko Otake on the Origins and the Present State of Her Art: Her First Solo Exhibition at a European Gallery, “COLOURIDER” appeared first on TOKION - Cutting edge culture and fashion information.

HANABIE.
Girls metal band formed in 2015. Consists of four members Yukina (vo), Matsuri (gt. & vo), Hettsu (ba & cho), and Chika (dr). Their intense metal rock sound, lyrics and visuals consisting of Japanese subculture and values, have attracted the attention of fans. Middle and high school classmates Yukina, Matsuri, and Hettsu started as a four-piece band, bringing on Chika as the new drummer in May of 2023. In July of the same year, they made their major label debut with Sony Music Labels Epic Records Japan, releasing their first album, Reborn Superstar! They embarked on their first solo domestic tour, secured slots at music festivals, and even toured internationally. They released their new single “O･TA･KU Lovely Densetsu” on January 19th, 2024. 
https://hanabie.jp
X：@HA_NA_BIE_
Instagram：@ha_na_bie_
Threads：@ha_na_bie_
YouTube：@HANABIE_official

While there are many Japanese bands that have made it to the world stage, the common factor among ones that succeed globally may be that they all exude “Japaneseness”. There is a Japanese girls band that has established a new genre called, “Harajuku core” gaining enthusiastic support from metal fans mostly from the West. The band consists of four members: Yukina (vox), Matsuri (gt & vox), Hettsu (ba & BGVs), and Chika (dr). They call themselves HANABIE. 

We interviewed Yukina and Matsuri from HANABIE., a band that’s been flying sky high. In part one, they shared insights on the formation of the band, the venues they performed in high school, and how they established their performance style. In part two, they shared stories of their international tour and their thoughts behind their new song, “O･TA･KU Lovely Densetsu”, and their plans for the future.

International Fans Coined “HARAJUKU CORE”

– International tours are now common for HANABIE., but were you always interested in doing shows abroad?

Yukina: No, it never crossed our minds.

Matsuri: More like we didn’t have the capacity to think that far. So even this time around, we’re like, “wow, we can go?!” (laughs). Like, “people abroad actually like our music?”

Yukina: It’s unbelievable also because our lyrics are all in Japanese. Even during this international tour, everyone was singing along to our lyrics.

Matsuri: And everyone’s good at it (laughs).

– It’s only been about a year since you’ve been able to do this.

Yukina: That’s true. During the COVID pandemic when things were still shut down, the comment section for our song “WE LOVE SWEETS” was filled with English comments. Since then, we always thought, “We’d love to go abroad, but we don’t know how”. 

Matsuri: I think the “WE LOVE SWEETS” era was when we first started charting abroad, too. People from countries we couldn’t even pinpoint on a map were listening to our music. 

– I heard your foreign fans were the ones who first called your music “HARAJUKU CORE”.

Matsuri: Our listeners were like, “This is a new genre! It’s HARAJUKU CORE!” in our comments. We thought it was perfect, so we kept using it in different scenarios (laughs).

Yukina: HANABIE. is a hard band to explain to people, so when we saw those comments, we were like, “That’s it!”

Matsuri: We were. Because everything falls under “metal” abroad, we thought “HARAJUKU CORE” was the perfect way to describe our sound.

– Did you feel uncomfortable with the term “metal” being used to describe your music back then?

Matsuri: No, I think in our case, calling our music “metal” is quite misleading (laughs). People are more inclined to be interested if they just understood we were doing something new. I’d be happy if they could see this as a new style of metal. So it’s not like we didn’t like being categorized as “metal”, we just want people to understand that we’re doing something chaotic within that.

– From there, after experiencing ups and downs, you had your major label debut and booked your first solo show and Tokyo/Nagoya/Osaka tour.

Yukina: We kept on missing our chance to do our solo show. We wanted it to have such an impact that we missed our opportunity and couldn’t get to it until last year.

Matsuri: We waited too long to do our solo show. We kept being like, “We need to do our solo show at the perfect time!” and kept extending it. We waited so long that we eventually got signed by a major label. We thought the appropriate time was our eighth anniversary. 

Show-Intensive International Tour 

– You then suddenly had to go on a large-scale international tour, with no time to celebrate your first solo show or your major label debut.

Yukina: In retrospect, it’s crazy.

Matsuri: Truly! Everyone made us feel like they were waiting for us. Everyone was so warm. Looking back, the shows felt very strange. We were performing in countries we had never been to before. It was like, “wow, we’re really doing this”. 

Yukina: Now that I’m back in Japan and can reflect back on it, I’ve started to realize how incredible an experience it was. Before going, I was quite apprehensive. I was even studying English, and found myself struggling to think about how I would be able to express myself to our fans and staff. But once I was there playing the shows, I realized there are things that don’t need to be communicated with words. 

– Yukina, you were even taking English classes.

Yukina: Yes I was, and crying while doing it (laughs).

– Did it help?

Yukina: I really want to say it did (laughs), but I realized passion is more important than words.

– So real-life interactions were more important in the end.

Yukina: Of course, if we were able to speak English fluently, I’m sure our world would expand and it would enable us to play different types of shows.

Matsuri: It was easier to communicate than I thought. Even during rehearsals or in everyday conversations, everyone was willing to try to grasp what I was trying to convey. I found people from every country to be quite warm.

– That being said, I’m sure the rehearsal process is quite intense. Isn’t it important to have a mutual understanding of what’s going on?

Matsuri: That’s true. That’s why we utilized words we knew and tried to communicate through gestures, like “this is where we want to cut the sound”. They understood quite a lot, right?

Yukina: Yeah. In Europe, we got a PA who lives there to travel with us on tour. They were really stoked about it.

Matsuri: They really listened to our songs in great detail. During rehearsals, the PA would ask if we could play a specific part of the song again so they can adjust it. Because they were so passionate, we were able to get a cohesive sound by the fourth show. I’m so glad we met such a great PA in Europe. 

– How was your American tour?

Matsuri: We had more show dates in the U.S. than in Europe.

Yukina: Our daily schedule was sleep, wake up, rehearse, play a show, repeat. 

Matsuri: We had to make sure which city we were in, because it got so confusing. We also did something we had never done as a band: play six shows in a row.

– And you did it abroad.

Matsuri: On top of that, each venue was so hot. Even if the air conditioner was on, it would start feeling like a sauna each time the show started.

Yukina: That made us become more resistant to the heat (laughs).

Matsuri: I’m confident that we can play in the hottest circumstances (laughs).

Yukina: Sometimes there was so little air circulating that I thought I was going to pass out. 

Matsuri: In a sense, I guess we can now say we won’t get flustered if anything goes wrong during a show.

– Has your experience abroad affected your songwriting?

Matsuri: Absolutely. Our major label debut album, Reborn Superstar!, is our idea of a concept album. In it, we added songs with more of our glittery, upbeat sound. That is one of HANABIE.’s core pillars. We’d like to have two or three more pillars, too. We had a bunch of ideas come up in the process of being abroad, too, like “it might be fun to mix this type of genre into our music”, or “we have too many fast tempo songs, so let’s slow it down”, or, “let’s try changing the tuning”, taking notes everytime we thought of something.

Yukina: We talked about a lot of this as a band.

Matsuri: For the tour we did, I communicated what I wanted to do with the band, got the rest of the band to do the same, and summarized what songs we wanted to include in the next album among the four of us. We’ll use that as a template to start production on our next record.

– You gathered some powerful tools during your time abroad. Now you can use those newly acquired tools to create something new.

Matsuri: There are some songs we wrote at our hotels during tour, which may bring a different flavor to our sound. 

Yukina: We were also heavily influenced by the bands that we played with. In the U.S., we played with Dropout Kings and Fox Lake, as well as with Galactic Empire. It was our first time playing with the same bands all tour, so that was really fun.

Matsuri: It was so fun, wasn’t it.

Yukina: The more we were together, the more we vibed. We were so sad by the end. 

Matsuri: We were so sad, but they were so cool because they told us that there’s no way this would be our last time seeing each other, and that we’d meet again soon. 

Yukina: I was sobbing (laughs). We were able to get through the tour because of them.

Matsuri: After we went our separate ways, I saw Yukina sobbing while listening to super hardcore music next to me, and thought, “how surreal” (laughs).

Yukina: We got fired up every time we saw the other bands’ shows.

Matsuri: Every band did what they could to connect the whole show to us, as we were last to play. Their efforts came across. By the end, it really moved me.

Yukina: I’d love to bring them to Japan one day. 

Matsuri: We definitely want to do that. I think they would be a hit among Japanese kids and band-lovers.

HANABIE. Finally Boldly Embraces “Otaku”. 

– Was the new song you’re releasing, “O･TA･KU Lovely Densetsu”, written while on tour?

Matsuri: It was a song we wrote right before we went abroad. We wanted this to be our last super upbeat song for a while. We did everything we wanted to do with this song, more than ever. We added AI vocals, which was something new for us, to give a more 2.5 dimensional sound.

– Are the English parts AI? I didn’t notice.

Matsuri: Yes, that’s the part. We had AI speak, and then combined that voice with Yukina’s real voice to give it a brand new, 2.5-dimensional sound.

Yukina: Personally, I didn’t know that Japanese culture was so popular. I knew that as a fact, but experiencing it and having people approach me and say, “I love this Japanese anime”, or “I like Pokemon”, made me really happy. That’s why we chose this theme for this song.

– You had some references to otaku culture in your other songs, but this time it’s explicit. 

Matsuri: Yeah, the lyrics are really only about otaku. 

– I hear some Sailor Moon in there, too.

Matsuri: All of us like that kind of anime. We tried incorporating the sparkly vibes of our favorite animes. 

Yukina: I think this is a song that can only be executed by HANABIE., and it’s something different from what we’ve done before.

– It’s quite rare to find a band that openly embraces otaku culture, which is also what differentiates HANABIE. from other bands. Other bands may have members who secretly like anime, but not many can express that love so directly in their music. But HANABIE. is different. You have a punk spirit that enables you to show your whole selves. That’s why “O･TA･KU Lovely Densetsu” is so refreshing.

Yukina: It’s true that it’s refreshing (laughs). We want to be straightforward and as true to ourselves as possible.

Matsuri: That’s right. We’re like, “We can confidently say we like otaku because we also identify as otaku!” (laughs). 

Yukina: We also want to tell people, “Otaku like these exist in the world, we’ve seen them firsthand!” (laughs).

Matsuri: I think that’s what’s fun about it. If an otaku listens, they’ll understand, but a non-otaku can also listen and be like, “otaku are kind of cool”. 

– I didn’t realize that was the message.

Matsuri: I think otaku culture has been embraced by many people now. We live in a world where everyone, including the beautiful woman sitting next to you on the train, is probably an otaku. We want everyone to know that we live in a society where we can proudly admit to being an otaku!

Yukina: The word for “suteki” in English is “lovely”. So, we wanted people to think that “being an otaku is lovely”.

Matsuri: As otaku ourselves, we thought we needed to address that being one is nothing to be ashamed of (laughs).

– So, what kind of year would you like 2024 to be?

Yukina: There was a lot to absorb from all over the world in 2023. I want to take advantage of that and fully utilize it, whether that’s for shows or songs. I also want to do a proper Japan tour, and we have some international festivals coming up. We’re excited for what we have in store.

Matsuri: In terms of music, we made a lot of lively, sparkly songs in 2023. In 2024, we want to show another side of HANABIE. Hopefully, you’ll get to see some of that .

– Let me ask one last question. Until now, it was long believed that Japanese bands should tour domestically before venturing into the global market, or that English songs would need to be released in order to target international audiences. But I believe that HANABIE. has shattered all these “conventional” beliefs. From your perspective, what advice would you give to Japanese bands that are looking to go global, considering new, unique approaches to expanding a band’s reach that are specific to today?

Yukina: There may be restrictions depending on the country, but I realized through YouTube and social media just how much reach our music has. Because of these different platforms, people across the world sang along to songs that are in Japanese, and we saw passionate fans from countries we had never even visited. So I do believe it’s essential not only to focus on music but also to utilize social media in a visually appealing way.

Matsuri: When we went on tour abroad, we had so many happy fans who, regardless of the language barrier in the music, were having a great time. It was then that I thought we could’ve gone abroad even earlier. Looking back, I think we were unnecessarily anxious. Setting up shows abroad is not simple. It requires different costs, like transportation, so I’m not saying this lightly. But if a band has a desire to go abroad, they should.

Even if your band is unknown abroad, people usually casually walk into venues in places like Europe and the U.S. Even in taxis, the drivers often play their own music, not just mainstream stuff. A lot of the time, they play more unknown, cool songs, just like any other everyday music listener, which there are a lot of. Ultimately, I think it’s a good idea to actively reach out and go find your own audience.

Photography Hamanaka Yoshitake
Translation Mimiko Goldstein

■HANABIE.”O･TA･KU Lovely Densetsu” now streaming

O･TA･KUラブリー伝説 | 花冷え。 | ソニーミュージックオフィシャルサイト

ソニーミュージックによる花冷え。公式サイト。花冷え。の最新ニュースやリリース情報、ビデオ、ライブ・イベント出演情報、メディア情報などを掲載。

www.sonymusic.co.jp

■HANABIE. Major label debut album Reborn Superstar! official website

来世は偉人！ | 花冷え。 (HANABIE.)

Major Debut Album 『来世は偉人！』 2023.7.26 Release! | HANABIE. Major Label Debut Album Reborn Superstar! 2023.7.26 Release

hanabie.jp

The post Interview with HANABIE., the “Harajuku Core” Girls Metal Band in the Global Spotlight, Part 2: “Chaotic” Music Combined with Japanese Culture appeared first on TOKION - Cutting edge culture and fashion information.

HANABIE.
Girls metal band formed in 2015. Consists of four members Yukina (vo), Matsuri (gt. & vo), Hettsu (ba & cho), and Chika (dr). Their intense metal rock sound, lyrics and visuals consisting of Japanese subculture and values, have attracted the attention of fans. Middle and high school classmates Yukina, Matsuri, and Hettsu started as a four-piece band, bringing on Chika as the new drummer in May of 2023. In July of the same year, they made their major label debut with Sony Music Labels Epic Records Japan, releasing their first album, Reborn Superstar! They embarked on their first solo domestic tour, secured slots at music festivals, and even toured internationally. They released their new single “O･TA･KU Lovely Densetsu” on January 19th, 2024. 
https://hanabie.jp
X：@HA_NA_BIE_
Instagram：@ha_na_bie_
Threads：@ha_na_bie_
YouTube：@HANABIE_official

While there are many Japanese bands that have made it to the world stage, the common factor among ones that succeed globally may be that they all exude “Japaneseness”. There is a Japanese girls band that has established a new genre coined “Harajuku core” gaining enthusiastic support from metal fans mostly from the West. The band consists of four members: Yukina (vo), Matsuri (gt & vo), Hettsu (ba & cho), and Chika (dr). They call themselves HANABIE. 

Their single “Pardon Me, I Have To Go Now” released in January 2023 triggered their sudden success. The music video released by Epic Records Japan six months prior to their debut has garnered 5.5 million plays on YouTube so far, the video overflowing with English comments from international fans. Wrapped in colorful outfits reminiscent of Harajuku-style Decora fashion, Yukina alternates between a cute anime-like voice and intense death growls, while the instrumentalists deliver sounds with lively melodies and heavy rhythms. It’s this contrast that defines their performance style. 

Not only did they embark on their first solo tour after their major label debut, they also secured slots at music festivals and even toured internationally. We interviewed HANABIE., a rising force in the music scene, to discuss their journey. In part one, Yukina and Matsuri shared insights into the formation of the band and the struggles that led to the establishment of their performance style.

– This past year was quite the year of achievements for you.

Yukina: It was truly beyond our expectations. Of course we had our hearts set on touring abroad, but this was a year we gave our all to each of our performances. 

Matsuri: Emotionally, we felt we needed to tackle what was right in front of us, but I think it was a huge turning point for us as a band because it was a year filled with firsts. 

– Band members changing, your first festival appearance, first solo show, first Tokyo/Nagoya/Osaka tour, your major label debut, and your first international tour all happened this past year. I don’t think there has ever been a band that has experienced their first domestic tour and first international tour in the same year. From an outsider’s perspective, it looks like you had a crazy year. But were you so busy focusing on each task at hand that you couldn’t see your achievements objectively?

Matsuri: There was no time for us to relax. All we could do was focus on our immediate tasks each day.

Yukina: Each event was so intense, yet time passed instantly. Going through this made me want to continue doing it, which made me realize there are so many things I still want to do. So, while I feel grateful, I also feel overwhelmed with excitement for future endeavors. 

– It’s unbelievable that your single “Pardon Me, I Have To Go Now” wasn’t even released this time last year. 

Matsuri: Truly! I had the same thought the other day. I was curious how many plays the YouTube video had gotten, and when I went to check it, I was surprised to see it wasn’t uploaded that long ago. 

– It’s like our internal calendars are fully glitching. 

Matsuri: Glitching (laughs).

Yukina: No, really. 

High School Rock Band Club Era When Rivalries were Rampant

– So, since this is HANABIE.’s first interview with TOKION, I’d like to start with asking how you formed the band. I heard that it was formed in a high school after-school band club.

Yukina: Since we went to a combined junior high and high school, Matsuri and the bassist Hettsu were classmates since middle school. After-school band club was only for high school students, and Hettsu and I had already talked about joining. I had heard rumors that Matsuri, who I hadn’t really talked to until then, was into heavy music, so I approached her and asked if she actually liked that kind of music and what she was currently listening to.

Matsuri: I was already close with the original drummer of HANABIE. She had been in the brass band club, and I was interested in rock bands but not that enthusiastic about joining the club. I was more like, “I guess I’ll join the rock band club”. Yukina approached me at that time, so I joined the club. I thought there would be people who would have the same interests as me, so I joined, treating it like a trial run.

Yukina: Matsuri already played guitar and liked heavy music, so I knew we had to get her in the club. She was also a leader-like figure in the classroom, so I thought her leadership skills would translate well in a band.

– In contrast to Matsuri, you weren’t the bubbly personality, Yukina. You were more of an introvert, weren’t you?

Yukina: That’s right. Hettsu and I were in the art club in middle school, drawing in the corner of the room together. Matsuri, on the other hand, was in a sports club and was the class leader. 

– I’m sure you had to muster up a lot of courage to approach her first.

Matsuri: I feel like it was pretty natural. I think she asked me if I liked heavy bands when we ran into each other in the hallway. As we talked, I got to know Yukina better and we started going to shows together. 

Yukina: We went to music festivals together, too. We got deep in it together.

Matsuri: In our Dickies (laughs).

– Approaching someone in a school hallway is like a scenario you’d see in an anime. 

Matsuri: It is, now that I think about it (laughs). I remember that interaction so well.

Yukina: I don’t remember (laughs). 

Matsuri: We weren’t in the same after-school club in middle school, so I wondered why she approached me. I also wondered why she knew I was into rock bands. 

Yukina: Matsuri would often bring her favorite band’s towels to gym class, and our other classmates confirmed you liked those bands.

– Yukina, were you interested in playing heavy music from the start?

Yukina: I wasn’t sure if we could pull it off, but I knew it would be fun since we had that interest in common.

– And specifically, your common interest in MAXIMUM THE HORMONE.

Yukina: Yes.

– Any other bands you two were excited about back then?

Matsuri: We both listened to a lot of BABYMETAL, which sparked conversation.

Yukina: That’s true.

Matsuri: I also liked punk/melodic hardcore music, like GOOD4NOTHING and SHANK.

Yukina: Or dustbox and ELLEGARDEN.

– And thus, HANABIE. was born, but you started off as a cover band. Which bands did you cover?

Matsuri: I think SCANDAL was first? Or DOES.

– Interesting!

Yukina: We flipped through the hand-me-down scores from our seniors religiously (laughs). 

Matsuri: We picked ones we thought we could play.

– So you honed your skill that way and eventually started playing covers of MAXIMUM THE HORMONE?

Yukina: We actually initially wanted to start with HORMONE, but our seniors stopped us (laughs). They told us to learn the basics first.

Matsuri: We covered their songs after we got the hang of it.

– What was the MAXIMUM THE HORMONE song you covered first?

Yukina & Matsuri: (immediately) “Zekkyou Billy”. 

– I’m surprised you remembered that quickly.

Matsuri: That’s true!

Yukina: I remember it quite clearly (laughs).

– What other songs did you cover?

Matsuri: “Jitterbug” (by ELLEGARDEN). We also did BLUE ENCOUNT.

Yukina: We also covered the song “Katoniago” by a girls band called FLiP, and also WHITE ASH.

Matsuri: Oh yeah we did! I loved WHITE ASH.

Yukina: We also played some ZebraHead tunes.

Matsuri: I brought that score and asked if we wanted to cover it (laughs).

– I can’t believe there are scores for ZebraHead songs.

Matsuri: There are! I still have them back home (laughs).

– The drummer has changed, but have the relationships between the members changed much over the years?

Matsuri: They have changed a bit because we’re all adults now, but I don’t think they’ve changed all that much, fundamentally.

Yukina: Hettsu hasn’t changed, either.

Matsuri: But she’s becoming more and more like an alien.

– Like she’s more liberated?

Matsuri: Yes, she is (laughs).

– As I was listening to you tell this story, I realized the environment of an all-girls school was probably a major part of your development.

Yukina & Matsuri: I think that’s right.

Matsuri: If there were both guys and girls in our school, our band may have been co-ed. But because it was an all-girls band, there was an insane amount of intensity among the girls in the club. We were all like, “I’m going to crush you all!” (laughs).

– Competition with the other bands?

Matsuri: Yes. Of course, we were surrounded by other girl bands with competitive streaks, which created this great synergy among us. We were all only focusing on our bands.

Yukina: It motivated us a lot.

Matsuri: None of us were romantically involved either, because there was no one around! (laughs).

Yukina: We even snapped at our teachers for not letting us do what we wanted.

– For example?

Matsuri: We weren’t allowed to play shows outside our high school. They claimed it was dangerous and that underage kids shouldn’t be playing at venues that serve alcohol. In retrospect, it’s obvious why it wasn’t permitted (laughs). But back then, we wanted so badly to play at an outside venue that we pleaded with our school to let us play if our parents chaperoned.

Yukina: We got signatures from several teachers, too (laughs). 

– You could do that?

Yukina: The paperwork had spaces for our homeroom teacher, head of year, vice principal and principal’s signatures. We rallied the support of some teachers in the process.

– Did you feel like you needed to write original tunes as you were competing with other bands?

Matsuri: Definitely. Other bands in the club started writing originals first. That freaked us out, which prompted us to start writing our own (laughs). We also started participating in high school band contests. Bands that entered those contests usually had original songs, which made us want to start writing our own, too.

– HANABIE. is a band that consciously strays from what other bands are doing. Were you like that since high school?

Yukina: That’s true… (laughs). Even the name HANABIE. was also created because we wanted it to be unique. 

Matsuri: English band names were popular at the time.

– The name HANABIE. is truly quite unique. It’s not a name that high schoolers would come up with.

Yukina: Our then-drummer was quite smart. She found that word for us.

Matsuri: She was also insanely competitive, and wanted us to stand out (laughs).

– HANABIE. then continued to play at many venues, mostly Shinjuku ANTIKNOCK.

Matsuri: We’d often rush to ANTIKNOCK after school, in our uniforms (laughs).

Yukina: We’d bring a suitcase full of merch to school in the morning, leave it in the corner of the classroom so the teachers wouldn’t find out, and take it to the venues after school… (laughs).

Matsuri: I had combined my amp head and pedal board onto a cart, which raised suspicion among the teachers (laughs). Hettsu also had a big pedal board, so the three of us dragged all our luggage around on days we had shows (laughs). 

– And after school, what transpired when you descended the stairs of ANTIKNOCK?

Matsuri: We were so scared when we first booked ANTIKNOCK.

Yukina: It was so scary.

Matsuri: The entrance of that venue is dark, and kind of intense (laughs). We were contemplating who would go down first (laughs). 

– That’s hilarious!

Yukina: I was like, you go first!

Matsuri: We were all pushing each other to go first (laughs).

– I guess you can’t see what’s at the bottom of the stairs from the outside.

Matsuri: No, you can’t. Once we went in, everyone was friendly and super nice, but it was intimidating at first.

– Was there a lot to learn on site?

Matsuri: Most of what we learned was on site. We were blessed with mentors who taught us everything, including how to plan the afterparty. We learned a lot from them.

Yukina: Matsuri asked a bunch of people about how to get the right tone on guitar.

Matsuri: Everyone was so nice, they even let me borrow gear they weren’t using. I was working part-time, but I wasn’t making enough that I could buy new gear. I was really thankful to everyone for helping me.

– There were probably no other high school girls who played ANTIKNOCK, so I’m sure everyone loved you. They wanted to help you grow.

Matsuri: Yes, everyone treated us well.

Yukina: Very much so.

– Like they were your uncles (laughs).

Matsuri: Truly! Whenever I see someone and it’s been a minute, it feels like I’m seeing an uncle because they ask me how I am (laughs).

Yukina: They keep track of us, and tell us their positive opinions on things we’ve worked on.

Matsuri: Everyone reminds us to stay healthy (laughs). ANTIKNOCK feels like a family-run venue.

A Turning Point in Music and Visuals

– What a nice story. I think your colorful outfits, rare for that of a metalcore band, are also what makes HANABIE. stand out. I understand that they’re made mostly by Hettsu, but how were these outfits first developed?

Matsuri: We wore normal clothes at first, right?

Yukina: Yeah, we wanted to fit in with the male bands.

Matsuri: We didn’t want to be underestimated. Back then, the metalcore scene consisted of a lot of skinny black jeans. Skinny black jeans, white T, no smile. We tried replicating that for a bit as best we could.

– You were trying to fit into the scene. 

Yukina: Yes. I even got Hettsu to hold up a white T-shirt at a park so I could splatter red paint all over it to make it look like blood (laughs). We tried fitting in like that, but we soon realized that felt wrong. 

Matsuri: We thought maybe it didn’t align with the type of music we wanted to do. There were a lot of similar bands back then that we wanted to differentiate ourselves from, so we did a 180. 

Yukina: We thought we could take advantage of our collective love for cute anime and Sanrio characters. We knew the contrast between our music and these cutesy elements would be interesting. Hettsu’s hair became increasingly lighter, too (laughs). 

Matsuri: Hettsu really did a lot. She had already dyed her hair on our graduation day. Anything is possible in the dynamics of our band now. 

Yukina: We wanted to do exactly what we wanted. I think that ideology eventually reflected onto our outfits.

– So you eventually realized that that was your natural state and that it connected to the band’s originality. 

Matsuri: Exactly. We thought, “everything works, including the clothes we like, the color we like, and the glitter we like!” It did take a while to get to that point, though.

– At what point did you land on your current style?

Yukina: When we were twenty?

Matsuri: I think we decided to be colorful around after the release of our single “L.C.G.” (released November 2019). Hettsu dyed her hair purple, and mine was blonde. Things gradually started changing from there.

– “L.C.G.” was musically and visually a critical turning point.

Yukina: Yes, it was the biggest turning point.

– I believe one reason for HANABIE.’s steady success is your proficiency in social media. You’ve been using social media as a strong platform for a while now. 

Matsuri: Yes, we have been.

– Were you partly doing it for fun?

Yukina: No, we were told by our seniors that we should do it. They told us that it would be a waste not to upload more photos, and that our fans would be excited to see them. We realized that we could extend our following if we posted more and started to update our social media with more photos everytime we had a show. 

Matsuri: In the beginning, we had an account but didn’t really use it. We would post a photo if we had a show, but that was about it. We realized that wasn’t communicating our individual personalities, and discussed how we could do that more efficiently. We never uploaded selfies until then, but started to post more after we realized that no one knew who played what instrument. 

– HANABIE. utilizes X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram, and even uploaded live videos on YouTube during the COVID-19 pandemic, even before you had a management team. I was amazed at your diligence. 

Matsuri: All of our shows got canceled because of the pandemic. We made videos very diligently back then because we didn’t want to be forgotten. 

– What you did out of necessity during the COVID-19 pandemic has directly connected to your success today.

Matsuri: Exactly. If it wasn’t for the pandemic, we may not have made full use of social media. We learned a lot from our time during COVID-19.

Photography Yoshitake Hamanaka
Translation Mimiko Goldstein

■HANABIE.”O･TA･KU Lovely Densetsu” now streaming

O･TA･KUラブリー伝説 | 花冷え。 | ソニーミュージックオフィシャルサイト

ソニーミュージックによる花冷え。公式サイト。花冷え。の最新ニュースやリリース情報、ビデオ、ライブ・イベント出演情報、メディア情報などを掲載。

www.sonymusic.co.jp

■HANABIE. Major label debut album Reborn Superstar! official website

来世は偉人！ | 花冷え。 (HANABIE.)

Major Debut Album 『来世は偉人！』 2023.7.26 Release! | HANABIE. Major Label Debut Album Reborn Superstar! 2023.7.26 Release

hanabie.jp

The post Interview with HANABIE., the “Harajuku Core” Girls Metal Band in the Global Spotlight, Part 1: It All Started as a Girls’ High School Afterschool Rock Band appeared first on TOKION - Cutting edge culture and fashion information.

Soshina, a member of the comedy duo Shimofuri Myojo, is also producing music as an artist. “Yusari no Kanon feat. Yuika”, a song he composed as the ending theme of the anime Ao no Orchestra (which began airing on NHK E-television on April 9, 2023), attracted a great deal of attention on social media. We asked him about the secret stories behind the song’s creation, his passion for music, and his creative practices spanning different fields. Discover the source of his creativity at the intersection of music and comedy.

I would read scores of Blue Hearts and MTH like novels in my teens

–Please tell us how you came into contact with music.

Soshina: I started playing music when I was two years old. At first, I took piano lessons under the influence of my parents, and I spent a lot of time playing music. In middle school, I started to find the types of music I wanted to play by myself and started playing the guitar for that. Of course, there were times when I played with friends, but while everyone else devoted themselves to club activities, I was absorbed either in comedy or music. In high school, I had friends doing desktop music (DTM), so I started using it myself to produce songs. Back then, I loved using computers, and there was a lot of free software available so that I could get started smoothly.

— At that time, many people were composing songs to upload or uploading clips of themselves covering some music with the title “me singing~” on Nico Nico Douga, weren’t they?

Soshina: Those were good times. It was fun to compose music back then, all the more because of the conditions of the times.

— Are there any artists or music that influenced you in terms of how you compose your music?

Soshina: I have always listened to music I heard on the Internet, such as Vocaloid music and anime songs. Even now, I especially like Oishi Masayoshi, Tomoya Tabuchi, Hyadain, Hige Driver, and Tamaya 2060%. I was also influenced by the bands like Blue Hearts and Maximum the Hormone, which I listened to countless times when I was in elementary, middle, and high school. I bought band scores and read them all like novels.

— Many of your songs seem to be vocaloid-oriented, so I was surprised to hear the names of rock from you such as Blue Hearts and Maximum the Hormone. How do these link to your own music?

Soshina: I guess their simple chord progression. I don’t use complicated and emotional chords as much as the other producers do for their songs today. I think that is definitely an influence from the Blue Hearts and Maximum the Hormone.

The stories behind the birth of “Yusari no Kanon feat. Yuika”

–Your many years of creative work have now borne fruit as “Yusari no Kanon feat. Yuika,” an ending song for NHK’s E-television anime Ao no Orchestra. What did you think about the original story?

Soshina: Actually, I had read the Ao no Orchestra manga before getting an offer for this project. The story about music was great, but more than anything, I was struck by its human drama. While I was reading it, I was fascinated by the unexpectedly serious side of the story, as well as by the backgrounds of characters and their behaviors, such as how a genius solo violinist blends right in with the orchestra.

— I see. How did you feel when you were asked to produce the ending music for the anime adaptation of a work you had read?

Soshina: Well, I was so happy. Considering how short my career was, it was a huge offer, and I was surprised that they entrusted me with the project. Many people were involved in this project, including NHK, the animation production team, and Universal Music. I can only thank them all.

–What was the process of creating the song, “Yusari no Kanon feat. Yuika” like?

Soshina: Since they kindly selected me, I wanted to create a song that would somewhat meet their expectations, rather than a selfish song that I usually make, so we had a meeting before working on the piece and developing the image. I thought that a song with a youthful feel, like something associated with the way back home at dusk, would be appropriate, and from there, I created a large number of versions. I sent them to the arranger, Syudou-san, and asked him to choose one from them.

— And the song ended up being based on a Pachelbel’s Canon, right?

Soshina: The first demo I sent to Syudou-san was a song created using only three chords from the A, E, D, and G (the scale of open violin strings) so that even a beginner violinist could play it using only open strings. After discussing this with everyone, including Syudou-san, we came up with the idea of adding phrases from Pachelbel’s Canon. Then, This idea grew.

–I was one of those who were inspired by Ao no Orchestra to start playing the violin. So if I pluck the open strings of it, I can even play the bass line of this song, right?

Soshina: Yes, that’s right. However, making a song with only those chords was challenging from the perspective of chord progression. One would want to use other chords to add some twists to it. But I put myself on hold and managed to create a demo by changing the order of the chords, and sent it to Syudou-san.

–Even within the limited chord progression, the song has a simple but slightly complicated feel to it, doesn’t it?

Soshina: After a series of co-production with Syudou-san, he quickly created something close to the finished work, and I was able to listen to it in a fresh way, thinking, “Wow, that’s amazing. Wow, this is how the song came to be.” The song was completed with the help of so many people, including Yuika’s vocals and the NHK Symphony Orchestra’s strings.

Comedy and music: What Soshina’s different creative practices share in common

–You are a comedian and an artist, but do these different activities have anything in common?

Soshina: Well, it’s a good question. I guess it is the desire to do something that has never been seen before. Things I have never seen are exciting and attract me. That is why I am conscious of creating ideas, tricks, and something that has never been done before. However, it isn’t easy to create music that has never been heard before, so, at the very least, I want to make music that has never been seen before. For example, I would like to realize such ideas as having a monkey play the piano.

–That would certainly be “never-before-seen” music (laughs).

Soshina: Another thing would be to have a hungry spirit. I am hungry for both comedy and music. People often say I’m rebellious, but I’m just the kind of person of solid principles so that I cannot make a compromise. I firmly believe that “I’m funnier than that guy” or “I’m more serious about music than that guy is.” Sometimes, when other comedians produce songs on the side, I am like, “What the heck!” (laughs). In my case, I write the lyrics myself, arrange the music, record it, mix it, master it, going through all the processes to make music seriously with various people. So, not to be disrespectful to the music industry, I don’t want to make music as a side job; I want to do it seriously, even if it means reducing my work as a comedian.

— I see. But you must be very busy, appearing on TV and updating videos on YouTube every day, so how do you make time for music?

Soshina: I literally cut down my time as a comedian and make music late at night alone at my desk. There used to be a time when I solely focused on winning the M-1 Grand Prix, devoting all my time to comedy. But when I won the M-1 Grand Prix and achieved one of my goals, I faced the question of who I truly am and what I enjoy doing. And it turned out to be creative work. I realized that making something and having it appreciated meant more to me than eating a lot of food or sleeping well. I enjoy making music and thinking up ideas for comedy skits by myself late at night. And gaining recognition for these works from the public is more pleasing than anything. So again, I create music even if it means cutting back on my time for comedy work.

–Listening to you, I can tell that you enjoy your creative activities, and above all, I can tell that you are strict with yourself.

Soshina: I think I am the type of person who sticks to it once I decide to do something. I have a lot of things I want to do. But, for example, even if I want to make music, it is physically and financially difficult to release a song every day. Considering that my father died when he was 60, I may have another 30 years. So even if I put out one song a month, I can only release 360 songs. In that case, I have to choose what I truly want to do. As I said earlier, I want to seriously make music that people have never seen before, which is even more challenging. In the future, I would like to break through that and make music that moves all kinds of people.

–Lastly, could you give a message to listeners of “Yusari no Kanon feat. ‘Yuika,'” and those who have watched the Ao no Orchestra anime, and to our readers?

Soshina: I would like to emphasize that I did not produce this song alone. As those who have either read the original story or seen the anime already know, the main character of this story, Hajime Aono, who has been playing the violin by himself all his life, joins an orchestra and starts working as a team. When creating this song, I also had it arranged, sung, played, mixed, and mastered by my collaborators. I projected myself into Aono’s situation, thinking this is precisely what an orchestra is all about. This piece is the result of my serious commitment to music, so please listen to it. 

Photos Miyu Terasawa
Edit Nana Takeuchi

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Fashion model Angela Reynolds currently acts as Director for contemporary art gallery PERROTIN Tokyo. She started her fashion modeling career at the age of 14 and later relocated to London, England at the age of 20. She has appeared in numerous magazines including Vogue Italia, British Vogue, Jalouse, Dazed & Confused, Numero Tokyo, Harpers Bazaar Japan, and Ryuko Tsushin, as well as runway shows and advertisements for Shiseido, Nike, and Uniqlo, and others.

Following her successful career as a model, Angela ventured into freelance journalism. It was during this period that her encounters with the world of contemporary art left a profound impression, propelling her to challenge herself in yet a new world, despite lacking prior experience in the art industry. We spoke with her about her motivations in pursuing a career in the art world, especially after transitioning from a different industry.

–What made you step into the world of art from modeling?

Angela Reynolds (Angela): It all began when I started feeling uneasy about receiving compliments at every photo shoot, as a model. At the age of thirty, I felt a sense of crisis and felt that my inner self would stagnate unless I had more challenge and discovery in my life. If I was going to continue on my path as a model I knew I needed to explore new avenues of self-expression. I became involved in various Not-for-Profit Organizations, began writing articles, and collaborated with brands in jewelry and fashion design. I particularly loved writing, and decided to venture into freelance journalism. I preferred to write for foreign magazines where I was not recognized for my identity as a model.

As I interviewed creators in various fields such as architects and designers, I often found them discussing fine art. Despite my extensive research prior to conducting these interviews, time and again I felt my knowledge of art and artists was insufficient to dig deeper during the precious time I had with my subjects. I immersed myself in study so I could better understand the individuals I was interested in. The more I frequented galleries and museums, the more captivated I became. Even if I initially didn’t feel a strong connection to a particular artist or style, I often discovered a profound connection once I saw the artworks in person and gained some knowledge about the artist. Within this process of discovery, I felt the tremendous potential and energy of art, leading me to yearn to be involved in this industry.

–How did you learn about art?

Angela: I actually had no prior background in art. However, my English ability gave me the opportunity to speak to visiting artists and art professionals at gallery openings, especially at  SCAI THE BATHHOUSE gallery which I regularly visited. I attended many of their openings and sometimes did some translating for them. One day at the gallery, I was struck by a work by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and, completely captivated by its magic, I found myself asking the gallerist for an opportunity to be more involved in the gallery. After some persistence on my part, Mr. Shiraishi, the gallery owner, kindly agreed to give me a trial period. Without any formal training nor prior experience working for any company, I started out by taking on miscellaneous tasks. Gradually, learning on the job, I built up my skills through lots of trial and error. I failed again and again, but I knew I had to pull through. Those were days of intense training.

Challenging a new world in her 30s

–As you get older, don’t you feel uneasy about taking on new challenges?

Angela: On the contrary, I aim to remain active well into my seventies, so I don’t have any hesitation about pursuing new ventures. In fact, I am the type of person who thrives on taking on new challenges. Before I entered the art industry, I visited UNHCR refugee camps, traveled to Rwanda as an ambassador for Table for Two – an initiative that provides school lunches to children in developing countries — and journeyed to Bangladesh for a project with the fair-trade clothing brand People Tree. I’ve learned that if you don’t challenge yourself, you cannot fail; if you don’t fail, you don’t experience the deep joy and learning that comes from growth. Learning fosters gratitude, humility, and an understanding of the struggles faced by others. What I find through constant self-reflection and challenge is to me more meaningful than the stability of a familiar environment. This is what propelled me to dive into the art industry.

–Along with being Director, you act as an artist liaison at PERROTIN. Could you tell us about this work?

Angela: An artist liaison’s role is similar to that of an artist manager. We take a long-term approach to view and manage artists’ careers, creating presentation materials to introduce them to museums, clients, and institutions, determine prices on artworks, facilitate connections with various individuals, assist with production research, attend exhibition openings, and so on. We try to provide comprehensive support in any way necessary to each individual artist. At the moment, I am responsible for three artists at Perrotin —  Eddie Martinez, Barry McGee, and Mark Ryden.

–What criteria is applied when selecting the artists you work with?

Angela: The selection process involves extensive discussions among PERROTIN’s global directors. We approach the decision-making process with a long-term commitment in mind, as the relationship with an artist is intimate and formative for both sides. Therefore, we invest significant time and consideration in assessing various factors before finalizing our selection.　

–What is important to you in building a relationship with an artist?

Angela: One primary aspect I prioiritise is understanding the boundaries of an artist’s creative territory. It’s crucial to determine early on which areas I am allowed to navigate and which areas I should avoid. Drawing from my experience in modeling and having support from a manager, I’ve learned how to be attentive to the sensitivities and preferences of individuals. Artists often possess a heightened sensitivity and a rich and unique worldview, and it is important to respect their natural way of being and honor their personal space in order to foster a strong trust relationship.

–It shows how sincere you are working with artists.

Angela: Thank you for your kind words. When it comes to working with an artist, I truly believe in treating them with utmost love and respect. Every artist I’ve had the privilege of working with pours their heart and soul into their work, and it’s only fair that I reciprocate that dedication. This mindset extends into my daily life, especially in interactions with people and situations that seem unfamiliar or complex to me. This is something I strongly felt during my battle with terminal cancer in the past. While I was recuperating in London, the effects of anticancer drugs caused my hair and nails to fall out. However, with the help of a wig, I could conceal my illness from others. This experience reminded me that even the person assisting us at the supermarket or our neighbor may be silently struggling with their own health issues. It’s a powerful reminder that many people around us are enduring immense hardships, even if we are unaware of their battles. Since I realized this, I make a conscious effort to approach others with empathy, remembering that everyone carries their own pain, experiences, and something they deeply cherish in their life. We are all fighting and striving to survive.

–In your personal life, you are a wife and mother; how do you maintain a work-life balance?

Angela: Navigating life’s transitions and deciding how to move on to the next chapter is a deeply personal journey. When one starts family life, one’s relationship with work significantly changes. While I hold immense value and passion for my work, I’ve learned the importance of setting clear boundaries that allow for dedicated time for myself and my family. At first, I grappled with finding this balance, but eventually I discovered that equivalent (sometimes better) results can be achieved even under restricted conditions. Until then, I had believed that relentlessly dedicating my waking hours to working and studying was the only way I could fulfill my responsibilities – especially given that I had been granted the opportunity to work in a remarkable gallery with exceptional colleagues despite my lack of experience.

–I got the impression that you are a person of such a strict self-discipline.

Angela: Oh, really (laughs)? I actually think I have quite a laid-back personality, but perhaps I’ve developed a knack for pushing through adversity. In life, we all experience moments of feeling inferior, thinking we’re not good enough or comparing oneself to others. But that self-image is merely a selfish illusion, based not on actual results but judgements derived from unchangeable past experiences. It’s important to drop that critical image and simply act constructively towards the next step. Creating a favorable environment can completely reshape our experience and the value of our contributions.

— Finally, what do you think is the power of art in times of turmoil, when we have pandemics, wars, and earthquakes?

Angela: Art plays a vital role during uncertain times. Even in times of peace, people feel pain and emptiness, search for meaning, and experience conflict. Art in its various forms can rescue us from such suffering, either for a brief moment’s solace, or sometimes definitively shifting one’s perspective. For instance, sitting in front of your favorite painting, the tears flowing down your face can save you. The same can be said about music, movies, theater, and other artistic expressions. Connecting with the oasis of the heart through artwork revitalises our energy, offering respite from the challenges we face and giving us the courage to go back and confront them.

Photography Anna Miyoshi（TRON）
Hair & Make-up Mikako Kikuchi（TRON）

Jacket ¥29,000, Pants ¥19,000 / supplied by styling/ (styling/ Lumine Shinjuku 1/ 03-6302-0213), other items worn by Angela are her own

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In addition to the exquisite selection of songs, what made the series so appealing was its covers. Those covers show the scenes and people photographer Masataka Ishida captured on film in 1984 when he traveled to Brixton, South London. Brixton, home to a large population of Jamaican immigrants, is a town where the culture and music of reggae were nurtured in the U.K. It is also an important location for the scene that has served as a stage for the movie Babylon (1980), which was screened for the first time in Japan last year after a lapse of more than 40 years.

In April, the gallery JULY TREE in Shinsen, hosted a photo exhibition, Masataka Ishida Photo Exhibition RELAXIN’ WITH LOVERS ~photographs~ comprising 36 photographs taken in Brixton and the other cities, including works used as covers of the series RELAXIN’ WITH LOVERS. What was Ishida thinking and feeling when he traveled to Brixton, and why was the romantic sound of lovers’ rock born amidst the harsh reality as exemplified by a series of riots in 1981? Music writer Ryohei Matsunaga, who visited the exhibition venue, asked Ishida about the memories and stories evoked by the photographs, which have yet to lose their luster.

I went to Brixton to discover how reggae had changed since its arrival in the UK.

── Before coming here today for an interview, I read the comments written by you for each photo that can be read with QR codes at the venue. Underpinned by the sheer volume of information and your accurate memory, the comments themselves seemed like a thick book to read, and I thought it would be a wonderful experience to actually refer to them when viewing the photos.

　With that in mind, I would like to hear about coincidences and inevitabilities associated with the encounter in the 21st century between the many photographs taken of real life in Brixton in 1984 and the sound of lovers’ rock, from your point of view.

Masataka Ishida (Ishida): Last year, the movie Babylon (1980, UK, directed by Franco Russo) was released in theaters in Japan for the first time, and the real image of reggae in London became known. Actually, that film was independently screened in Tokyo in the early 1980s, and I happened to be there to see the screening. Until then, the only images I knew of England were the ones I saw on TV, such as Buckingham Palace and London Bridge, so I was shocked. Of course, I had already heard British reggae music like Aswad and Linton (Kwesi Johnson), but for me, the film Babylon connected such music and the scenery behind them for the first time.

　I went to Jamaica for the first time in 1982. Airfare was expensive until the early 1980s, so I could only travel abroad once every two years or so, but once got to Jamaica, the cost of staying was cheap. So once I went, I decided to stay there for three months. I went to England in 1984 as a next step of that trip. A part of me wanted to go back to Jamaica, but I also wanted to see how reggae music had transformed in the relationship between Jamaica and England. Looking back, England at that time was very much well-worth visiting. When I talked with Jamaicans in London, the fact that I had been to Jamaica opened a line of communication.

── At that time, there would have been very few opportunities to get a real feel for the local atmosphere.

Ishida: There were many people going to England from Japan. Whenever I went to a new wave show in London, there were always two or three dozen Japanese acquaintances who greeted me with words like, “Hello again.” However, there were no other people than me who paid attention to Black people in Brixton.  There were people like photographer Ruiko Yoshida who were covering the civil rights movement in the U.S. in the 1960s, but not much attention was paid to the U.K. in Japan.

──You must have felt a lot of tension when actually having your base in Brixton and capturing the cityscapes and people on your camera?

Ishida: No, I didn’t feel much of that. Actually, it was quite easy to live in Brixton. There were many advertisements in the back pages of a free weekly magazine Time Out for something close to today’s Airbnb, and I could look for a place to stay. I always stayed at a place where I could stay for about 10,000 yen per week, including breakfast. Then, I checked the schedule of live shows in music magazines such as NME (New Musical Express) and Black Echos (first published in 1976) for black music. However, there were no announcements of sound systems even in Black Echos. So I found out about the event schedule by looking at the flyers in record stores and posters on the street.

In sound system events, there were very few white people and of those who were taking pictures. I greeted the organizer at the venue and then took pictures. The strobe lights made me stand out a lot, but except for a few times when I almost got into trouble with drug dealers, I had no trouble at all taking pictures. There was a place called “Frontline” with a very good atmosphere where Jamaican food stalls gathered, but there were also people who were selling drugs mostly to the white customers. I was slapped on the cheek with a knife and asked, “What the hell are you photographing?” But at that time, I was saved by a local friend of mine who interceded and said, “Give this guy a break.”

──Although your photos are black-and-white, they convey an ambience of gaiety.

Ishida: If I were a foreign photographer visiting Tokyo, I would mainly focus on the towns along the Loop Road No.7, such as Koiwa, Akabane, Shimokitazawa, and Koenji. No matter where you go, the center of the city is filled with a variety of well-known tourist destinations and objects, while the suburbs tend to be dedicated to residential areas. In my experience, places that I find interesting are located on the border between these two kind of regions. In Tokyo, that would be areas along the Loop Road No.7. London is divided into concentric zones from the center, and each zone has its own subway fare, but the areas around “Zone 2” are interesting because they tend to have a kind of downtown atmosphere and a large Black populations.

Rediscovering and recognizing lovers’ rock in the 2000s

── Was it this kind of climate that nurtured lovers’ rock music?

Ishida: When I went to London in 1984, the main focus was to photograph the city where the music of Aswad and Linton (Kwasi Johnson), whom I had learned about through “Babylon,” was born, and I myself was not aware of lovers’ rock music at all. In Japan, Janet Kay’s “Loving You” became a hit in 1993, but I just thought that music was a bit flaccid (laugh). On the occasion of Sugar Minott’s Japan tour, I asked him about his lover’s rock hit tune “Good Thing Going” (1981), and he said, “I sold my soul to make that song sell, so you should better listen to ‘Sufferer’s Choice’ rather than that” (laughs). That kind of comment persuaded me that lovers’ rock was superficial music for selling out and the main line was roots reggae and that the core of reggae was to sing about things that happened in the hard reality.

　But then, a little before releasing this “Relaxin’ With Lovers” series in 2001, some reggae enthusiasts began to realize that serious music like Linton’s and lovers’ rock were both made by producers like Dennis Bovell and were born from the same background and that they are actually two sides of the same coin: one is political, and the other is just sweeter. I didn’t notice it at all, though (laughs). Japanese enthusiasts were the first to discover this.

Terumasa Yabushita (director of “Relaxin’ With Lovers”): There were a lot of people with the organizer of the event LOVERS ROCK NITE Takashi Fujikawa as the leader, Tsuyoshi “TICO” Toki and Seiji (“Big Bird”) of Little Tempo, who were aware of how good lovers’ rock 12 inches actually were. They also had a dub on the B-side. And you could still buy them dirt-cheap back then.

Ishida: When Mr. Yabushita and his colleagues started Relaxin’ With Lovers, they named the label “15-16-17” after a female lovers’ rock group from the late 1970s. In 2002, the BBC aired a one-hour special program called The Story Of Jamaican Music consisting of three episodes, in which Gregory Isaacs testified that he loved lovers’ rock, especially listening to Janet Kay and 15-16-17. That was in 2002. So the release of Relaxin’ With Lovers was a little earlier than that.

　I mean, I didn’t realize until the 2000s that there was a very special musical development of lovers’ rock that was very common within a specific community, but almost no one outside it knew about. I remember when I was in Brixton in 1984, there was a song called “Gimme Good Loving” (1983) by a group called Natural Touch that was extremely popular. It was playing on every sound system I went to. But I’m sure it never reached the ears of the music lovers outside of sound system community who would go to HMV in central London. It wasn’t until the 2000s that I realized anew that that type of music was lovers’ rock. For this exhibition, I remembered that I had shot Natural Touch, and I exhibited that photo for the first time.

───I was struck by your words, saying, “it never reached the ears of the music lovers outside,” but in reality, what was separating the inside from the outside?

Ishida: After all, lovers’ rock is the music of London. One of the things that surprised me when I went to London in 1984 was how thick the wall between whites and blacks was. For example, The Specials are from Coventry, right? Although there were many opportunities for whites and blacks to play music together there and in Bristol and Birmingham in the 80s, there were almost none in London. The only exceptions were people like Adrian Sherwood, Slits, Joe Strummer, and John Lydon, who were all within a close relationship with Don Letts.

　Specifically, I was most surprised by the Reggae Sunsplash, which took place on July 7, 1984, at Selhurst Park in Crystal Palace, South London. In addition to a stellar lineup that included Aswad, Black Uhuru, and Dennis Brown, I thought there would be a lot of white people who liked two-tone music because Prince Buster and The Skatalites, who were making their first appearance on stage in the UK, would be there. In addition, King Sunny Ade, who was becoming monstrously popular, would also be there, so I assumed that white people who liked world music would also come. However, the audience was almost entirely made up of black people, so much so that I forgot that I was really in London. I think the reality is that it was challenging for white people to go to black music venues in London. When I talked to people who went to London in the 1990s, they said there were quite a few white people in the Jah Shaka sound system, but that was a change that occurred in the 1990s. In the days of “Babylon,” it was composed of only black people. I am not white, so I was in the most comfortable position. It would have been difficult for a white photographer to take pictures like mine.

However, when “Wembley Reggae Festival 1970,” a massive festival in which Desmond Dekker & The Aces, Millie Small, Bob & Marcia, Toots and the Maytals, and John Holt performed, was held on April 26, 1970, at Wembley Stadium in London, there were quite a few white skinheads among the audience of 14,000 people. There is a scene in the movie Babylon where Blue, played by Brinsley Ford (Aswad), and Ronnie, played by Carl Howman, the only white guy in the Ital Lion Sound System crew, are walking along the south bank of the Thames River. Then Ronnie says something like, “The first time I smoked pot was when I was a skinhead, in ’68 or ’69, I think.” Then he continues, “I saw a concert at Wembley Stadium, in which Desmond Decker & the Aces and a woman singing ‘My Boy Lollipop,’ who was it (Millie Small)?, were performing.”

Sweet, gentle music born out of tough reality

── Are the sweetness and straightforward love-song-nature of lovers’ rock contrast to the harsh reality?

Ishida: According to a commonly accepted theory, lovers’ rock music started with a female singer, Louisa Mark, in 1975. However, there are differing views on how long lovers’ rock lasted. I believe it ended in 1984 or 1985. Even after that, there were many songs whose musical styles resembled those of lovers’ rock. However, despite their stylistic resemblance to it, they were not lovers’ rock anymore because the social landscape has changed drastically. Specifically, just as Japan had an economic bubble in the mid-1980s, England had an economic boom. The south side of London Bridge was developed as a fashionable waterfront area. As far as I know, the club culture exemplified by rare groove and acid jazz was created during that economic boom.

── That sounds interesting.

Ishida: In a broader sense, there were great songs that were just like lovers’ rock musically, though.

──You mean, they were not underpinned by the social landscape, right?

Ishida: That’s right. But it was in the 2000s that this background was first revealed. This trend was kicked off by the Japan-made Relaxin’ With Lovers series and the BBC documentary in 2002, amongst others. Also, in 2011, a British filmmaker named Menelik Shabazz released a documentary film called The Story Of Lovers’Rock. What was depicted in this film was by far the clearest. It clearly states that lovers’ rock is inseparable from the background of sound system culture and the Brixton riots in April 1981 (a three-day riot against a backdrop of severe conflicts between overbearing police and disgruntled local black people, resulting in many arrests). Moreover, Linton was in the film even though the primary focus of it was lovers’ rock music, and Pauline Thomas, the vocalist of Natural Touch, made a decent political statement, just as did Caron Wheeler later. It was nice to hear her testimony because Natural Touch was a lovers’ rock group in the true sense of the word that I experienced in the scene back then.

── In 1984, you must have been bombarded with all kinds of information, both visual and auditory. So I can kind of imagine that you could finally understand what was going on after all these years. You can’t go back to that era, but you can clearly redefine it because you were there. It’s great that you can communicate that.

Ishida: The good thing about photography is that even if you shoot something you are not sure about, you still get an image of it. This exhibition includes photos taken in that kind of situation. For example, when I went to Sir Coxsone International, one of the leading sound systems of the time, I was going to take a picture of the DJ, Jah Screechy, but the two people beside him posed for the camera, intending to be photographed. They later turned out to be Mafia & Fluxy (laughs). You will find out later, even if you don’t know when you shoot it. When I photographed Linton, I was very disappointed because he was wearing tracksuits instead of being dressed in a suit and tie, (which are what we associate with him,) but when my photo was used on the cover of the magazine STUDIO VOICE (June 1996 issue,”Loud Minority”), someone pointed out that that tracksuits were actually from Fred Perry.

── If the ordinary people captured in your photos should happen to find out that their photos were used for the cover of Relaxin’ With Lovers, they will be deeply moved. Your photos will bring back to life the times and atmosphere in which these people lived, along with the music.

Ishida: In my case, the theme of my life is to “take good photographs.” A “good photo” for me is “a photo that I like.” In order for me to like a specific picture, I need to like what is captured in that picture. Therefore, the question of what I should shoot to like that photo fuels my motivation to listen to music. That’s how I move into action. I want to take photographs that I like, and that desire inspires me to learn about various things.

───This attitude of yours and the fact that your photographs have passed through the Lovers Rock era makes this exhibition, as well as this compilation series, so wonderful. An important thing to note is that you did not initially start doing these things out of a love of lovers’ rock. All of these things combined to create a sense of tension. The amount of information is limited, but it is all conveyed.

Ishida: That was just a product of chance. I feel like I was able to be a part of an exciting development.

Yabushita: Mick Hucknall (Simply Red) runs a label called Blood & Fire, which released a compilation called Darker Than Blue: Soul From Jamdown 1973 – 1980 in 2001, which selected 70s reggae soul from a rare groove perspective. The cover featured portraits of black people from the 1970s, and it looked really cool. So when I was looking for something like that for our compilation’s covers, I was impressed by Ishida’s photos in STUDIO VOICE. On top of that, it turned out that he had lived in Brixton around 1984, and I knew it was a done deal.

Ishida: I thought I was shooting the world of Linton and Aswad, but I found out about 20 years later that I was actually shooting the world of lovers’ rock, which is interesting. I only knew Mr. Yabushita once I got involved in Relaxin’ With Lovers. He saw my photos in STUDIO VOICE and decided to have this style of cover. So I have nothing but gratitude for him.

── I would like to ask you what you think about the fact that lovers’ rock now echoes along with your photos from those days in a society where oppression and discrimination are becoming more and more apparent again.

Ishida: Well, looking at it from a broader perspective, as symbolized by the screening of Babylon in Japan last year, people tend to want to see this kind of film again at this time.

Masataka Ishida Photo Exhibition RELAXIN’ WITH LOVERS ~photographs～
Dates: March 25th – April 25th
Venue: JULY TREE
Address: Royal Stage 01-1A, 4-7-27 Aobadai, Meguro-ku, Tokyo
Holiday: Closed Irregularly　
Hours: 13:00-18:00 *Subject to change.
Please check the official website and SNS for details as well as gallery holidays.
Admission: Free
Official site: https://www.julytree.tokyo/
Twitter: @JulyTree2023
Instagram: @july_tree_tokyo

Photograpy Kentaro Oshio
Translation Shinichiro Sato

The post Interview with Photographer Masataka Ishida:<br>On South London in 1984, and Scenes from Days of Lovers’ Rock appeared first on TOKION - Cutting edge culture and fashion information.

His sound shows respect for vintage cinema and the pioneers of electronic music while drawing from politics, philosophy, and history. But is Simone’s worldview the antithesis of contemporary culture, where new artifacts are born and disappear one after another?

Simone’s talent was recognized early on by mule musiq, one of Japan’s leading labels, which released the second and third editions of the famous and sensational series “Mondo Nuovo.” We interviewed Simone, who will return to Japan for the second year in a row, and Toshiya Kawasaki, the owner of “mule musiq,” which will celebrate its 20th anniversary next year, at a party at Mitsuki in Shibuya on May 13.

Simone de Kunovich
Simone de Kunovich is a Venice-based music producer whose debut release on the Australian label “Superconscious” in 2019 has attracted significant attention. Last year Simone released the second and third installments of his signature series, Mondo Nuovo.

“I want to be a taste master,” Simone de Kunovich talks about his sound world in his own words.

— As for Addio Mondo Nuovo, the third and final chapter of the Mondo Nuovo series released last November, I felt a more experimental and exotic worldview than ever from its tropical sounds topped with impressive birdsongs. Was there anything in particular that you focused on?

Simone de Kunovich (Simone): I used the same instruments and techniques to make the Mondo Nuovo trilogy cohesive as a series. Half of all tracks of the final chapter, Addio Mondo Nuovo, are made up of diverse music, including soundtracks and soundscapes. For example, “Path To Eternity (On The River of Nameless God)” is inspired by the imaginary story about the final journey of an explorer lost in the Amazon River, adrift on a ragged raft, sick with dehydration and poisoned fruit, reminiscing about old times and experiencing visions of the afterlife in the last moments of his life.

— Why are you drawn to old music and films, such as works by pioneers in the early Italian electronic music scene like Piero Umiliani and the 1980s horror film Cannibal Holocaust?

Simone: The creativity brought by the synthesizers that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s is incredibly unique. Pioneers like Piero Umiliani, who adopted this technology before anyone else, radiated an experimental quality that transcended genres. Music in those days was not just part of the arts but part of a dialogue with politics and philosophy. Records and films triggered social debates, and art had explosive and dangerous powers that would create discord and become tainted by ideology.

Experimental music became a niche subgenre, and films like Cannibal Holocaust and Last Tango in Paris were in danger of being overlooked or ignored by the public. As for Huxley’s Brave New World, Neil Postman said, “What Orwell feared were those who would ban the book. Huxley feared there would be no reason to ban them and no one would want to read books anymore.”

–You have been inspired by such films and incorporated elements of them into your music. How did you develop your style of combining electronic music and film?

Simone: When I was a child, I went to a rental store called Blockbuster near my house for the first time and was fascinated by the movie posters there. I became obsessed with the fantasy world evoked by those posters and frequently visited to devour the archive films. My driving force is an insatiable thirst for knowledge, and I’m trying to connect the dots and establish new connections between previously unexplored points.

— Following your last album, Mondo Nuovo, this album is also released on “mule musiq,” right?

Simone: Yeah, Toshiya has supported my music since we first met, and it’s a real honor to work with him. While “mule music” invests in new talents, it also has a lot of timeless archival works and works on reissues of Japanese synthpop and ambient from the 1980s, which is excellent. I’m one of the fans.

Simone De Kunovich Releases

Browse Simone De Kunovich Releases

kompakt.fm

–You toured Asia last November and will revisit Japan this May. What do you think about the Japanese music scene?

Simone: In the United States and Europe, hardcore live music is quite popular with a functional and intense approach. However, Japan tends to favor a more contemplative and introspective practice. My impression is that Europeans dance with their bodies, while Asians seem to be dancing within themselves. Furthermore, while electronic music is commonplace in Europe, where the act of going to clubs is a part of life, the club scene itself is a niche in Asia, where karaoke and other forms of entertainment are more common for many young people. Therefore, I realized that the key people from the golden age of clubbing still support the Japanese club scene, which I don’t think is necessarily bad.

–I also feel a sense of originality in your style. Do you have a favorite fashion style or particular taste?

Simone: Fashion plays a role that embodies both the image we have of ourselves and the idea of ourselves we want to present to others. Designers today are quite conscious of this point, and often the product quality does not match the quality of the look, which is just like a beautiful box with nothing inside.

I like designers with solid ties to the counterculture, such as Raf Simons and Demna Gvasalia of “Balenciaga,” and I choose to wear items that can convey my worldview. I’m sure I will eventually retire as a DJ, but ideally, I would like to be a consultant to fashion brands for their sound identity. Many major fashion brands seem to be understating this, but I believe it will soon become a necessity in the fashion industry. Ultimately, I want to be a tastemaker in any field.

— Tell us about the projects you are currently working on and plans for the future.

Simone: I plan to release two EPs by the summer. I will release an EP with a remix of “Fantastic Man,” a collaboration piece with my friend Pascal Moscheni, on the Polifonic Festival label in Italy, and another on Public Possession in Munich. The taste of these will be completely different from that of the Mondo Nuovo series, so I believe that these will possibly disappoint previous listeners and make another listener happy.

I cannot stand still for long periods of time. Since the euphoric and schizophrenic resurgence of dance music we experienced after the pandemic, I have felt the need to engage with different sounds and textures. The new work is free from the restrictions I imposed on myself to accomplish the Mondo Nuovo series and has a more ecstatic, energy-driven, dance floor-oriented sound. This work well reflects my current musical orientation.

Toshiya Kawasaki, the leader of the Tokyo-based label “mule music” who has witnessed the world scene, talks about Japan today.

–You have released many albums by artists mainly from Europe who are active worldwide, but Simone is unique among them, and his sound and worldview are pretty original. What attracted you to Simone?

Toshiya Kawasaki (Kawasaki): His sound was exquisite in that it has a strong left-field feel, yet also has the party atmosphere of a club track. There are not many artists who have this sense of balance. He also has a great personality. He is definitely a very promising artist.

— Could you share your favorite tune in his latest work Addio Mondo Nuovo? Please also tell us why.

Kawasaki：I personally like “Path to Eternity.” Its indescribable eeriness gets me hooked every time I listen to it.

–You have been at the forefront of the scene for many years, running a label and playing worldwide, but how did the Covid-19 Pandemic affect your orientation and how you think?

Kawasaki：The pandemic hardly affected my musical orientation, but the cost of pressing records has risen abnormally in the past few years. And that has made it very difficult to release house and techno 12 inches. On the other hand, home-listening pieces and reissue LPs are in high demand, so I would like to shift my focus to more digital releases regarding dance tracks and dedicate physical releases to more universal types of pieces.

–In Europe, many clubs have closed and are facing difficult operating conditions, but now they seem to be back to their former glory, and new venues are opening up. In Japan, many of the leading clubs have closed their doors, but on the other hand, small clubs, live houses, festivals, and young artists in their early twenties seem to be gaining momentum. What do you think about that?

Kawasaki：Smaller clubs are so good in Tokyo. The audience is young and lively. On the other hand, I am sure that clubs with large capacity are having a hard time. Currently, international flights are costly, and DJs’ fees are getting higher and higher, making it difficult to make a show viable. Nevertheless, festivals are still thriving because the audience is willing to pay a lot of money for the special feeling that festivals have.

–What are your future plans for “mule musiq” and projects?

Kawasaki: I hope to continue releasing music that I think is good, just as I have in the past, but I would like to hook up with younger and newer artists. Next year will mark the 20th anniversary of the label’s establishment.

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