#disacode

[mikezweiii]

little innocent crush

(trying yoshitaka amano's style)

[nemessisvoninpirian]

[cates642]

Akira of DISACODE

[pinkvampi]

[sweetie-bitch-chan]

[monochromenosekai]

[jrockerswithoutmakeup]

[igutranslations]

The five-woman rock band exist†trace and Shinjuku LOFT is hosting a monthly threeman event from September to November at Shinjuku LOFT and Shimokitazawa SHELTER! [PART 2/2]

【interview:miko(exist†trace)/Composition: Kasai Kaori (SHINJUKU LOFT)】

Original text: rooftop.cc (2015.09.25)

(Click here for Part One)

Each band’s “Winning Point”

-- Now then, hit me with something that makes you think “my band absolutely cannot be defeated in this!”

Shin: I don’t like that for some reason. I’m not good at that kind of competition.

yurica: He’s a girl!

All: (laugh)

Shin: DISACODE is super chill. I think we can’t be defeated in how chill we are.

-- Do you feel like that’s nice for your fans too?

Shin: Totally. I think people who come to watch us just wanna watch in peace. So it’s a feeling like “let’s just be chill about it~” without getting too tense.

-- Sometimes people say Igu (exist†trace) looks scary, like the only feeling they get while watching from the floor is “don’t mess with us”.

Shin: We’re probably not like that. Actually, for me, I’d like getting that “don’t mess with us” vibe from all of you.

-- (laugh) But it's good that it's lead by all sorts of people. Old, young, man, woman, anybody can be captured.

Shin: That's true. You can watch easily.

-- In a way, we have to persist no matter what. I guess since people say we’re scary (laugh).

Jyou: Right. We’re extremely competitive. I think each member finds commonalities between themselves and whoever we may be performing for that time, and feels sympathy with them. So, even if that person is by themselves they’ll get fired up (laugh). I think they get fired up and then that makes the live really visceral, so we attack it intensely!

Shin: Ooh~ that’s scary.

All: (laugh)

Shin: But we’re persistent too.

yurica: I’ll take the plunge into those stormy waters!

-- Actually, it’s a force you can use.

Jyou: Let’s go!

yurica: Our winning point, huh… For us, it’s probably the pacing of our sound. We have a lot of quick tempo songs, but there’s a lot of really rapid sound chopped up into that. So I think it feels like each song ends quickly, but if it went on any longer the instrumentalists’ limbs would fall off. Although it’s fine for me because I’m the vocalist (laugh).

Shin: Noo, that’s really, absolutely terrible.

yurica: For our instrumentalists, even if the BPM is 200 they’re relentlessly shouting, “We’re gonna transcend that!”

-- For us, if the BPM is 180 everybody complains.

yurica: It’s like, we won’t lose to the tempo either! (laugh).

Shin: That’s kinda amazing.

-- That gets the fans fired up too. Like “this really gets me going!!”

Jyou: The fans probably also get really tired at the end of the day, in a good way.

-- Surely. Fascinate and draw them in with a quick attack.

Jyou: It probably takes away everything from your body and your heart, totally.

-- You completely wear them out (laugh).

Shin: That’s great. It’s fun.

Jyou: Everybody who comes to see you will have to stay overnight in Shinjuku. Like, “I can’t move anymore”.

Shin: That’s good for business in Shinjuku.

Jyou: You’re worried about business doing well in Shinjuku? (laugh)

Shin: A little. There’s nothing better than good business.

yurica: Makes the economy fruitful, huh (laugh).

-- We’ll get something back from the Shinjuku district.

Jyou: They’ll be like, please do that again (laugh).

-- Well, we’ll do it eventually.

Jyou: Could it be? Could this become such a huge event?

-- We’re unintentionally elevating the Shinjuku district (laugh).

Do vocalists fall off the stage a lot!?

-- I just wanted to have fun with this topic, but I think the fans will think it’s interesting too, so I absolutely have to ask. I’d like you to tell me some little secrets about band members who aren’t here right now (laugh). For example, when our band’s guitarist Omi is onstage she’s super aggressive, cool, and handsomely masculine, but when she leaves the stage she gets extremely quiet, unexpectedly loves cute things, and gets pretty cutesy.

Jyou: Would you say she’s kind of an airhead? She’ll do things like leave even though we’re right in the middle of rehearsing for a oneman to buy CC Lemon.

Shin: That’s too much! That would piss me off!

yurica: She’s just naturally like that?

-- Right. It’ll probably be interesting for fans to get a point of view like that, and then think “she’s cool, but that CC Lemon thing…” when they see her. Do you have anything with that kind of “so that’s what these guys are really like!” feeling?

yurica: I probably have the most~.

-- I definitely wanna hear it! (laugh)

yurica: For me, the band member episode I tell the most is, the time when we went to McDonald’s in the winter. One of our members was wearing huge sunglasses and this flashy outfit, and he ordered like, “‘scuse me, I’ll have a hot iced coffee.” The clerk asked, “I’m sorry sir, but did you want it hot or iced?” and he replied “a hot iced coffee” again. So they asked “hot or iced?” again, and while I was thinking “is this supposed to be a prank?”, he yelled “I said I wanted a hot iced coffee!”

All: (laugh)

Shin: That’s scary as hell! It was his own mistake and still… (laugh).

yurica: The shop staff seemed really freaked out, but when they asked “hot or iced?” again he realized, OH, and apologized like, “I’m sorry, I’ll have a hot coffee”. All the members burst out laughing when I told them.

-- (laugh) It was his own fault but when he used that attitude to say it, the clerk probably wanted to cry (laugh).

Shin: I kinda feel like crying now. I thought that was pretty scary, seriously.

All: (laugh)

yurica: I seriously thought he was trying to pull a prank (laugh). He’s normally not a scary person at all.

-- Of course. He’s a mess.

yurica: A total mess. He can’t speak Japanese.

-- He gets weird sometimes? (laugh) Onstage he seems like someone cool and stylish that girls are attracted to.

Jyou: Yeah, he’s got a gorgeous and cool older sister feel onstage, but he’s got airheaded qualities too, huh?

yurica: A lot of messiness and things like that. He ends up doing that.

-- The men’s camp are weak in points like that.

Shin: I’m shocked.

yurica: Are you now-! I wonder if you are (laugh).

Jyou: miko likes it when people are scatterbrained.

-- I’m having so much fun right now!

Shin: So scary!

-- Has anyone ever fallen over at a live or something?

yurica: Ah, I have! The first time we did a live where we departed from the recording was at Club asia, and I fell off the stage on the first song (laugh). The asia stage has a part that juts out on the side, and only the middle is indented, but, when the guitarist and bassist went up to the front like ‘bang!’ I felt like I wanted to go to the front too, and when I went I disappeared (laugh).

Shin: Holy shit!

yurica: We were between songs so it was ok, but (laugh).

Shin: You didn’t get hurt?

yurica: I somehow didn’t get hurt.

Jyou: I’ve fallen off the stage before too (laugh). At (Shibuya) BOXX.

-- That was terrifying. The stage is pretty high there.

Jyou: I disappeared (from the stage). Right in the middle of singing, too. When I went up to the front my foot slipped (laugh).

yurica: I normally just fall off the stage and disappear (laugh).

-- Vocalists fall (off the stage) a lot?

Jyou: Yeah, we fall. But I never fell before or after that one time. Ever since then I’ve been extremely careful. Even if I look down I’m still careful.

yurica: Me too, I do that too.

-- Has AKIRA ever fallen?

Shin: She’s never fallen, but pretty much every time she says her back hurts.

-- Her back hurts!? Is she getting injured at lives?

Shin: I dunno, but every time we have a live she’s always all “my back hurts, my back hurts”.

-- Is it just because she uses intense and aggressive staging? Like, is the the type who always headbangs from the waist? If that’s the case she’s definitely getting injured.

Shin: I have no clue. I dunno, but she says it so much it’s like it’s her catchphrase.

Jyou: Do you have anything like that yourself?

Shin: At this last live I got shoulder pain like I was 40 years old or something. My shoulder hurts right now (laugh).

Jyou: That’s a serious problem for bassists.

Shin: It’s serious, yeah. My shoulder hurts...

-- But don’t you forget all about it during the live?

Shin: I forget during the live, and then afterwards it suddenly comes back.

-- If you’re forgetting about it then it must hurt way too much.

Shin: Yeah, it does.

Jyou: You’ve had times when the vocalist and guitarist or bassist have crashed into each other, right? It hurts for a second, but don’t you forget? Since it’s in the middle of the live.

yurica: I might not be able to feel pain. Even the time I fell didn’t hurt at all.

Jyou: Even if you don’t feel pain when you fall, it’s embarrassing.

yurica: Oh yeah, it was embarrassing!

-- How do you get back to looking cool? (laugh)

yurica: Well for me it seemed like the people in the back didn’t even notice. The people in the front row probably thought “Ah, she fell!”, but the people in the back probably thought I was just crouching down as part of the production.

-- I see. Since it was between songs.

yurica: Right, right, since it was between songs. I wasn’t singing so it was ok.

The investigation of the member’s appearances on the 30th!

-- The stage at LOFT isn’t that high, but there’s kind of a lot of space between the stage and the seats.

Jyou: Speaking of LOFT, I was in a pretty big pinch. We were doing quick outfit changes depending on the songs, and the zipper on my dress broke right before I had to go on.

yurica: Woah~ that’s really panicky~.

-- Huh? That was when you were changing?

Jyou: Right, it just snapped off. The song’s intro had already started, and moreover it’s a short intro. When I was trying to pull it up the zipper pull snapped off (laugh).

Shin: Oh shit!

Jyou: I made it onstage just in time to sing.

yurica: You made it in time~.

Jyou: I did it somehow. It was a big pinch though.

Shin: Definitely a pinch. That’s really rushed.

-- Do you always remember that when you go backstage at LOFT?

Jyou: It come to mind sometimes (laugh). We don’t have any songs that need a quick change now, but there are still times that get my heart racing.

-- Do you all have experience playing at LOFT?

yurica: It’s the first time for me.

Shin: This is a first for me too.

-- Oh, is that so?! It’s super easy to do stuff in LOFT, so it’s nice.

yurica: Since I have the image of it being a well-established place, it gives me a lot of fighting spirit. It’s fun.

-- The seating floor goes out horizontally, and there are pillars there, and when the event starts the people who are there to see other bands hang out around there, but when they gradually get interested and start nodding along from around the pillars, I think “nice!” (laugh).

yurica: I see. I want to make that happen too (laugh). I’ll be trying my best to make them nod along!

Shin: That can be fun too. I’ll try my best too.

-- They’ll go from nodding to being drawn to the front of the stage!

yurica: Oh, I remembered something about our members. The 3 guys from the men’s team are really good friends, so when we go out to eat or something, those 3 aaalways order the same thing. When one of them says, “I’ll have that”, the other 2 are like, “Oh, me too”.

-- What--!!

Shin: That’s suspicious somehow. Is that ok?

yurica: I think it’s fine. ...But, maybe our bassist and guitarist are kinda suspicious? Our bassist is the type to fuss over others so he’s nice to all of us. But, maybe he’s especially nice to our guitarist.

Shin: Is he the “special service” kind of guy?

-- Ah ah ah!?

yurica: Uh-huh!! (laugh)

Jyou: There are a lot of highlights for the 30th.

yurica: Their names, “KENTA” and “Kensuke”, are similar too, so if you say “Ken-chan” to either of them, they both turn around (laugh). And our bassist’s birthday is August 31st, while our guitarist’s is September 2nd. So of course they always spend the day in between together (laugh).

All: What--! Seriously!?

yurica: Uh, I mean together with the whole band.

All: (laugh)

yurica: But maybe it’s camouflaging something (laugh). One time we jokingly called the band “Last Gay Jaguar”.

All: (laugh)

Jyou: Amazing. While the fans are all enduring your speed, they’ll be thinking, “Those 2 are thinking about each other!!” (laugh).

yurica: Well, the 3 of them (laugh). Like, “there’s something else behind this unison!”

-- The Igu members are definitely going to be watching out for this in the changeroom (laugh).

yurica: Try calling out “Ken-chan”. Because they’ll both turn around (laugh).

-- We’ll have to investigate that (laugh). What kind of feeling is there between the 2 men in DISACODE?

Shin: The feeling of sweet, sweet indifference. Maybe we’ve even lived together.

-- Would you say you’re like family? Like brothers?

Shin: That’s pretty much it.

-- I can’t even begin to imagine living together with other band members.

yurica: And men and women together too! I wonder if it’s like 3 guys…? Is AKIRA a boy? I don’t know (laugh).

Shin: I don’t know either. I really don’t know (laugh).

-- It would be nice not to have things like one member oversleeping and being late to the studio.

Shin: That kind of thing is really nice. Everybody gets there in the same car, so even if somebody is sleeping we can all go together.That kind of thing is really fun.

-- And you wouldn’t have to split up and go home after a live is over.

Shin: We don’t.

-- So economical (laugh). Time-saving, too.

yurica: You don’t have house rules or something like that, do you?

Shin: I take everybody’s trash out.

-- The official trash collector? (laugh)

Shin: But I don’t do anything besides that.

-- What are the other 2 responsible for?

Shin: The others will take their own initiative and wash the dishes, or sweep, all kinds of stuff.

-- Doesn’t AKIRA upload a lot of photos of food on Twitter?

Shin: She cooks a lot. I can’t do anything besides taking the trash out.

All: (laugh)

yurica: What about sorting the recycling?

Shin: I can’t do it. I don’t really understand how you’re supposed to do it. I would do the dishes and stuff before, but Marcy said, “The dishes you wash are still dirty, so don’t do it anymore”. I haven’t done them since then.

yurica: I totally get that!

-- Marcy has a lot of girl power, doesn’t he? (laugh)

Shin: He does. Marcy is fussy.

yurica: It seems wonderful. Having one person who is motherly like that is the be~st.

-- (laugh) I’ll be checking out that side of DISACODE in the dressing room too. With both bands, the members are really close, huh? As for us… Well, we’re close too.

Jyou: We’ve momentarily seemed like we were on bad terms before and it was shocking (laugh).

yurica: Your band’s been together forever. I’m thinking, what could have happened? (laugh)

-- We’re all women so if we have something to say, we say it.

yurica: I see. But even so it’s like you guys all have the same higher consciousness.

-- In a sense we’re all really simplistic. Even if we bicker, then next day we’re laughing and everything.

yurica: Fighting over the things you wanna say, is nice.

Jyou: We have a basis in things we all like though.

-- We do. We’ll go on trips together and stuff.

Jyou: We do things with all 5 of us together.

Shin: What, you all go together?! Where do you go?

-- We go to Disneyland and stuff (laugh). We don’t go a lot, but.

yurica: Seriously!? I can’t even think about going on trips with my band’s members.

-- Maybe that’s because our band is all girls. Just recently we all went to karaoke together.

yurica: Seriously!? Not just for an afterparty or something?

Jyou: Not to for an afterparty.

-- We met up specifically to go to karaoke (laugh). Although, we did sing Igu songs.

yurica: I wanna go too (laugh).

-- It was super fun!

Shin: You guys are so close.

-- When you call us “close”, I think “Are we?”, but we do have a good relationship.

yurica: You’re clo~se. If we were going to meet up for something other than rehearsal or a live, we’d probably just go to a live together.

Things you want people to enjoy on this day

-- And finally, as we face the 3man on 9-30, please give the people reading this chat something to be excited about!

Jyou: The title is “Beauty Element”, and while not all of the bands’ members are female, being able to battle with such cool female-fronted bands will make for an excellent first day, so that even if we talk with everyone you’ll be overwhelmed with the thought that “of course they can’t be defeated”. It’s not just an Igu live, not just a LAST MAY JAGUAR live, and not just a DISACODE live, so while you’re enjoying the attitude that all 3 bands’ music is competing in one live, we can all have fun together!

Shin & yurica: Amazing!

Shin: So cool! There’s coolness oozing from your words. I could never say something that cool.

Jyou: Thank you very much. But the two of us were able to talk about it in advance, so it got more fun.

-- It’s more fun not just for the fans, but for the members too.

Jyou: Yeah. At a 3man, or any time you’re working together with somebody, aren’t there times you become good friends with people you met for the first time that day?

yurica: Like an introduction.

Jyou: There have been times when we’ve met someone, got to know them from the beginning, and became friends all within the same day, but to be able to talk like this beforehand… But since we’re also rivals, our spirit of rivalry and battles that we have after becoming friends have a lot of significance. So of course there are things we can do now after becoming friends.

-- It seems like we definitely have mutual respect.

Jyou: Right, right. Of course it's not as if we didn't have any before now, but now more than before. Thank you for today.

All: Thank you very much.

yurica: I don’t really know what I can say after you’ve said something so cool, but (laugh). This is my first time meeting DISACODE, but I know your band from watching you on YouTube and stuff, and your lives are really fun as well. We’ve already played together with exist†trace a few times, and although my band is already a year old it feels a little like this is our first taiban. It’s been 4-5 times? ...Wait, 4 times already!? I feel like we’ve played together a ton (laugh). Because of that, I know we have some shared fans, although I think there will be a lot of DISACODE fans seeing us for the first time, but I think my band is easy to join in with. The places where you raise your hands or sing along are easy to get, and I think it’ll be easy to join in even if you’ve never seen us before, so I want everybody to riot and get refreshed as much as you want. A feeling like “let’s start a riot!”

-- So! good! You’re a rocker, after all.

Shin: As for us, well, we sincerely hope we don’t trouble anyone.

yurica: That’s awfully humble (laugh).

Shin: We’ll work our hardest so that we don’t lower the quality of the event.

Jyou: It’s not like that.

Shin: Since we can’t beat you in terms of tempo, or spirit, I just hope that we can charm you with our “laid-back” feeling by being ourselves. I’ll do my best! This once, I’ll have a fighting attitude.

Jyou: Not at all. You could say these are 2 bands with the same confidence and coolness as exist†trace, so that day will be an intense battle.

yurica: Truly, I hope we can forget about everything, blow it away, and have fun.

-- No, we’re getting extreme fighting spirit from these two girls (Jyou & yurica), and it’s awesome now. But I was thinking a little, and Shin is probably trying to sell himself short so he can impress you, don’t you think?

Jyou: Ah, you'll bring it that day, won't you?

-- Right. DISACODE’s lives are extremely cool, right! They attack hard. So he’s probably trying to make you expect something different out of the live.

Shin: Ah, it feels like I’m doing that? Am I really such a bad guy!? It’s not like that at all! (laugh)

-- Like, I wonder if we can keep up with you at the live (laugh).

Shin: No no no. I’m like some kind of mascot character but AKIRA and Marcy have more of a “hell yeah!!” feeling to them, and I don’t understand it. It’s best if you don’t believe anything I say.

yurica: That’s a summary of this interview! (laugh)

Shin: Yes (laugh). I can only speak for myself.

-- I’m really happy that 2 bands I love said “definitely” to appearing on the 30th, and I want to watch as a fan and also enjoy myself, and furthermore, since this event can be longer than just a normal live I expect that we’ll see a lot of different cool points. It feels like I’ve overcome a lot of hurdles as a member of Igu, and I want us to be so cool doing things our own way, so even though I feel heart-pounding nervousness we’ll be working hard! Also, LOFT has excellent food. Since the fans can eat there, before the live, or after, you can have fun in a way that’s different from other livehouses.

yurica: It’s kinda like a festival!

-- Right, right. When you go there for an afterparty, you can get a huge omurice with your band’s name or the name of the event written on it in ketchup.

Jyou: It really raises your spirits!

yurica & Shin: Really-!!

-- So all day on that day I want both band members and fans to enjoy themselves, and I think it would be great if you could all definitely come check it out!

yurica: Until then we’ll be preparing with all our might!

Jyou: We also will not be defeated.

Shin: Well then, we’ll do our best too!

All: (laugh)

-- I look forward to the earnest competition between these 3 bands!!