“GAUZE”



If I remember correctly it was in 1999 in a studio in Los Angeles where I first heard this word as a contender for the album title. Thinking about how long it’s taken us to name other albums, I think that we named GAUZE at a very early stage.



I could not have imagined that seven years later I would be returning to Los Angeles to play live.



I wonder how long it’s been since I listened to this album from start to finish. Since I only listen to old songs when we decide we’re going to play them on tour.



So since we will do the GAUZE tour for the first time in fifteen years I listened to all of GAUZE. I’m going to write about what I thought, felt and remembered from listening to each song. If I wait until the next issue I will probably have completely forgotten. (laughs)



“GAUZE -mode of adam-”



Listening to this a shiver runs down me and I become excited.

While recording the guitar for it I remember playing my Em cord loudly then Kaoru who was sitting in front of me messed with my guitar strings and made noises.



“Schwein no isu”



Geist Seelee Wille Zelle

In order to record those four words being shouted we got many bandmen and friends to join in the recording.

Listening to it now I felt like it was a message to us who had just debuted to fire us up to work hard.

The shouts contain so much raw spirit. It’s the best.



“yurameki”



Right before we were about to record this I was still troubled over my guitar phrase and couldn’t decide on it. But then Kyo casually said to me “What about like this” and it loosened my mind which had become rigid. I realized that doing something simpler would be okay and I was able to face toward the song naturally .



A point of this song for me is the B melody.



“raison detre”



Yeeep, for this song I just think of the music video. (laughs)



“304 goshitsu hakushi no sakura”



When I was in a taxi the drum phrase for the intro and the flow of the chord randomly came to me and I thought that when I got home I needed to give shape to it, so upon returning home I quickly began work on it.

The melody and chord came to me quickly and I was able to see the shape of the song at a quite early stage.



By the way, The room number of the first apartment I rented when I moved from Mie to Osaka was 304.



And also when I was living in that apartment around 3am in the morning one night I woke up to the fire alarm going off. Thinking it was just some prank I checked outside anyway and when I opened my front door white smoke came billowing in.

Then I quickly ran away.

The fire was in the apartment right below mine so the stuff I had been storing on my balcony all turned completely black.



“Cage”



We went to Los Angeles for somewhere between 10 to 14 days to record this song but the direction of the song was changed again and again and time passed without us being able to decide on the arrangement… In the end a concert in Japan was organized and so we returned home. Then one week later we returned to Los Angeles and finally began recording.

I wonder how much it cost to produce this one single. It’s terrifying…



“Tsumi to batsu”



I think the music video was filmed in an abandoned building in yuubari in Hokkaido.

But even though it was Hokkaido it was mid summer and really fucking hot in my full body pvc costume and we shot at a lot of locations.

Considering we weren’t shooting battle scenes. (laughs)



“Mazohyst of decadence”



Listening to it for the first time in a while I felt a strange temperature. Its a bit cool (temperature) and has a lukewarmness to it.

I think this music video which the director Kindo made is wonderful.



“yokan”



The flow from Mazohyst to this song. You wouldn’t think it’s the same band (laughs)



The cord progression and melody came to me quickly and I was able to complete it quickly. But in the first demo the melody of the hook was different.

I re-made it thinking it shouldn’t have a smooth flow, but instead be more impactful.



An image of white costumes. When we appeared on a music tv show a certain female singer said about the costumes “How are they..”



“MASK”



I strongly remember bringing a large crane to Amagasaki live square, a small live house in Hyogo with probably a capacity of 250 people to film the music video. Amagasaki live square was the home ground for the first band I joined when I moved to Osaka and we played there every month.

At one time we played at the same event there as Kaoru’s band at the time, and I remember we had our first conversation there, while packing everything away after the concert. It was just a casual conversation but I still remember it now.

But before that actually apparently I played at the same event as Shinya’s band at the time, but it seems that we missed each other and we both have no recollection of it…



“ZAN”



There’s too many stories with this song… from recording, playing it live, the PV, music station.. etc

Actually, I want to use this space to apologize about something. At the time when we’d play this song as lives for 30 or 40 minutes, and I’d remove my hands from the guitar and not play enough, instead just stirring up the crowd. I’m sorry for getting angry and saying after the concert that that in the middle of it the rythym was lost.

You guys are amazing for clapping for so long.



“Akuro no oka”



I thought again that this was the right song to be last on the album. For some reason the moment after the acoustic guitar intro when Shinya’s fill comes in and the band’s sound comes together I became teary. At that moment I’m brought back to that time, and it’s like the fragments of my memory play back to me in a slideshow.

At that time every day was unbelievably busy, and everything was new for us so I get the feeling it all went by incredibly fast.

They were days in which without even knowing left from right we just have to keep going forward.

When I think about it now, it was very fun.



I wonder as time passes if even those memories will slowly fade away?



[GAUZE -mode of eve]



And again, to Adam…?



In regards to the performance aspect, being gentle, (laughs) I felt like it’s an album full of the very pure great energy of some young people who weren’t bound by (or didn’t have?) common sense.

An album that is amusement park-like, exciting all five senses.



Our musicianship has changed from the past, and certainly the form of our music has changed drastically, but listening to this album I feel like the roots and the true nature of our music is still the same.



August 2014. The first Dir en grey mid-summer tour in a while.



Look forward to it.



See you soon.



