– At last, the album is complete. First, I’d like to ask about your impression of it as a whole. Could you make some general remarks concerning your personal thoughts about it?
[From the start, I was thinking I wanted to make this one a pop album. So, I kept that in mind for all the songs I came out with. The song THE BLACK ROSE might not quite be pop though, but to me it’s a playful tune, and I think it puts a nice accent on the whole thing.]

– Let’s see, this time there are three songs by you, but those songs carry the accent of the entire album, right?
[Yeah, I guess so.]

– It’s the case with SEVENTH HEAVEN as well as with Hurry Xmas. I get the feeling that you were very deliberate about composing them.
[Yeah. I was thinking that I wanted it to become a pop album, right, so maybe that’s why I wrote such colourful songs this time around. But, I also wondered “Can I really pull that off?”. You can’t tell without laying them all out in a row. Then, when we did have all the songs laid out, I said to myself “Oh good, it turned out to be (a pop album) like I wanted”, which made me happy (laughs).]

– Your wanting to make it pop, did that also become an unyielding idea during the recording process?
[Hmmm…… More of a hope. Of course, I kept it in mind for the songs that I had written, but when it comes to the songs the others brought in, it’s not just about what I think anymore. My hope that when the songs were all brought together, the album would turn out that way, it was there normally……. I worried a little.]

– I think that AWAKE was an introspective piece of work, where all the songs came together to illustrate a single scene. Do you think that this fact directly influenced the current album, or something along those lines?
[The way I feel now is that what was done last time is over with. For the lyrics, too, I made myself set my sights lower so I could come up with easily likable songs about ordinary things, with a nuance of closeness, thinking that I wanted it to be a pop album.]

– I believe the theme of AWAKE was anti-war. I think the lyrics and songs were all written to reflect that idea as much as possible, but this time the theme seems to be jumping around. To you, hyde, is that a part of the pop feeling?
[Hmmm… well of course, that’s partly true… It’s a warm expression of love, perhaps. That’s what really jumps out at me. I think the last one was a more exasperating expression of love, but this time the thing that jumps out at me most is that gentle love, and an ordinary-life atmosphere that strikes me as being very wonderful. Like I said, I really wanted it to take that shape.]

– This is album is quite wonderful, isn’t it? SEVENTH HEAVEN and Hurry Xmas are so straightforwardly expressive, it makes for a gorgeous atmosphere. I mean, some other rock bands have aimed for a flatter sound in order to better express the ordinary, but as stadium bands go, trying to express the spark of the gorgeous ordinary in the entertainment world just doesn’t seem to be happening, so that leaves it up to you, in my mind. What do you think?
[Ah, I see what you mean (laughs). Yeah I do think that’s somewhat true. After all, I do think it’s one of this band’s strengths. Each one of us writes songs and thinks up the image he wants, freely…… Even if I’m thinking I want to make a pop album, that’s not something we recognized as a group. ……And this band has some history, too (laughs). As an individual, I dissipate. That conscious awareness of making hard rock like in my solo work dissolves, and I’m left feeling very happy that we are this band that can make any kind of music. Until now, I admired rock more, I was even tying myself down that way, but now I’ve gotten to enjoy not being tied to one genre, and I thought about how this is a great thing about the band. This time…… it feels like we’re blossoming, much more than before. The seed has gone wild (laughs).]

– (laughs).
[What kind of band are we!? I feel like we’ve gone crazy with that, and I think other bands probably couldn’t do this, anyway.]

– L’Arc~en~Ciel lives up to the meaning of its name (i.e. rainbow) with this album, right?
[That’s right (laughs).]

– I think this album’s music has a wonderfully positive special power that isn’t heard anywhere else. Why do you think you have been able to make such a thing?
[……… How did we do that, I wonder…… Rather then asking how, I feel that we just made what we had to make. Of course, there was that solo period, so each of us built up his image of what L’Arc~en~Ciel is, and got ideas about what he’d like to have the other members play, so we all wrote songs with that idea in mind, and in that sense I think all of our minds became one, this time…… In the end, things that were at the back of our minds made their way to the front, I think that’s the same for all of us.]

– ken-san mentioned that making this album reminded him of True quite a bit, so I’m wondering if the rest of the band thought the same thing. In other words, I’m wondering if there was a bit of a sense of gearing up and taking notice that there are still higher goals to aim for. How about you, hyde, how do you feel about that, compared to the past?
[Hmmmm………. (Thinking extremely hard) ……… Even though it’s our eleventh album, I don’t feel like we’re seeing the “bottom” at all. This time, once again, we’ve put an album together and I think it’s a good one. This is our sixteenth year together, and I don’t know if we’re changing gears or not, but this atmosphere is there. This band hasn’t stalled yet. We’ve still got plenty of energy (laughs).]

– Hahahahahahahahahaha.
[That’s how I feel.]

– Does this connect to a feeling that you will still go on for a long time?
[Rather than say we will go on, I think it’s closer to the correct nuance to say that we can still go on. ………I’m sure our feelings aren’t gone, that somehow we might be getting to be a band we can admire.]

– I see. hyde-san, was it you who came up with the title of KISS?
[Yes. This is essentially what I said before, but it’s not the kind of meaning that AWAKE had, it’s more of a likable meaning, and I wanted it to be something that can represent the links that people have to each other. So coming from that…… with the idea that it would be nice if everyone could be tied to each other closely enough to kiss, I gave it that name.]

– That sounds like a challenge.
[Yes.]

– Do you like kissing?
[Oh, you know, the essence of kiss is that it’s an expression of love. I think of a kiss an action that gets the blood pumping. Of course, I do think there are kisses whose sole objective is to move on to sex, but for those we love, those we want to hold closely…… I think a kiss is what gets the most blood pumping. So, it’s what sprouts from the links between people. I think that’s a fantastic, wonderful thing.]

– More than love or hate, it’s about feeling the quality.
[Of course it’s about love (laughs). But thinking about it sexually is a bit…… Well of course I do like that aspect too (laughs), but it’s not only about that, and I want everyone to know it.]

– Now, lastly, I’d like to ask you for a brief review of each member, concerning the recording. Start with yukihiro-san.
[He played with wonderful smoothness, this time. Of course there were some annoying songs in there, like Hurry Xmas. Before, he used to take two, three days for a single song, recording hundreds of takes, really intense, you know. Then, in the end it would be the very first take that got used (laughs). Now, he doesn’t waste his time like that anymore, he’s OK with the first take, and a lot of the time he didn’t even play the song more than once…… In that sense I think he’s grown up, and become more gracious (laughs).]

– Now tetsu-san.
[I guess tetsu-chan is the same as he’s always been. I didn’t get the feeling that anything about him had changed… He has this dispassionate image about him, doesn’t he? But, I did notice that his capacity for direction had jumped way up. He grasps what’s good and bad right away, but I think that’s normal. I think his leader traits come out, even in recording.]

– And ken-san.
[ken-chan has always had this “music teacher” vibe to him (laughs). I get the feeling that he sees music on a higher level than the rest of us do. This time I felt the influence of that side of him even more than before. So those aspects of music that are beyond the rest of us, those are left up to him. I felt that this side of him deepened quite a bit this time, also in how the demos he made were already almost perfect. In that sense, I think we relied on him a lot even for songs that he didn’t write. It’s like he’s above us, in a sense.]

ALBUM [KISS] INTERVIEW

It is an overwhelming album.

First of all, its prideworthy contents are as though they made an overwhelming abundance of flowers bloom; this is an album whose excellence cannot be covered merely by listening. From the sudden gear-switching, jump-in-and-fight party tune SEVENTH HEAVEN, to that which brings pomp and flourish to costume parties in an ageless mingling of jazz and rock, the unexpectedly direct Christmas tune “Hurry Xmas” – they are a band of twelve songs, and it is plain to see that while they do build upon one another, they are not directly connected; it would be fair to describe them as an “All star” or “Elite” line-up. The projection from L’Arc~en~Ciel is thus : these four songwriters have together brought into life something that “each freely tore to shreds”, leading to the music’s dynamism, but this time the process is incomparable to the past, each song has freely developed into infantry, air force or navy, as if this were to be the one, decisive battle, and so the incomprehensible, unstoppable spectacle goes on in the form of this album. Faced with the task of ascribing a masterpiece to the band based on this work and their career to date, a fair amount of preparation is required, but taking into consideration their musical persona and band sense spanning from whenever to whenever, I believe it is fair to say that this album is their masterpiece. More than anything, the creation of such an album is but one result of intentional and daring efforts, and upon acquiring more knowledge, that emotion remains memorable. From the mouths of the four themselves, episodes such as “The quality of the demos was on a whole new level of professionalism,” goes to show that this album can be called a masterpiece from many different points of view.

Pop music is the development of wondrous mechanisms and developments where each new result leads to all-out war. This means that it is not about a single superstar’s power, but perhaps rather like a soccer club, its strength varies along with the sponsors, supporters, and back-up system. However, much like a single brilliant play may go down in history, in pop music a single song has the power to move the world with a single sound or word. Starting with a spark that defies logic and marketing, this is a thing that gives life to business and development. Put differently, music without a spark, music that is given light only by business may be heard left and right but it can have no life beyond making money. In other words, cliche.
From the band’s story to their looks, and now this series of releases that have brought them back into daily gossip, the appeal of L’Arc~en~Ciel is multifaceted, and though they earn nothing but praise on several points, they have preserved “the first melody”, “the single echo”. This album, KISS : from the first listen it can be felt that its great dynamism will ring across the world, but in truth there is a slight distance between “I want to protect your smile while you’re close to me” and the themes of space and love within the songs. A tiny heartbeat against an explosion, and the world keeps on turning despite anger and sadness. When it comes to making that “core” sing, L’Arc~en~Ciel proves the surprising truth about the power of music and the purity of pop. They are a band that has lasted 15 years of moons, and thus their message, although gentle, is a polished blade that arrives to thrill our hearts. This is the ecstasy of pop music as taught by KISS.

It may seem like I am cursing it to call it pop so insistently, but I am not only speaking of the five singles but also of the seven other songs which do not fail against the singles in terms of melody and rhythm, nor in the aura they illustrate. In the minds of these four, rock and pop and punk and Japanese folk music and movies and paintings are lined up in a row, and that universally radical jumping over of sensibilities is what allows, according to passionate beats and detailed musculature, the mystifying melodies to echo. Personally, I wonder : why is this ballad so beautiful? This hard rock song, why is it cruel and yet so sad? Although it can be enjoyed as pop, why does this certain awakening stick to it almost as if it were the band’s philosophy? I think of these questions as flirtation with L’Arc~en~Ciel; with this album L’Arc~en~Ciel has maxed out the meter, “L’Arc~en~Ciel has surpassed L’Arc~en~Ciel” this time.

“I think of a kiss an action that gets the blood pumping. That’s why it makes the participants connected, I think it’s a tremendously wonderful thing.” – hyde

Once I wondered aloud : is there no rock band that betrays its own price and value? Then my mind went white and that band was there.
Now this band must expand its field; by means of this brutal tour, challenge their own concept and destroy suspicions in order to break down the walls, and so gently let ring the truth about this severe world.
L’Arc~en~Ciel has not just once but earnestly, to profit from the sound of the “unknown world” and “the truth of things”, made this album, KISS. It is wonderful yet also contains a spiritual unease. It is the push and pull of the friction and fusion between the band communicated emotionally into the flesh and blood that is pop.
This band that has created so many renowned works has once again created a masterpiece, yet I had no idea that such a moment was a tense kindness presented to a drifting world. From the bottom of the heart, this album is a wellspring of joy.

text : Shikano Atsushi
Translated by Natalie Arnold