Firstly, I want to get straight to the point, what does the album “ARCHE” mean to the band?

I think it was made responding to intuitive things. Rather than aiming for something in particular we just made it in the flow of that time. We talked together as a band and tried to make it so that the individual things that each of us hold could reach as many people as possible. We decided not to be like “the people who will understand it will understand it” this time. Instead, we decided to make it so that many people would understand it.

I thought that making songs which I get caught up in thinking about in my head wouldn’t suit the mood of the other members. This time we cut out strong progressive rock feelings and the need to use your head while playing. I wanted to think about the album as being something we can feel with our bodies when we perform and can be done easily with our power as it’s center. I also wanted to place importance on what I’d done up until now, atmosphere I can produce now because of my age, plus rhythm, and groove. Up until now I’ve had the habit of going for more sharp and extreme things. I thought it would be best to take a fresh look at that one time.

For example, your recent works have been not only detailed and difficult in performance, but the images you created and and the view of the world you presented was also detailed and deep. So as a work of expression they were amazing right? So after having done that, did you think that you would lose some of the excitement of the expression by playing stuff that’s straight and simple ?

hmmm….. With this album we wanted to place more importance on expressing ourselves, having people feel our work, and conveying things. It’s not just that we’re being like “We are in this world!” “We’re just doing this”

Not like “We’re creating this image!”

Yes. I worried about how people would interpret that. A little bit like opening a door. like let’s express ourselves in a way that’s a bit easier to understand, I was working in that direction. When I made the songs like that I was able to convey many nuances and I thought that if I tried I could do it so I didn’t really worry about that.

Why were you able to think like that?

That’s the kind of atmosphere the five of us have, so it’s like there’s no helping it. So it’s like even if we tried to change that aspect we couldn’t. For example, if someone thought that a song someone came up with was a bit wrong then we’d think we need to change course.

During the production of ARCHE you were playing a lot of older songs, from GAUZE etc.

That’s right.

Did that experience have any effect on ARCHE?

I don’t think it had any effect (laughs) no, well, because we did that kind of tour I feel like the band has become tougher. Like, now we’re able to do many things. I think that our possibilities have expanded.

How was the GAUZE tour?

It was interesting. It felt like it had been a long time. What I wanted most for the tour was for the fans who came to enjoy it. Thankfully everyone seemed to enjoyed it and it was fun for me too.

I think you’ve said it all. Putting it simply, there wasn’t anything particularly like “Look at this!!” just that it would be good enough if it were fun.

Yes.

Listening to your new album too, there were many times I felt that.

But occasionally I worried. Production went surprisingly smoothly and we really made a lot of songs. The other members wouldn’t give me feedback on what I did so I’d worry if it were really okay. (laughs) Thinking things like should I change this? But what if I just make it worse when I change it? I had many conversations like “Is this okay?” “Yes it’s good” “really?”. But I thought that those parts in the album would be interesting. I didn’t make it like “This is perfect!” Rather it’s like I left a lot of gaps in it? I hoped that people would find those areas interesting. Kind of like it’s fallen back down to Earth.

Apart from the changing of Dir en grey, I think that that is also the relationship between Dir en grey and it’s fans and others.

Yes

Because that’s changed Is there any new approaches you want to try?

Hmmmm not really. I want to reduce the feeling that we’re secluding ourselves. I think we should become more well known, there’s lots of people who have only heard our name but they should also know what we’re doing. I worry people get sick of us quickly. I want the people around us to be able to say more and more that we’re cool. I feel like we’d given up on that recently. It’s like I’ve remembered that we need to want more and more different people to listen to us and come to our concerts……. When you get used to things it’s boring.

Hahaha.

We’re a band in which if we go in one direction then we will want to go in another direction. We can’t stay in one place. Although we don’t go on to things radically different. If you go back four albums, every album was very very different, but recently rather than do that I think that we’ve been pushing forward to a more narrowed down place. I thought it would be bad if we didn’t challenge ourselves so that more people would think “Dir en grey is interesting!” “They also do this kind of thing!”. So there was a sense of danger. Like if we just stayed how we are then there would be no stimulus in the band. So I thought that firstly I needed to delete myself one time. So I’m putting aside what comes out of me. I did many things like starting to make a song based on a phrase with a completely different atmosphere from normal. But in the end they still ended up becoming songs very much with my personal flavour. (laughs) That’s how it was creating this album.

*This sentence sounds so weird to me idk, original Japanese is:

そのときどきの直感と言いながら、１つの、それこそ「根源」と名付けられるくらい、シンプルなベクトルを持っているアルバムだと思うんですが。



I’m sorry this has taken me sooo long to post!!! I will doing the others quicker :) And sorry for awkward sounding English at times, it can be so hard to make it sound nice ;o;

