Hey, I know I said I wouldn't be posting again but I couldn't stop myself! My friend Ryu sent me a link to the March edition of the MUSICA magazine interview with Fujiwara. Only part of the interview is available online, the rest is only in print. But it's still a very enjoyable interview! They seem to have had a good time, so I hope you enjoy it too!:D
Original Japanese article at: http://musica-net.jp/articles/preview/4058/
Thanks for sending me the link, Ryu!
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Surpassing Tears and Smiles, the Album of Light, "Ray," is Born
BUMP OF CHICKEN's Fujiwara Motoo Tells All
"Of all our other albums, I think this one made our band members, staff and others cry the most times, haha. I think these songs convey the really tiring things, what it's like understanding oneself, what it's like reaching one's thirties. It's really tiring, and it's unpleasant… But it's awesome, haha." (From the February edition of MUSICA, volume 83, page 14)
■ "Today is January 17th, 2014. I think the album RAY is about finished by now. How is the opening song?"
"It's not quite finished? Yes, that's right. The opening song was decided on relatively recently. If I were to listen to it again now I know there'd be things I'd want to fix, things I'd want to change a bit like this or that… More or less it's all there though haha."
■ "Are all the other songs finished?"
"No. Tomorrow we're putting in one more song. Ray."
■ "Ah, so the song we just heard was not the final take. But didn't the band perform this one in the Nippon Budokan Arena a while ago?"
"That's true haha. But you know, aren't live shows and recordings fundamentally different? And the album's release date hasn't been moved further away. And--- I'm sorry these words are coming from my mouth, haha. But the staff did some rescheduling. Looking at the recording date for Ray's vocals and its release date, I feel like they might reschedule the date again."
■ "Is that how you usually work?"
"Not usually. It sort of feels like we're saying, 'The schedule's gotten a bit messed up, so let's scrap it and reschedule one more time.' I was totally fine with it. But a lot of things have happened, and we're still not done putting the songs together."
■ "But they extended the release date, so couldn't it be said that you will be perfectly prepared when the day comes?"
"Um… If we don't finish it won't be perfect haha. So I can't afford to think that way just yet."
■ "Actually, since about three days ago we've been getting a ton of Twitter and Facebook messages coming in."
"Eh, what happened? Did something good happen?"
■ "No, I mean that a lot of your fans have been sending me tons and tons of messages saying "Good for you, Shikkape!!" [Shikappe is the interviewer from MUSICA here]
"'Good for you, Shikappe?' What's good? Did something amazing happen, Shikappe?"
■ "I mean, good grief. I mean that your song '(Please) Forgive' is finally released to the world!"
"Ahh!!! That's what you meant! You heard it, Shikappe, many years ago. You waited a really long time!"
■ "It doesn't matter about me, but your fans were extremely happy."
"Why was it that you knew about (Please) Forgive?"
■ "In midsummer 2010 when I went to see you recording COSMONAUT, I wrote a report that I thought you would be including that song along with Angel Fall and the others… But then you didn't."
"We didn't, haha. Hahaha, that's right. I wonder why we didn't include it."
■ "Not to get too personal, but when I made that false report about (Please) Forgive, that information spread throughout the world, haha. And I wrote about the song with so much praise --- because I really liked it a lot --- so everyone was waiting very excitedly for the song. I'm relieved that this long-awaited song is actually being released this time, really.
"Thank you, haha. Probably, [the reason we didn't include the song in COSMONAUT] was because of a problem with the album. To fill up the entire CD, we had to stay within a certain number of minutes (which was about 74 minutes, by the way)… So to stay in that range we had to cut one song, and looking at the balance of songs overall we decided to take out (Please) Forgive. We thought we could use it later. That's it, really. And of course, songs don't really fade with time so we decided to use it in this album.
■ "Now that I think about it, RAY is being released 3 years and 3 months after COSMONAUT. Like we were saying before, in these 3 years and 3 months these two albums have become complete rhythmic opposites. So it's not something like, 'We put this album together in the last 5 months of this 3 year and 3 month period,' it's more like the crystallization of an extremely long period of production work. Taking this into account, do you think it's possible some of these songs may seem similar to your earlier works at first?"
"I think so. We're talking about the production period, right? Certainly, it's not like we could just concentrate and then come out with a ton of songs just like that. It's more like, over the period of 3 and a half years we gradually recorded, song by song, I think. It took a long time… Yeah, a long time, hahahahaha. When I look back on it, it was a pretty long span of time… Between the oldest and the newest songs on the album, there is a huge gap between when they were born, I feel. So more than it being a question of what it is, I feel the space of years between the songs---"
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