This is a track that I made inspired by VOCAROCK. You can totally hear that in the synth, the phrases, the Telecaster cutting riffs. Moreover, I also designed it to be a song that people can dance freely at lives. Seeing people actually sing along and dance to it for real makes me really happy. I'm planning to keep this song in the setlist as long as possible.
As for the lyrics, I wanted everyone who listens, who sings along, to just go crazy with me, so I crammed in as much of the anger I can imagine modern people feel as I possibly could. Of course, I've got plenty of things that genuinely irritate the heck out of me too. Like, if someone said stuff like "your songs sound like ○○!" or "I prefer ○○" to their own close circle, it's totally fine, but if those people said that stuff out loud in a place where anyone can see it, honestly, I will instantly think they just should xxxxxxxx (T/N: text got censored here lol). Lately, it's been really bugging me when other artists get that kind of comment too. Though, I actually kind of enjoyed taking the time to vent all that stuff into my computer. I want to make stuff like this regularly again. Don't think, feel. よろしくお願いします。
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Interview
--- IN_MY_HEAD is a fast pace rock song clocking in at over 170BPM. No doubt, it will be a killer track in live performance, but what was on your mind when you wrote this song?
Na: It was so long ago, so I don't really remember exactly... but I had a ton of stress built up, and there were also those moments when I felt like I just couldn't keep up with my own creativity at all, something like "What the heck am I even doing?" I was so angry at myself, and also angry at everyone around me. I wanted to express that frustration, so I started by cramming as much volume as possible into the DAW (Digital Audio Workstation), and that was how the theme of this song was born.
--- So frustration and anger were the driving forces behind this song. But when it became a song, you played it at lives, and the audience got hyped, clapped along, sang together. Seeing all that, don't you feel like the song has turned into something different?
Na: Yup, that is true. I know this might sound rough, but I made this song with full "drop dead!" vibe, and somewhere along the way it became "you idiots!" vibe instead. I think that contrast is actually interesting. The impression you think people will have when listening to the recording is completely different from the impression people get when you performing it live. There's no way I could have figured that out without actually releasing it and performing it live.
--- That "drop dead!" vibe is something you were carrying alone. But by sharing it with thousands of people at lives turns it into heat. That's part of what makes rock lives feel so good, transforming something that might be dangerous when done alone into a surge of energy. I think those are the moments where you feel glad you became a live artist.
Na: It felt like what could have ended as just a lone introvert's scream actually became an explosion of everyone's frustrations together. I don't think it'll ever be dropped from the setlist, and I believe it's become a song that just has to be there.
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Comment from Deu (PEOPLE1)
Congratulations on the release of your 2nd album "The Abyss"!
My own voice is just so raspy, so every time I listen to your voice I can't help but think "I'm so jealous…!"
It has this transparency yet pleasantly distorted in just the right way. You've got so much of what I lack.
And then came "IN_MY_HEAD."
I remember it just hitting that boyish part of me like "man, that's so sick!"
You can pull off that kind of raw, rough singing style, and yet still able to hit those notes perfectly too?
That's literally my favorite part. Absolute peak. Untouchable.
On top of that, something I've been feeling for a while now but especially lately, your songwriting keeps up with what's modern while refusing to lose what makes it uniquely yours, just pushing forward on its own terms, and I genuinely respect that so much.
The vibe of "yeah, this is properly a 2nd album" comes through loud and clear.
I know this is going to sound a bit patronizing, but as one culture nerd to another, I'm rooting for you with everything I've got. I'm looking forward to the next song and the one after that.
This is the 10th track of the album. The concept behind this one is something like the feeling of" the gap in values and cultures between yourself and those around you".
Back in my student days, there were so many times I felt like I was different from everyone around me. There were countless moments when my favorite things were mocked, and I couldn’t say a word in response. I really hated so much I found myself I spent a lot of time alone, agonizing over it. On top of that, it was a really rough period in a lot of ways for me: there were times when a simple words or offhand opinion from someone would hurt me, or I'd feel "completely alone" even when I was with other people.
However, as an adult, I've met many people who finally accepted me for who I am, and this song was born when I looked back and realized that "I've finally been able to move on huh". In my own roundabout way, I wanted this song to reach out and support anyone who might be going through the same thing right now. The title "Cult." is a play on words, taking "Cult" from both "Culture" and "Occult."
Melody-wise, I created it while imagining a sound that is cloudy yet somehow bright, like a comfortable, gentle darkness. What I found personally challenging was the vocal delivery - since the key isn't particularly high throughout the song, I had to work that much harder to pour the right amount of emotion into it. I was really struggled with when to hold back and when to let my emotion out. I'd be happy if that inner conflict comes through when you listen. I hope Cult. becomes a source of support for everyone who listen to it.
[Shinkai / The Abyss] 君と電波塔の交信 / infection - Booklet
「僕らみんな、電波に侵されいる」 - You, me, everyone, we are all infected by the radio wave.
Self Liner Note
This is the last song I made for this album.
Originally, I planned to make 18 songs, thinking "this track list is looking pretty good" while shaping them up. But no matter what I did, the last song just would not come together. And since this was right up against the deadline, I have strong memories of writing it while desperately trying to figure out what piece was still missing from this album.
The content is kind of sensitive so I can't really get into the specifics.
But to put it simply, I think that modern life is just full of people, myself included, who blame everything on the radio waves and run away from taking responsibility for their own actions.
When I actually think about it, it is genuinely kind of creepy, like something with no shape has just quietly infected all of us.
That said, it's not like anything in me actually changed, but I do think that vague sense of wrongness I've always carried around maybe took on a little bit of shape.
That was the theme I had in mind when I started making this song.
And now that I have finished every single song, I realize that all my songs are blaming something.
People often say that a work reflects the mindset of whoever made it, and honestly, I think that's maybe actually true.
I always felt like I was writing songs with this kind of surface-level thinking, (like I wasn't really going deep) but I’ve was able to recognize, once again, that every single song was created from my true feelings.
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Interview
--- I'm guessing that "infection" was made pretty much at the very end of the album process?
Natori: Yep, this was the last song I made for this album. After finishing the other 17 songs, I was just stuck on what to even do with the final one. Like, should I just make something that sounds like Natori-vibe? or should I try something more experimental? Having finished everything else, all the options were open. Realized that I could do whatever I wanted, so I decided to write this type of song.
--- What do you mean by that?
Natori: Out of all the albums (I love), I'm really drawn to the songs that aren't mainstream, the ones that barely get played. I made 非常口 逃げてみた - NO EMERGENCY DOOR with that exact same feeling. Like, “It’s fine if no one listens to it, just let the people who like it hear it.” I made this song with that same vibe. I figured most people probably wouldn’t like it, but I wanted to convey my personal taste for the weird and gross things, I felt like this piece was necessary at the end of the album, so I started working on it
--- The impression I got listening was this sense of a final push not "this element is missing from the album, let's fill it in," but more like "this is what kind of album this is, so let's make sure it is."
Natori: That is exactly it. Honestly I was at the point where I was like, maybe I can just put in the demo, that's fine. But since I'd actually managed to make something good, it felt like a waste not to make it properly cool too, so I ended up going ahead and giving it a real mix and master. Perhaps, with this vibe, I didn't even need an 18th track. The album was complete at 17. But inside me, something felt missing. I only had one song that felt like a rough sketch just thrown down fast, and that was 非常口 逃げてみた - NO EMERGENCY DOOR. I wanted to do a little more of that scribbling and I wanted people to really see those messy, imperfect moments of mine. It really does feel like I was making it with this whole "one last push" kind of feeling.
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Comment from Eve
There is this addictiveness you can only get from Natori-kun's music and voice.
"infection" is a song where the "coldness" and "warmth" living in that voice coexist in perfect balance, giving it this uniquely distinctive sense of distance.
Once you hear it, it's closer to an infection than anything else.
That, I think, is the magic of Natori-kun's voice.
Incredible!
「もう君のこと、わっかんねえなあ！」 - I no longer have a clue about you!
Self liner notes
I started making this song with something like the madness that comes from being a kid as its theme.
I think that, when we were kids, we didn't really understand the difference between good and bad, or, to put it loosely, we didn't understand what we call "common sense" the way we do now.
And not understanding that is a really scary thing. Sometimes I find myself wondering if maybe (when we were still kids), had something gone wrong by just some small error, something awful could have happened. But surely back then, we weren't thinking about any of that. There were so many things more important than that, such as a ring from someone you liked, made from flowers growing by the roadside, or the promise that came along with it. I think those kinds of things were surely what mattered more.
I took that feeling and turned it into music in my own way, and what came out is this song. As for the arrangement, it's fairly straightforward, but I've added little touches of dissonance here and there in the beats, the rhythm and so on. So I think it turned into something that makes people want to listen over and over again.
When I look back on those childhood memories now, it all feels super dramatic, but from the perspective of who I was back then, I just sort of imagine that every day was probably plain the whole time, and that is how this arrangement turned out. I'd be happy if you'd listen to this for a long, long time. Thank you.
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Interview
--- What inspired you to make this song?
Natori: This song actually has source material behind it. I took inspiration from a manga called "Takopi's Original Sin" to make this song. I was making it with the image of Takopi, the alien, singing to the heroine, Shizuka-chan.
--- I see. The song title is "Propose" but it wasn't written with a proposal or marriage scene in mind.
Natori: It's the same with Takopi and Shizuka-chan, I think that when you're still a kid, you don't have things like a proper understanding of rings, or proper common sense or proper perception. Things that an adult would normally say "stop that" are, for those kids, just fun, right, and beautiful things. When I think back on my own childhood, there were things like that too. What I was picturing with this song is that hurting each other is something you should normally be told to stop, but for those kids, maybe it was something incredibly comfortable. What I was imagining was that even if the world were ending, for those kids it would be something like "huh? what do you mean?". And within that kind of world, while playing in a grassy field, the girl makes a ring out of a weed with a flower on it and hands it over like "here you go." If the world were ending at that moment, that's scary, but I think from those kids' perspective, it must be something incredibly happy. When you were a kid, everything felt so much bigger. It's all imaginary, but I had this thought of, what kind of song would it become if I took that madness that comes from being a kid and made it a theme.
--- So it is a song that can be received as depicting a happy relationship, but what's actually behind that isn't shown.
Natori: Yep. Because that's something the people involved don't need to know. The world on the other side of the shutter. I find that beautiful, or rather, that's the kind of thing I felt when I read "Takopi's Original Sin", so I wanted to express that beauty.
--- In that case, sound-wise too, there's no real reason to make it loud or noisy either.
Natori: There aren't many sounds, so I think it turned out to be a song that feels easy to listen to. But what it's actually saying is pretty heavy. I think one of the amazing things about kids is that they can focus both their sight and hearing on a single point. So I stripped the sounds down as far as they could go and made sure the piano properly stands out. I think the sparseness of the sounds also became an important factor in expressing the world of this song.
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Comment from Haruno
Last spring, while the two of us were walking through Yoyogi Park as the cherry blossoms were falling,
I told him "There's someone I really like right now, and I want to marry them."
I've always remembered that look on his face, when he turned back toward me, looking slightly happy, and said "The next song I'm releasing has the title "Propose".
I think that whenever I come to different crossroads in my life from here on, I'll no doubt remember that face every time.
And even a single line like "What if she hates it?" just makes me amazed at how (delicately) timid this guy can be.... I'd always thought he was a born night owl, but on days when his head goes to that kinds of unhealthy thinking, he should just go to sleep already. (And yet) the lyrics of ‘Propose’ carry the scent of a night that stretches on endlessly.
It's a passionate song, like desperately knocking on the unbridgeable boundary that exists between yourself and someone else, and I like it very much.
And when I think that maybe the reason I'm the one writing this comment is because of that whole story between us, I feel a tender urge to invite him to see the cherry blossoms again this spring.
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