#skream

Jin, who entered the internet culture of the 2010’s as a revolutionary due to being the creator of the multi-media project “Kagerou Project”, has finally finished making his first mini-album, “Allegories”, in which he sings all the songs himself. Four years have passed since the release of “Mekakucity Reload”, his third album for Kagerou Project, in 2018. This work, which has set a new frontier for Jin – who has been releasing several music pieces sung by VOCALOID throughout these ten years since the start of his activities – is a fresh one that realistically reflects his way of life and half of his lifetime. What kind of feelings has Jin put into this work, in which he has sharpened his songs and melodies more than ever with the theme “folk song” in mind, and what is he contemplating for the future? We have asked him about it.

Raw||Index || Translated on commission!

“The ‘Kagerou Project’ series is a big project, but ‘Gojitsudan’ felt detached from it, as if it were something that I was doing separately.”

——At last, Jin-san, you have finished a work where you sing all the songs yourself.

Came out pretty quick, huh?

——Ah, is that so?

Making it in itself was difficult. I was able to do all I could, so to say. I feel that it materialized in a natural way.

——But Jin-san, haven’t you been making countless other works where you sing the songs yourself until now?I think you had the opportunity to step into that territory in this meantime, so what was the cue for you to do it only now?

For the last ten years until I arrived to this point, I’ve been doing things like providing music to other artists, projects using VOCALOID and writing. I produced a music piece for AlphaPolis’s TV commercial last July.

——“Gojitsudan”, right?

Yes. AlphaPolis is also an e-book site, where users can post their own works. I was commissioned to make a theme song for it. While thinking, “Who’s gonna sing that?”, I firstly sent them the song that I pictured. I made it as a provisional piece that went like “lalala”, and apparently, it was good. The people around me kept saying, “Why don’t you try to sing it yourself?” and things like that. But if I were to do so, the commissioners would be like, “Please let us think about it”, right?

——Yes. It turns into something more personal.

Exactly. Therefore, I decided to dig deeper into the lyrics while making them. I wanted to treasure the feeling of “Why is it again that I’m doing this as a writer?” when writing. I soon finished it. It’s something I’ve thought about thoroughly, but I didn’t have to remake it. Everyone from the staff accepted it, and everyone that had an involvement with my life, such as my mother and little sister, also told me that it was good.

——Jin-san, do you have your family listen to your compositions every time you finish them?

Whenever I send them to my sister, it leaks to my parents (laughs). I ended up singing it myself because I had this kind of support from them as well. I’ve wanted to create things in an elaborate way up until now, so to say – what I wished to do was to solidly create a miniature garden and think about what I wanted to put in it.

——A songwriting that carefully built up your world view.

That’s right. Which is why I rarely did anything like bringing out my feelings just the way they were. I used to think that it didn’t fit me. As you said, I had until now been receiving countless proposals to try singing the songs myself, but it just didn’t happen. Not out of selfishness from not wanting to sing them, but rather because the flow of things didn’t mesh.

——So there was simply no timing for it?

Right, right, right. This time, in contrast, everything meshed. I feel like I made each song one after another from that point onward. Then, when I was asked what kind of album it was going to be, I was especially pleased with myself when writing “Gojitsudan”. As if I’d written it in a small room. “Kagerou Project” feels like a really big project, but I got hooked into the sensation that I was doing something separate, which strayed away from it. This is like a debut work even though it’s been eleven years. I made it as if I knew that it was going to be like this from the very start.

——Didn’t you originally want to make a sequel of Kagerou Project as your next move after the release of the album “Mekakushi Reload” back in 2018?

Well, I want to keep working on Kagerou Project from now on too. However, due to it becoming a series that was simply too big, it went far beyond a category where I could navigate it as an artist. It’s a project that I write books, make music and set instructions for, but a lot of people take part in it. While I was thinking that I had to find a way to navigate it, I made “Gojitsudan”, so I felt like it had straight up spurted out of KagePro. I should work on Kagerou Project when I want to work on it. After all, it isn’t the only thing I’m doing. I’ve started to think that it would be great if I could create something with new value beyond this kind of experience.

——Jin-san, did you have the desire to sing the songs yourself one day?

As expected, it’d come and go. Whenever I suddenly had one-sided ideas like “I can’t have other people sing this” or “it’d kill this song if it were sung by a VOCALOID”, I’d conclude that I had no other option but sing them myself. Like, I’m still required to write… be it novels or screenplays, and they themselves are forms of expression as well. It’s about writing to my heart’s contentment about my own detailed nuances, to an extent where it’s comparable to singing, so there isn’t much of a boundary for it.

——So “singing” and “writing” entail similar outputs.

Right, right. If I were to say it, I have the impression that singings is what feels closer to writing, in comparison to composing songs. That was also a reason why I wanted to put more effort into writing. But this time, once I decided, “I’ll be the one to sing”, I produced the songs with a strong desire to make them into something that I can be proud of.

——How did you face your songs?

I do play-and-talk because I quite enjoy it. Also, livestreaming. I started to feel a special meaning in playing the acoustic guitar, particularly in the last five years or so. In the past, my stance was to make music with VOCALOID using the electric guitar. I’ve always liked rock bands. But when I started wondering, “Why is it that the acoustic guitar feels just right for me now?”, I realized something. That this collection of short stories called “Allegories” is folk rock to me. I think folk song is a cursed music genre that has a lot of soul in it. Real life ends up showing in it. Nakajima Miyuki-san and other such people are just like that. For example, “Kanashikute Yarikirenai” (by The Folk Crusaders). I was born in the countryside of Hokkaido, so…

——In Rishiri Island, right?

Yes. I used to listen to folk there, and I thought it was a terrible performance. The sound can’t compare to the likes of metal or hard rock but the curse levels are super high. Lately, when I listened to Tulip and other such songs again, there was a moment when I got a click on the style and melody of acoustic. Like, “Ah, I wanna do folk”. What matters isn’t just playing an acoustic guitar or playing with three fingers, but rather what you choose from the lyrics and what you’re screaming about. In that sense, I think “Allegories” has managed to get to the point of what I deem as folk.

——So that is why “Allegories” is centered around the idea of ​​folk, yet it does not have the antique-ness of the so-called “Showa folk” in terms of sound and also contains songs with various approaches.

I don’t think of folk as old-fashioned in itself, after all. It’s something that indicates people’s own melodies as human beings, so to say. Katou Tokiko-san’s songs about living life your own way are like that too.

——After “Gojitsudan”, you announced the song called “GURU”, which is not included in the main part of “Allegories”. I thought that this song in particular seems to have a strong folk rock mindset.

“Gojitsudan” was the trigger and it made my desire to produce stuff in a certain way – releasing things as soon as I finished them – start coming to life. Like, “Until now, I’d only been doing productions where I polished them into perfection, but from this point on, what I create today will be released tomorrow”. I made “GURU” into this kind of song. That one is folk too. The lyrics are crazy, though. Personally, I intended to make literary art with it. Like, I write, “make a FOOL out people and they make a FOOL out of you” in roman letters.

——The humor of writing a standard word in roman letters on purpose, is that it?

Yes, and I use kaomoji for the parts of the B-melody where I say nothing but “o-e-o” (it says “(o-e-o) (o-e-o) (o-e-o)” in the lyrics card). For me, this was a verse that I wanted to turn into literary art in video culture.

——It seems this song was produced using the new voice synthesis software “KAFU”, so how was that?

I used Hatsune Miku a lot in my previous album, but I don’t particularly have a “this is the only thing I’ll ever use” kind of obsession with it. I simply thought that KAFU was good. Being able to do all kinds of challenges was fun. It came closer to the image I have in my head when I sang on my own, rather than with the software that I used in the past. Like trying my hand at using coined words that are hard to catch from the very beginning of the song – it goes well up to the part where the singing gets intense but isn’t necessarily a rap. I think that was possible because I was using KAFU.

——The limited edition of Animate’s complete production volume also includes the song “GURU”, sung by you, Jin-san – meaning it was a song that could have been included in the main part of the album, so is there any reason why you purposefully removed it?

It’s just that I finished “GURU” after I was already mostly done with the album’s songs. In order, my most recent one is “Kiero” and before that is “GURU”. If you think of it that way, “Kiero” is a song that feels different, even in this album.

——Jin-san, your productions so far have granted a kind of persona-like existence to VOCALOID and created an intricate view of the world. But now, you are singing by yourself about something that is closer to your own way of life. Is that not a rupture in your musical life? Or do you regard it as a continuum?

To me, it’s the same, unchanged thing. For example, there is a certain philosophy that I aimed for with “Allegories”, but at the same time, as expected, there is a part of me who can think of this world as the world of Kagerou Project. How can I put it? The theme of the song “FREAKS” is something like “dinosaurs idolizing the sun”. I really like that one.

——You sing, “I wanna be like ‘that popular guy I admire, the one who’s like the Sun’”, after all.

Exactly. As for why I like this song, it’s because it’s a song that sings about “going beyond this ever-shining lie” while getting ready to tell lies. After writing this song, what I wanted to say in this album was, “So there were other things/that I forgot to write about?” through “Gojitsudan”.

——What do you mean?

This “FREAKS” thing is how I feel as a creator. I’ve been doing what I do because I keep thinking that I want to be the Sun, but I also wonder if I’m nothing but an ugly monster riding on a ball in a freak show. It’s also a song where I think, “Aah, I can’t become the Sun”. The “ever-shining lie” in the lyrics refers to the Sun. It says that there’s no way such an invincible Sun can exist in this world. And it’s also a song where there’s a realization that someone is seriously shining through telling lies. It’s exactly because I was able to write all about this feeling that I put it into this album. And for me, Kagerou Project is something like that. An “ever-shining lie”. Therefore, I’m aiming for the same thing with Kagerou Project, while leaving it in a position that completely opposes my own. One doesn’t contradict the other. I’ve said something a bit confusing, but if you ask me, “Is it a continuum?”, I say that both are things that come naturally out of me. Nothing has been lost, nor has anything changed. That’s why, by making “Allegories”, I’ve come to believe even more strongly that Kagerou Project is pretty good.

——Jin-san, it feels like your options for expressing yourself have increased.

Right. To sing about something like this, you just have to choose it. This time, I’m the one singing. I feel that I might be able to convey something by doing that.

——Did you have a desire to express something like, for example, your pain or conflicts as a creator through this whole album?

Indeed, now that you asked, I think that might be an aspect of it. This album has an outlandish structure. There is a “writer” that shows up in “Gojitsudan”, and I imagine this person as the one who writes the five subsequent short stories, “Kiero”, “ZIGI”, “MERMAID”, “VANGUARD” and “FREAKS”. However, he isn’t a persona, but rather an exact copy of me, in a sense. So the theme about creation is present, but rather than being about my conflicts as a creator, I feel that I made these songs to be more like, “This is how music is born, this is how you make it”.

——Aah, I see.

With “Kiero”, I portray feelings like wanting to die and deciding to commit suicide. But if you search “I want to die” on the internet, you get telephone numbers of counseling centers and whatnot, right? When that happens, you can’t bring yourself to die. So I asked myself why I couldn’t die. When I wondered about who was stopping me, I figured that it must be myself, for sure. “Kiero” is a song with that kind of theme. It’s the feeling of, “How many variations of myself have I killed in order to live through today? I’m alive because I’ve been killing my thoughts, be them kind or painful. Just what is this exactly? What is life?”, which is so sad that you can’t stand it. Like, “Sorry for not being able to be nice to myself” – that kind of conflict.

——I totally get it.

Also, the song “VANGUARD” is something I wrote when a friend of mine passed away. Back then, everyone on the internet was saying things like, “It was too soon for you to go”, “Why did you have to die? I’m so sad” and, “I loved the things you created”, which grossed me out a lot. Like, “Why didn’t you tell them that when they were alive?”

——So that person was also a creator, huh?

That’s right. I think those people should have told them “I like your stuff” when they were still alive. Those people should’ve attended their live concerts. They didn’t really go. So why do they try to make a drama out of it? That’s what I was feeling when I wrote this song. I think that’s what music is. That we should sing, “Isn’t this what everyone is actually thinking?”. Maybe it’s a work in order to confirm, “Am I the only one who thinks this way?”. In that sense, “Allegories” contains songs that bring me back to the feelings I had when I was at the starting point of my music career. So rather than it being about the life of a writer, it’s about my own life. A song that I wrote because no one talks about this. I also made it while thinking, “Everyone, you don’t have to write love songs anymore”. Like, “There are too many love songs” (laughs).

——While “VANGUARD” is a song that has these feelings in its roots, lyrics-wise, it is like a story that begins with the line, “I heard that you had passed, so I set off on a journey”.

Yep. This a song about going to a funeral. Long ago, I watched a documentary about the Ger people. The whole tribe goes to the funerals of those who married off to somewhere far away. Super far. They head off carrying things like household belongings together in such a frigid cold that it might kill them. Funerals are that important to them. That’s what became my motif.

——So that is why the sound also has an exotic finishing touch.

Exactly.

——Eijun-san (Suganami Eijun/THE BACK HORN/guitarist) is credited as the arranger. I think he is indispensable to talking about your roots, Jin-san, so under what circumstances did you ask him for it?

I’m a big fan of his. Without a doubt, Eijun-san is the world’s number one rock star. A while ago, we made the song “Into the blue’s” from the anime “LISTENERS” together, and didn’t it have such a “rock” sound? He’s truly a garage rock guitarist, but I could really feel his sharpness for making tracks. I wanted him to lend his strength to my melody, and that was how I asked him.

——How did the production with Eijun-san go?

I handed him the demo song and things progressed as we had exchanges that went like, “Can you do it like this?”. Whenever I conveyed my own image of it to him, Eijun-san would say, “I totally get you; it’s a good song”. He picked up on what I was thinking and turned it into sound, I believe. This was a discovery on the fact that I don’t have any weird particularities when making stuff on my own, which also applies to when I request for arrangements like this one, because what I have to do is crystal-clear to me. Like, in the end, what matters most is the melody and lyrics.

——Jin-san, it looks like you will invest yourself even more into your songs next time.

That’s right. I think there’s this moment when a good melody turns into a good song. It’s not guaranteed that a sad melody is the way to go when you’re sad. It’s sadder and more unbearable when the melody is cheerful in spite of your sadness. That’s what makes people tear up. I have the feeling that this is the way I’m going to be investing myself into my songs, like, “This is what songs are”.

——Just now, you said, “There are too many love songs (out there)”, but if we were to categorize “MERMAID”, I thought it would be a love song.

Ah, right. This is a song about an airplane heading off to a honeymoon and then crashing into the sea. It’s a song in which the body steadily rots, becomes worn-out, melts away and turns into water. As for why I wrote this song, it’s that when the feelings that lovers, married couples, friends, etc. have for each other are at their peak, they gradually begin to see the negative points of one another, so the feelings wane off. I really don’t like that. “Then wouldn’t you be at your happiest when you’re traveling to your honeymoon or when you’re at the height of it?” – that’s what I attempted to try with this song. If I were to say it, rather than thoughts, I wanted to leave behind a scenery with this song. I made it wanting to create a short movie for it, so I used a different technique in comparison to the other songs.

——What are your thoughts on giving this work the title “Allegories”?

“Allegories” means “a collection of parables”. When it came to me that this work consists of drastic songs, I felt like giving it a simple title. It was pieced together with passion, but it’s similar to a book in that it’s closed up in plastic wrap. So I wanted to pick a word that didn’t have much feeling in it. For example, there are explanatory titles such as “Fairy Tales from Around the World”, but if you open the book and look inside, it contains stories like an old man being devoured by an old lady, or a witch being cooked up in a cauldron, or having rocks stuffed into her stomach and getting pushed down a river as revenge. I wanted a title with that kind of image. Therefore, the next one will be “Allegories 2” (laughs).

——Looking forward to it. Finally, Jin-san, you celebrated the tenth anniversary of your career last year, so after “Allegories”, what kind of activities are you thinking of doing?

I want to hurry and make my next work. In particular, I want to release something while I still haven’t forgotten the sensations from when I was making “GURU” and “Kiero”. I’m planning on keeping up this thing of making and uploading one song per month for a year or so. Either using VOCALOID or singing them myself. “If I end up producing a full album with them, how it’ll turn out?” is what I think.

——Being excited about things you want to do even after celebrating your tenth anniversary is quite fortunate.

I don’t feel drained at all. Ah, that’s right; there was one important thing. When I was writing the novels while using VOCALOID with a rather rocky tone, many people told me things like, “A musician shouldn’t be writing novels”. Or, “He’s writing novels because he doesn’t have confidence in his music”. The frustration of never being acknowledged was present in my early twenties. But now, I like being influenced by rock, although I don’t want to be a rock musician. I don’t want it to be the kind of rock that has long lost its substance. Then what will it be? I want to make stuff in order to determine that. Therefore, I want to continue writing books as well. I want to properly write my novels and create a work that will last in this culture.