[Feature] Digest of Power Push inteview on 6th album

sakanaction's frontman Yamaguchi Ichiro did an interview on their latest album, with the Natalie.mu website for their Power Push feature over here.

It's a total of 14,000 words which would be too crazy for me to translate, but there are some really interesting things you can pick up from the interview, so here I present a translated digest of points picked out from article.


- Yamaguchi says he chose to record the album at his apartment this time as in the studio, there’d be time limits, and extra people other than the band. He didn’t want it to feel like work, and to feel like it’s having fun after getting off school. He also wanted to make music using the speaker that he always listens to.

- He wants to convey both the “front” and “back” of the band properly with this album. Previously, like in the case of kikUUiki, there was only Aruku Around as a “front” song, so the balance is better this time. “Front” = the main single songs, songs with tie-ups (Music, Yoru no Odoriko, Aoi, Boku to Hana). The rest of the songs are the “Back”, which represents the music they really wanted to make as a band.

- Yamaguchi learnt about “the point of view from young people”. When he started doing tie-up songs, different types of users started tweeting him. From there he noticed users who tweeted him had purikura icons or had aliases like “Tohoshinki Love”. Sakanaction had reached even a group of people they didn’t target. These people said “Sakanaction is good”, which made Yamaguchi really happy. Now he’s a regular on the SCHOOL OF LOCK radio program that has many listeners in their teens, he managed to understand more specifically what kind of music teens listen to and what they react to.

- When he made the song (Moment) for SMAP, he actually tried singing it himself and thought, what an good song. But he also thought, it’s not a song that I myself want to sing, it’s embarrassing (**he means it’s embarrassing for someone like himself to sing this kind of song, not that it’s a disgrace of a song). He surprised even himself that he was able to think the song belonged to SMAP even though it was made by himself.

- “Structure” was made from a demo that he made before making “Music”. It was decided that they wanted the first song of the album to be an instrumental and he initially wanted to put “Structure” as that. However, he was told it was a bit weak to be the first song, and he agreed, so they made another instrumental ("INORI").

- Though the first half of the album is very emotional, the second half betrays that with a different kind of feel. It becomes fun to listen to and you can imagine it live.

- He would feel accomplished if by the time they put out a 10th album, the total sales of all releases including singles, DVDs and digital sales, reached 1 million. It would feel like they left some kind of mark on the music scene.

- No matter how many times they’ve appeared on TV, Yamaguchi still kind of dislikes it. Even though he doesn’t want to appear on TV, he sees the significance of it and he wants more people to know about them. And then from there, he wants to think together with the people what kinda of ways there are to listen to music.

- It was intentional that the first half of the album had the more dancey songs and then after “Eiga” it becomes ‘deeper’. “INORI” was actually made slightly faster as it had to flow nicely to “Music”. The first half of the album followed the BPM of “Music” and “Yoru no Odoriko” while the second half followed “Boku to Hana”. They were a bit lost as to where “Boku to Hana” should be put in the track order. Besides “intro”, “INORI”, “Music”, “Structure” and “Asa no Uta”, the rest of the track order was decided by the other members. Yamaguchi would have put “Boku to Hana” after “mellow” instead.

- Yamaguchi loves “Asa no Uta” as it had reduced the number of sounds like never before. Acoustic guitar was used, and Iwadera was just using a shaker (instrument).

- He wants to be able to dance along with his own music. It would be best if at the moment the music starts playing he could go “yay” and start dancing. He wanted to make this sort of music. But he is still unsatisfied and wants to do more, so he wants to immediately make the next piece of work.

- His next plan is to do afrobeat. He’ll fuse the techno feel at current together with afrobeat, and as usual using folk melodies.

- Interviewer asked what the representation of impulse of Yamaguchi Ichiro as an individual was. Yamaguchi replied, because his ears are already in its current state (**deaf in one ear), he wants to be able to directly convey his music. Such as through creating a music TV/radio program, a music TV/radio channel, or his own music label.

- He doesn’t have any intentions of, for example, making a protest song about people throwing bombs and left-wing movements. It is more interesting to him to think about the importance of music.

- Instead of making a balance of what he wants to do as an individual and what he wants to do with the band, he feels Sakanaction’s activities are “things you want to do as five people”, and the individual part is separate. He says “Endless” that was in “DocumentaLy” was overdone. It was solely his own feelings and thoughts in that song and apologizes for it becoming a Sakanaction song.

- Sakanaction will continue to make good things while betraying your expectations in a good way!