Es VOL.12 new album“parallel universe”成员interview(first half)

●○○From music freak Es Vol.12

GARNET CROW
New Album『parallel universe』2010.12.8 Release

About a year and three months after their previous album, “STAY 〜Yoake no Soul〜,” debuted at No. 7 on the Oricon weekly album chart, GARNET CROW released their eighth original album, “parallel universe,” on December 8. The album contains ten tracks, including “Over Drive,” which reached their personal best of No. 4 on the Oricon weekly singles chart, and an album arrangement of “As the Dew,” the opening theme for Detective Conan. We spoke with the band about the new release. （INTERVIEWED BY YUKARI MATSUBARA）

●This is your tenth-anniversary year, so I imagine you have had many opportunities to look back on the past. In that context, what does “music” mean to each of you right now?
Yuri Nakamura (hereafter Nakamura): Our attitude toward creating music has not changed at all from ten years ago. When we debuted, we started out focusing solely on production, but the biggest difference now is that we work on two pillars: creating music and performing live. We create music and release an album, then have everyone listen to it live and feel their reactions directly. We recharge our own energy with what everyone gives us, and then use it to create the next work. That cycle has gradually become established, and now it feels very ordinary—almost like the life of an office worker (laughs). I spend every day in a regular routine of going into the studio and singing during the day, so I think I probably lead a much more orderly life than most musicians.
●Do you feel that the works you create have changed, or that there have been other changes of that kind?
Nakamura: I feel that, as I have gained experience and absorbed all kinds of things, I have come to understand things I did not know before, gained more wisdom, and added more options to my repertoire. This album includes several bright, pop-oriented songs typified by “Over Drive.” That kind of song was a genre I had never touched before, or rather, I had not been especially interested in it myself. But making “Over Drive” allowed me to discover that there are other worlds of music like this, and to find them interesting and comfortable. In a sense, that was a new discovery in our tenth year, and it was a very important thing for me.
●Hiroto Furui (hereafter Furui): My honest impression is that, surprisingly, not much has changed... When I look back, I think a lot has happened, but my own sense of things is very quick, and I want to insist that I have not aged (laughs). Then you suddenly realize that time is moving on, don't you? Lately, I especially feel that gap.

●After ten years, many bands' musical styles change considerably, but GARNET CROW has remained consistent since your debut. You have also continued creating music steadily, so perhaps that makes changes harder to notice.
Furui: Certainly, I think each of us has had all kinds of thoughts and conflicts about whether this is really enough. But I have always wondered whether changing automatically makes something better. I think new attempts can peek through here and there without betraying what we are. When you say “change,” it looks like a point, doesn't it? But “continuing to change” gives me an image of something expanding. We have kept that in mind while creating music over these ten years.
Hitoshi Okamoto (hereafter Okamoto): Viewed broadly, I have not changed at all since our first indie album. GARNET CROW is the foundation of my life, after all, so being helped by it and being troubled by it have continued all this time without changing. If anything has changed, it is that the fans' presence has grown. At first we were a production team, but compared with then, we have had more and more opportunities to interact with everyone. That is certainly one thing that has changed.
●I would like to ask you about the new album. Beforehand, we had Nakamura rate the album on eight criteria on a five-point scale, so I would like to discuss it while looking at those scores.
Okamoto: One spot, “message,” is conspicuously depressed. AZUKI would probably have written the same thing if you had asked her to do it (laughs).
Furui: We don't force anything on people.
Nakamura: Right. We have absolutely no intention of making message songs. We do not intend to send out any particular message; we want listeners to feel whatever they want to feel. That is something the people who hear the songs think about, rather than something we should be broadcasting. GARNET CROW's music is not intended to be message songs, and that applies beyond this album as well.
●I see. So “GARNET CROW-ness” received a 4. What do you think about that?
Nakamura: Listening to the songs together, I feel that they came together well. As I mentioned earlier, working so carefully on “Over Drive” made me realize how interesting and pleasant bright, colorful songs like this can be. From there, I decided to dig a little deeper into songs with a world like “Over Drive,” in my own way. That led to songs such as “tell me something” and “Aozora Kanata.” Until now, as you probably imagine, our songs have been characterized by a rather dark image containing melancholy and poignancy. This time, though, I thought songs filled with vivid colors, as if lit by sunlight, could be beautiful too, so I wrote several of them. We brought the lively, colorful world of GARNET CROW to the forefront, and since it was accepted without feeling out of place, perhaps we can add it as one of our strengths. Of course, the album also contains songs with the melancholy and poignancy that we do best, so I think it remains recognizably GARNET CROW.

GARNET CROW-ness
The future
New attempts
Live suitability
Listenability
Sense of season
The pain of creation
Message orientation