D'espairsRay FOOL'S MATE May 2010
I veer off Closer To Ideal course for now (I am not in the mood for it anyway), but after all it is all about LOVE IS DEAD ;)
I have no idea what Karyu is talking about when he says "Bingo", I just assume it is not a game, maybe a song or an album, that's why I wrote it starting with a capital letter. Does anyone have any idea what it might be? ~__~ Thanks to rabu_resu , her suggestion had been proven right and I edited that sentence.
I will appreciate any help if there are any mistakes or something needs to be corrected ;)
Please do not repost it anywhere. I prefer to keep the translations to my own dark little corner and be responsible for my mistakes and the words I choose.
D’espairsRay FOOL’S MATE May 2010
D’espairsRay casts aside all reason and breaks a new ground with a fun dance tune.
A title song of a new single [LOVE IS DEAD] is an electronic dance rock song, its 4/4 beat, inlaid with samples we have never heard from D’espairsRay before, will make you want to move your body the moment you listen to it for the first time. Coupled with erotic and decadent lyrics it is truly a work they can claim to break a new ground with and it will become their great weapon this year as they expect to tour around the world. We are presenting the latest interview that will make you look forward to their first lives after a four months break at Shibuya O-EAST on April 23 and 24.
Q: You have been working in a studio lately, haven’t you?
K: Yeah, since the beginning of the year we have been focusing on a new album. We have not seen the light of the day for a while and led an unhealthy life style (laughs). We have been stewing in our own juices and now we are hungry for a stimulus from the outside world.
Q: [LOVE IS DEAD] must be filled with that craving; it is quite a surprise that it turned out to be a dance song.
K: From long ago I wanted to do something like this. I wondered what was going to happen if D’espairsRay recorded a danceable song or a kind of a song that could be played at parties. And then when I wrote it, I got hooked immediately.
H: Karyu wrote the song right around the time when I was thinking of recording a song like that too.
Z: I liked dance rock kind of music from long ago so it was easy for me to accept the song. I had a feeling that it would be suitable for a title song of the single the moment I heard it for the first time.
K: I wrote [LOVE IS DEAD] for the single, but honestly I had my doubts in the beginning and it wouldn’t be my first choice.
T: But I had an impression that it was something fresh, when I heard it for the first time at a song selection meeting. I felt that it was similar to [Reddish] and at the same time something new for us. I thought that it was a pop art kind of a song that had all sorts of colors in it from dark to light.
Q: Yes, the song makes one imagine a dark dance floor filled with different flashing lights. But lyrics are not that of a mere party song: “In my darkest hour when I could see nothing/A single beam of light…” Is it connected with the name of the band?
H: When it comes to lyrics, they are very D’espairsRay-like. When I listened to the song an image appeared in my head and I began writing lyrics based on it. They depict what I saw in my mind back then pretty closely. I’d venture to say that the scenery was very similar to the one in Michael Jackson’s PV [Thriller]. Actually I thought that it’d be great if we could make a PV like that. Of course, there was no way we would dance (laughs). But it is a song that will make people think: “Shall we dance?”
K: Actually it does look like we are dancing in the PV.
Q: Can we have you dancing on the stage too? (laughs) After all if you want to make your fans dance you have to be the first to do it.
Z: I am the type who basically can’t move well without an instrument, that’s why even if I go clubbing I can’t dance. But I have a feeling that as long as I stand on the stage I can do it. Actually I was told that if I just run on the stage it will look like my steps match the music.
Q: Well, in any case it is impossible to dance while playing drums.
T: I will dance with my feelings (laughs). Filming of the PV was a lot of fun too. Actually I was the only one who didn’t break into sweat and our staff members even told me: “Aren’t you slacking off?” (laughs). If there is anything to say about this song, it is that it’s a lot of fun to play without having to use all my strength.
Q: Then please use your spare energy to dance (laughs). Joking aside, this is the kind of a song everyone would like and it will probably become a song that will trigger an audience when you play overseas.
K: I wasn’t particularly bent on it when I wrote the song, but there are parts that audience can sing with us, so I can see it coming. But more than that, I hope that it will be a “merrymaking” song during our lives in Japan.
Q: I see. By the way this time Toshiyuki Kishi (abingdon boys school/keyboards and programming) was appointed as a producer again. Did you feel that working with him would be necessary from the moment you heard [LOVE IS DEAD] for the first time?
H: Probably because we worked with him before, I thought of him the moment I heard an intro. In the beginning the song had a different atmosphere, but we all told him what kind of a song we wanted to make it into and as usual Mr. Kishi immediately suggested his ideas.
Z: Like he told us: “This is good, but there are such alternatives too”. We made discoveries we wouldn’t be able to do on our own and we expanded our horizon. Working with him was very stimulating.
Q: Let’s talk about B-sides. [WEDICIИE] is a song included on both limited and regular editions and the title is actually [MEDICINE] with the first letter turned upside down.
H: Well, I simply thought it would make an interesting title. Even if you search for the word it does not actually exist (laughs).
T: Either way, it is the song we wrote with a new album in mind. Personally I think it has a Halloween image, we wanted it to be a danceable song with a dark tinge different from [LOVE IS DEAD].
Q: Speaking of writing danceable songs, does it mean that it is a theme for the whole single?
K: As we focused on a new album a lot of different key words came up, like 4/4 beat or digital metal, they are all overlapping. [WEDICIИE] reminds me of the earlier D’espairsRay, that precious feeling that I began to forget.
T: But it does not mean that we did it that way on purpose. Neither did we write the song specifically for a single release.
H: It is true, I had a feeling of familiarity when I heard it for the first time. Even though the song was different when we just started working on it, I thought that it was what one of our old songs would sound like if we recorded it now.
Z: Yes, exactly. It is both our old gothic sound and our recent metal sound. The balance reflects very well what we are like right now. I think if we recorded it earlier it would turn out to be a lot more gothic.
T: In the beginning, when I worked on the song, I used a synthesizer the way I used to in the past and I talked to Mr. Kishi that I’d like to keep it that way by all means…
K: Did the discussion get heated?
T: I just asked for his advice in the beginning (laughs) and then it turned into something completely different.
H: In short, in the beginning it was a song very much like something from our past. That sense of familiarity was hard to abandon, but if we made it too pronounced the song would seem old. Taking all that into consideration became a key to [WEDICIИE].
Q: The third song included only on a regular press version of the single is [CROSSED ARROWS].
K: It is a song that was a candidate as a B-side for [FINAL CALL] single. To put it simply, it is a song that failed a preliminary contest (laughs).
Q: That’s a description we often hear after the Olympics (laughs).
K: I really liked the song, but the other guys were not into it. Still I didn’t have a feeling of a closure and I wanted us to complete it somehow.
H: Aren’t singles something everyone looks for an element of surprise to have in? Or maybe to expand one’s boundaries? At the same time we want B-sides to be the songs representative of the band and channel as much of our power as possible. I think [CROSSED ARROWS] is a song like that.
Z: I don’t have an impression that the song “failed the preliminary contest”. When we worked on [FINAL CALL] we felt strongly that “all three songs had to be one single”. Any of those songs could be a title song and they fit very well together. That’s why [CROSSED ARROWS] didn’t fail, it just didn’t fit on [FINAL CALL].
Q: As always you very good at making conclusions (laughs).
K: Ahaha! But if this time the song didn’t come up in the discussion, I think I’d get angry (laughs). I’d be very sad if no one said: “How about we record that song?”
Z: Usually once a song was not chosen at a song selection meeting, we don’t have other chances of hearing it again, right? I think it becomes a blind spot. That’s why we have to have a grasp on all our music.
Q: As a result I think this single, just like [FINAL CALL], consists of three songs that fit very well together. One thing can be said about it all - every song will fit the live atmosphere well. Will the lives in April be connected with the mood of the single?
H: I wonder (laughs). It’s just that right now we haven’t switched into a live mode yet.
K: However, I want to see a new hope for our band there. It is our first lives after a while and a sort of a “come-back” for us.
Z: Well, we would like to try a lot of different things there, since we are going to finally play for two days in a row.
T: I am looking forward to our first one-man lives after a long break. Though there were also things like a sudden decision to play in Taiwan.
Q: I am looking forward to the next time we speak and hope to hear about Taiwan too.
Z: I think right now we are in the situation when we are waiting for an explosion to come after we absorbed a lot of different things and repeated the cycle of expansion and condensation over and over again. I wonder what kind of the explosion it is going to be after we process everything that happened to us one thing after another. That’s something we are looking forward to ourselves.