yukihiro

1) New World : It has the right feel for an opening track. When I was making the music, I’d already decided to submit it. But it wasn’t such a good a pop song until hyde-kun wrote the chorus and transformed it. I think that’s why it turned out the way it did (laughs).

2) LOST HEAVEN : Ever since I first heard it, it’s been easy to grasp the image of this song. To me, it’s a Recchi(Red Hot Chilli Peppers) rhythm. There aren’t many Japanese people funky enough to like Recchi though, at least that’s what I’ve seen.

3) Jojoushi : I’ve been thinking this song might be the best for showcasing L’Arc’s true colours. As far as the drumming goes, I thought something like ground beats would work best. It’s sort of like groove music.

4) TRUST : The finished version is just as impressive as the initial listen was.

5) Killing Me : I was having trouble doing three linked sets of two claps, so I started suggesting “How would this be instead?” (laughs) Can we change it a little? It didn’t change though (laughs).

6) AS ONE : I think hyde-kun probably already said this, but this sounds like a Slipknot song (laughs). This kind of song will be a hit with the younger drummers.

7) My Dear : This is a masterpiece. ken-chan’s arrangements particularly shine, don’t they? I thought it was going to be a hard rock song at first, but as it got closer to completion it became lighter, and I think it’s an incredibly emotional piece.

8) EXISTENCE : My first impression? I wanted to play it again (laughs)

9) Jiyuu e no Shoutai : This song was made back when we were working on SMILE.

10) Ophelia : It’s such a hyde-kun-like song.

11) Hoshizora : This is one of hyde-kun’s songs too… hyde-kun only had one song on SMILE, so maybe he thought more pressure was on him this time. He brought out a lot of songs this time around. And because of my bugging him (laughs), there’s one more. The drums for this one had me a little worried about what I was going to do, at first. The way I break up the song didn’t work structurally, because of how this song swells up and builds. The finished product was salvaged by Okano (Hajime)-san’s advice.

12) Twinkle Twinkle : I think this song was the only one fit to be the closing track. At first I thought it was going to be a hard rock song, and I was a little worried, but this is L’Arc so of course I had no reason to be (laughs). As for the drumming, ken-chan told me to give it the feel of a Sumapan (Smashing Pumpkins) song.

tetsu

1) New World : The bass line for this song was pretty tough. It keeps me busy. I want something like this for my solo. I wanna cover it. I don’t think I’ll be forgetting the pattern, for once (laughs).

2) LOST HEAVEN : In this one too, I’m constantly moving. Melodically, it has a bluesy touch to it, but it doesn’t drag down the listener.

3) Jojoushi : This is a finger song. I’m not especially good at doing that, but I don’t think there’s any other way to make it sound right.

4) TRUST : You know how the intro to this song has guitar going kakokako? That’s from the demo I played on guitar. Did I even have it tuned properly? I’m still not sure about that (laughs). ken-chan said “This is just fine!”

5) Killing Me : It was hard to get the bass to sound melodious for this up-tempo song. This is what forms the root of the song. I had a hard time getting it to sound melodious for this song, but it still ended up sounding pretty good. I found myself stopping to ask “Does this sound right?” a lot, but I don’t remember it being that troublesome, really.

6) AS ONE : My job as bassist wasn’t any trouble at all since we decided to pre-program this song. Oh yeah, I thought the lyrics to this song were all English, but then I checked the booklet and went “Oh! It is Japanese!” (laughs). I was surprised.

7) My Dear : It’s a good song.

8) EXISTENCE : The guitar intro to this song is magnificent. It’s so amazing, I doubt I could reproduce it.

9) Jiyuu e no Shoutai : This actually came from the rehearsals for Shibuya Seven days 2003. I was in the studio with yukkie, and we were supposed to be rehearsing all our old songs, but I felt like writing a new song and so I started jamming on a guitar. That’s how this song originally started. yukkie might not remember, though (laughs). To describe it simply, I’d say it’s a fast, free-flowing tune.

10) Ophelia : The bass on this one is awesomely cool. I think it’s the best bass line on the album. Every two or three times I play it right, I mess up the next performance, but keep going until the end, anyway (laughs). As long as we were using pre-programmed takes, I wasn’t correcting the parts I kept messing up on, was I? That changed the sound, and the studio changed it too. So, it’s a good thing. Even I can’t replay the same thing twice. I don’t understand how I pulled it off the first time (laughs)! That atmosphere doesn’t come back.

11) Hoshizora : I don’t have much to say about this type of song… It wasn’t especially tricky to play. Doesn’t it kind of feel like L’Arc’s old style? And this is ’05.

12) twinkle, twinkle : This is a finger song too. Slapping with the fingers. This song is very ken-chan-like… I like it, and I want him to write more songs like this.

ken

1) New World : yukkie said to me “ken-chan, do the chords!” It progressed with yukkie deciding what sounded best, and turned into a really bright song. “Wow! yukkie made a happy song!?” (laughs) But I was happy about it.

2) LOST HEAVEN : A good jamming song for our usual three-piece (guitar, bass, drums).

3) Jojoushi : I’ve been wanting to hear hyde’s voice in this register. I think this is how his voice sounds prettiest, but if I didn’t write a song for it, I wouldn’t get to hear him sing that way, so I wrote it.

4) TRUST : I’ve been thinking about the hidden theme in the backing vocals of this song. I thought they were cool when I first heard the song, and now I really like this song.

5) Killing Me : I always feel like going “Yay!” while playing this song, but I hold it in and just keep playing. That’s the kind of song it is.

6) AS ONE : When this song was submitted, I wondered “Did you make me a good hard song, hyde?!” and then hyde said “I wrote this because, during the tour, ken-chan said he wanted a hard song to play!” so I’m pretty embarrassed now (laughs).

7) My Dear : This is the tearjerker. For the second half of this song, I worked out the arrangements so that the atmosphere would gradually change, like doing a morphing (for example, an image manipulation where head shots of two people are merged into a new person using computer technology). Still, I don’t think that changed the song’s outlook.

8) EXISTENCE : This is great for bon-odori too (ken made a comment to this effect in the February 2005 issue’s interview concerning the release of Killing Me). I hope I remember to use it by then (laughs). I thought it would be nice to have a song you can run around irresponsibly with, so I wrote this.

9) Jiyuu e no Shoutai : I haven’t played this kind of guitar lately, so at least one of my strings goes “pyuu!” at the intro. It’s like a fresh start.

10) Ophelia : When hyde was all wrapped up in writing this one, he was focusing on the piano to write the chords. I was glad he wasn’t explaining them on guitar, cause that meant I was free to mess around irresponsibly on my acoustic (laughs).

11) Hoshizora : This is a splendid song, is it not? All sorts of different things went into it, so there’s a lot of feeling, especially in the chorus. I wanted the guitar solo in the second half to fade out, but it took too long. The key changes are complicated too. At least, they seem that way now (laughs).

12) twinkle, twinkle : Back during the Baltimore show, and during the SMILE tour, I was thinking I’d like to try a song with this kind of tempo, so I wrote it. It’s a good song for bon-odori, even kids and old people can use this one.

hyde

1) New World : After being rearranged by yukkie many times, this is the song that finally came out (laughs). But when it was finally done, I thought it was an incredibly catchy song.

2) LOST HEAVEN : It’s going to be a movie ending theme (for the movie Fullmetal Alchemist : Shamballa wo iku mono) so I thought I should check it out before I wrote the lyrics. But actually, as I was watching the DVDs, I found myself bonding with it so much that I cried out loud (laughs). I didn’t want to simply transfer that anime’s world into words, I wanted to let it influence me.

3) Jojoushi : It’s a good song, so I wanted to write good lyrics for it. It takes luck to be able to do that, and I think I had just the right amount of luck this time.

4) TRUST : When I wrote these lyrics, I wanted to convey a feeling that even though the world itself doesn’t change, life can change and renew itself all over again.

5) Killing Me : I started writing part of this song on a tree trunk. I’m not sure why (laughs). It just started with singing “Killing Me” (laughs). But for the album version I thought different lyrics would suit the feel of the song better (laughs).

6) AS ONE : We all like hardcore, but L’Arc~en~Ciel doesn’t have many songs like that. So I thought I’d go all out for this one. Still, the chorus turned out pretty catchy. I think it means I did a good job with the song.

7) My Dear : I wrote this three years ago, and I brought it out again because I didn’t think I was going to make my quota (laughs). But with the band’s arrangements, it got changed quite a bit. ken-chan in particular did good work with the structure and arrangements. I don’t think I have that kind of creativity.

8) EXISTENCE : The moment I heard this song, I got angry, cause it’s got a dirty image. I thought about something to write angry lyrics about, so decided to make lyrics about not being able to sleep.

9) Jiyuu e no Shoutai : I took rhyming into consideration when writing this one, so I think I paid a lot of attention to it (laughs).

10) Ophelia : This was another song that filled up my quota (laughs). I wanted to insert a name into the song, and even though it’s common, I pulled it out of Hamlet. (Ophelia is one of the principal characters in Shakespeare’s play ‘Hamlet’, she is the tragic love of the main character, Hamlet) Hammering it out during our sessions was the greatest.

11) Hoshizora : I used “explosive” words to make straightforward lyrics, and so I think this song penetrates the soul. I chose fairly strong words.

12) twinkle, twinkle : My job is easy, I just write lyrics for other people (laughs). But this one is incredibly hard to sing. But rather than hate the song, I see it as a fresh challenge.

Translated by Natalie Arnold