Translated from Apres Guerre, 1998.6
Fantasia
yasu: (suddenly turning toward interviewer) When you hear "Fantasia", what do you think of?
Since you don't need to ask me questions, your comments please. (bitter laugh)
ka-yu:This person here is the interviewer (laughs). Get into the game (laughs).
yasu: (Laughs.) I really love the world of Fantasia. And so, I tried to put my vision of that into a song, and into the lyrics...so I think that maybe anime fans won't be able to get enough of this one. I really like anime myself, I'm a bit of an anime maniac. The song has faeries, dragons, and elves too. I thought about putting dwarves in it too, but thought that might be going too far. So, it just gives the impression of a fantasy world.
kiyo: I was really particular about the sound of the keyboard. Since the piano intro is the real start of the CD, please don't skip over it and give it a listen.
ka-yu: Since yasu-kun put in his favorite creature, the dragon, lyrically it does have the impression of a rather grand scale.
yasu: Though it totally doesn't come out at all, just listening to it (bitter laugh).
ka-yu: Anyway, I like the song now. I feel as if it shows a different aspect of Janne Da Arc.
shuji: When I listen to it, it's a good song, but it's a difficult song to actually play. It's not that it's difficult in composition, but it's tough during shows because I have to play it while listening to a metronome. But, I really like the song.
you: As for me, I used the guitar to tell the story of going to another world outside of Earth, in my own way. First, in the intro, the sound of ascending stairs looking toward the sky. Then, I tried to tell the story of becoming an angel and getting your wings, flapping them toward your destination.
yasu: Though it is just how I chose to do it, really.
you: I really was desperately trying to make something of it there, until now (bitter laugh).
Judgement
yasu: This is one of the songs you-chan wrote. As you know, our styles are different, his and mine, and they don't really mesh. I don't really know what he thinks of the melody line I put in...
you: I like it.
yasu: (Bitter laugh) Well, I...it came to me from you-chan with the title "The Kiss of Death", so from there it became a hickey. The kiss of death. Do you know the anime "Cobra"? There was a story like that in there, too. (Laughs) It just went on from there. To me, it's a really easy song to understand.
kiyo: I think the melody is really cool, especially when it first comes out. In the keyboard part, there's a contrast between light and dark, and in the instrumental sections between verses there's brass and accordion, all kinds of stuff. It's a fun song to play.
shuji: I like this song, too. It feels like the genre you-chan, and I too, listened to a long time ago—hard rock. And so, I had some trouble with the double bass part in the beginning. Even now I still have trouble with it. If I can just get through that, then it becomes a song that feels good to play.
you: As shuji-kun said, I wrote it as a hard-rock, metal-like song, but if I just left it like that, I thought, it felt rather uninspired. So, I thought about a lot of things in regard to the song, and brought the vocals in; and by that, it started to sound like a Janne Da Arc song. The bass is still hard rock, but I'm pleased with what we were able to make it into.
ka-yu: It's a fun song to play. When I listened to the whole thing, the backing instruments were really heavy, but the song itself is fairly easy to listen to, in contrast. It's you-chan's first hit song, since it's a really popular one. Listening to the CD, it's different from how we do it live, but I think it would still be great if people even just listened to it at low volume at home.
shuji: This one is one you really have to listen to at full volume, though.
ka-yu: Then take a leap off your home speakers. (Laughs.)
More Deep
shuji: This song's a little sexy. I don't know why, but we really haven't done it much live so far.
kiyo: We just dared to put it on the CD.
Why was that?
kiyo: I put it in believing that there would be someone out there who would understand my predilections. I put them in from the beginning. Though, if you point out that they're a different tone, then that's what they are. Since I put all sorts of effects in there, I think it makes it more interesting if you pay attention to those.
you: This song, being one that kiyo-kun wrote, is made up entirely of keyboard phrases—so it's really hard to translate over to guitar. So, recording it and doing it live are both difficult for me. The guitar has a lot of influence, and I put in a lot of different things, so I'd like people to listen for those.
ka-yu: This is the first song I used a fretless on. I used a standard bass for the bass solo, but mainly used a fretless making it produce a sound that doesn't really sound like a fretless at all.
yasu: I hated putting the voice in this most of all. Always 'ageyou', 'ageyou', 'ageyou', like I'm blowing my nose (laughs). I really tried to shout this one. I'd be happy if people thought of it less that I'm singing, and more that I'm shouting with all my strength. It's good that "So Blew" comes after this, though. It's like, "Hey you, what's with all that shouting?" It'd be nice if people thought of it as a product of my fresh young mind. (Laughs.)
So Blew
you: I got the single cut for this from ka-yu-kun. It just graduated from there, like, for now, let's make a song out of this. We wondered how it would turn out since writing isn't really what I'm best at, but it really came around. It's not really a song that focuses on the guitar, either.
shuji: Just with it being such a simple song, it was difficult to keep the drums quiet enough.
kiyo: As for the keyboards, I think it's good to listen to it as if you're hearing a whole string orchestra, with so many different sounds coming from the violins. Since I like using strings, this one was a very easy one for me to do.
yasu: This song is one that ka-yu-kun worked really hard to write. When I first wrote the lyrics, I thought I was doing well with them, but now I wish I would have thought them over a little more. Though I guess it was still a message to someone, anyway.
ka-yu: It's a message song, huh.
yasu: Though that doesn't make it a good thing; I don't think the people who listen to it will get that at all. I think that they'll think it's a song to some girl, but the parts that aren't, they'll probably just think it's my fresh young mind again. (Laughs.)
Confusion
yasu: This is the song I wanted to do the least.
you: You want it to go somewhere, but it doesn't.
kiyo: It's really hard to change parts.
yasu: It's a song I can't sing even if I want to. We all really hate this song for that.
Who was the one who said, "Let's just put it in"?
yasu: I was. As for why, they wanted a different song, so it was like, "listen to my selfishness".
you: There's no problem with it on the CD, though. Doing it live is what's awful.
kiyo: If you listen to the intro and so on, I think you'll find that there's something unexpectedly different in it from what you've heard to this point.
yasu: But, I'm cheerful about it since I wrote it. But, my fresh young mind is responsible for that. (Laughs)
kiyo: Again, that's three times now (Laughs.) That one's exactly how yasu-kun wrote it.
you & shuji: That's right.
yasu: kiyo-kun helped me with the bridges.
kiyo: Since I like sound distortion, I put a lot in.
yasu: I'm really grateful for kiyo-kun.
ka-yu: This was a song that yasu-kun brought in prior to recording, saying that it was a pop song; I told him it shouldn't be. The first and second chorus were mostly done by yasu, so I just played them as he directed.
The lyrics are a little difficult, aren't they.
yasu: They're talking about a stalker. I think you'll probably get it if you can understand my English at the beginning, but he's a tough little brat. That's a love song, to me. But, the woman grows to hate me in the song, and I'm her stalker now.
The stalker's singing the song, I got that much.
yasu: You totally thought "could he be some kind of genius?", just now. I know. Morons won't understand my lyrics, since I'm a genius.
shuji: No one understands your lyrics!
Speed
yasu: This one is a really raw track. I just did it with no thought of singing it beautifully at all...though everyone hated it, it was my first choice for the album. I put it on thinking that most of the other songs were ones that we don't do live that often, and I wanted a song that gave an impression of what our shows are like on the album...but what do you think?
ka-yu: I didn't want to put this song on the album. We decided to put it on a week before we started recording. We just said something like that its drive alone makes it a powerful song. It's really driven by the bass in the beginning. After all, I'm a bassist who does stand out. It's a song with nothing but driving force.
kiyo: Since we really just use it to get people going during shows, we really didn't think it needed to go on the CD, but that sort of reaction made it fun to do. As the song's name suggests, it does give the impression of "speed", and it ends right away. Doing it, it really feels like there's not enough of it there.
you: As everyone has said, it's a really forceful song, and when we did the album I played the guitar in a way that would keep the intensity from getting lost, but it was mostly how I would do it live.
yasu: Everyone did it that way. I didn't even put in any harmony, either.
you: We just put it on the CD in the same way that we'd do it live.
shuji: This one, I really did play it just like I would at a live show. In terms of takes, too, this one was over the fastest; we just did it and left it as it was.
Yami no Tsuki wo Anata Ni...
yasu: This is such an old song. You can say it's a ballad, but at the same time it doesn't come to mind as one. This is one that I've really embraced, though—the other three people on the instruments, they've liked this one for a long time. But I don't so much. How about that?
I think it's a good song, though.
shuji: It is a good song, isn't it.
you: I guess it's all right.
kiyo: When I first heard it, I liked it so much that I was like, "yasu wrote this?"
you: The guitar solo is really long, and he said it makes up about half the song, if you include the fade-out. I like the song, and the guitar solo takes up half of it...I couldn't be happier. Thinking about what went into it quite a bit, it'd be great if people would listen just for that. There's a part that's a little less powerful than the rest of it at the end, but I'm pleased with how it sounds.
ka-yu: When I joined Janne Da Arc, it wasn't really complete enough to call it an actual song, and I showed it to everyone by doing the bassline and having kiyo-kun put the rest together on keyboard; but while it's the song that sticks in my memory the most, even though it's a song from four years ago, it's still too hard for me to really bring together well (bitter laugh) It's a song that still causes me some pain in its unrealized potential.