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➤The whole interview is divided into 8 topics, and the translation is divided into 4 parts. This is the second part, including the 3rd and 4th topics.
※The five members were interviewed separately and then edited into a video, so the words spoken by each of them are not necessarily coherent.
※[ ] are timemarks.
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{tocify} $title={Table of Contents}
03. Performance [13:23]
- - About Stage Performance [13:43]
Kyo：If I don’t want to stay on stage, I won’t sing even in LIVE. When we’re on tour, I don’t do things like think about how the song should be performed, or think that it feels good to sing like this. All in all, I just express myself 100% freely at that moment.
Toshiya：You must be honest with yourself. There are bound to be ups and downs in the human condition, and I can’t do the so-called perfect performance. If it’s the same performance every time, there would be no value for me to exist. However, I will do my best to maximize my performance on that day, and I want to be honest with myself on that point.
Die：For the band, LIVE is everything, and I joined the band because I wanted to be on stage. It’s like the space of the live house has become a part of everyday life. Standing on stage, I feel fresher and nervous than before, and I want to take it more seriously.
Shinya：I hope it will be enjoyable for everyone to watch. I will pay special attention to the hand part and think about how to move.
Kaoru：It should be a place where you can come face to face with yourself. Both my good self and my bad self will appear on stage. From that point of view, it’s like a place where I can face myself.
- - The Unforgettable Stage [16:28]
Kyo：Now I don’t remember most of what happened in LIVE. However, I still remember when I was injured, when I couldn’t hear, and when my voice became hoarse and I couldn’t speak.
Die：The LIVE that I am satisfied with. It’s not just this kind of time, but those LIVE that I think I’m useless, or I feel regretful, I will remember especially clearly.
Kyo：Although I could barely sing in LIVE at that time, it was more fulfilling for me than regular LIVE, and I found it very interesting. I could try a lot of things, like what I could do in such a situation in exchange for something. It’s fun when you have no choice and have to find a way to break out of a difficult situation.
Kyo：I am the type of person who remembers bad memories more clearly than good things. The same goes for food. Once you’ve eaten something delicious, you want to eat it again, but when it’s hard to eat, it’s particularly impressive. I’ve eaten curry with no taste. It smells like curry, but tastes like no taste. It’s like Coca-Cola Zero Sugar, that kind of impression and LIVE is the same reason, right? No…Taste… Although it smells like curry. LIVE also feels the same way, right? (laughs)
(*I love how Kyo takes food as a metaphor😆)
Kyo：If you keep thinking about a good LIVE, you will want to aim for that. That’s too boring, so it’s better to not remember it and explore it. It’s nice not to have to do the same thing over and over again.
- - Moment of State Switching [19:11]
Toshiya：Sou desu ne…when I walk to the side of the stage, there is a clear sense of switching.
Die：Not necessarily, depending on the situation that day, there was a lot of confusion. I change my state when I walk up to the stage and get ready to gather and leave the stage.
Kaoru：I will be nervous. I’ll be nervous 100 times when there are 100 LIVEs, and I’ll still be nervous at the 101st show. Well, I’m very nervous.
Shinya：I switched states when I sat in front of the drum kit and hit the first drum. Before I played the drums, I was just a normal person on stage, and I was still a normal person when I sat in front of the drum kit.
(Staff: Isn’t that a little late?)
Shinya：Yeah, it was a little late. I was just a normal person when I threw the drumsticks at the end of the last beat.
Kyo：I walked out when the SE was playing, and nothing changed 10 seconds before the show started. At the extreme, I can sleep until 5 seconds before the start of the show. I don’t rehearse much, but the lighting and sound technician will be very troubled if I’m not there. If I don’t need to rehearse, I’ll just go over 5 seconds before the show.
Kyo：In fact, I would like to tie a live house in Tokyo, DIR EN GREY will only hold LIVE there, I will move in advance and walk in the live house 5 seconds before the start of the show, everyone will also go in, right? When the SE starts, call me at my home and I’ll walk over there. This is my biggest dream.
🤣🤣
- - Stand on the Stage [22:13]
Die：I can say that all my efforts are to perform on stage, that’s all I have. It’s not like I can go on stage casually, after all, I’m also a person with limits.
Toshiya：When I originally planned to form a band, I did it because I wanted to make music, not because I wanted to play at LIVE, which I did at first. If you’re making music because you want to play LIVE, you’re just putting the most effort into the LIVE thing, right?
Kyo：I used to make music because I wanted to do a live show. Now there is almost no LIVE, although I have thought about it a lot… If only there could be LIVE, but if not, well, well… That’s it.
Shinya：I think the stage is the place where people can get to know more than the album, and other things that are expressed through sound.
Kaoru：To be honest, compared to the past, I’m much happier with the LIVE now, and I really want to do it. I didn’t feel this way before. Originally, I used to go on stage naturally and easily, perform and then finish, and that was probably the best. But gradually, I feel more and more the weight of each LIVE, “I have to do something to show everyone”, that feeling is getting stronger and stronger.
Kaoru：To me, if I lost the stage, I would have nothing. It’s very important, but it’s also hard. In that sense, it’s like life*.
(*Note:人生／jinsei)
...
04. Music Clip [25:10]
- - The process of producing Music Clip [25:32]
Kyo：Basically, Kondo-san* is in charge of our PVs, and we discussed with the director, combining the imagery of the lyrics and the director’s ideas before shooting.
(*Note: Kondo-san = Kondo Hiroyuki，近藤廣行)
Die：The director would filter out some of the imagery, and sometimes the imagery that was taken out would reappear, and we would talk about it while we continued to shoot. On the contrary, those that we haven’t thought about, those that we can’t imagine may be more interesting. Things that we have never seen or tried may often be selected and photographed from this aspect.
Kaoru：But there are also times when we can’t express ourselves, such as “red (赤)” or “flowing images.” Sometimes even we don’t understand very well. If an idea pops up, we will exchange ideas with each other.
Toshiya：Although we created it in the first place, the scope of the project was gradually expanded to achieve that effect, and it would not have been possible without the staff associated with DIR EN GREY. To put it further, they are the ones who made DIR EN GREY what it is now.
Shinya：Almost 99.9% of the music-related parts were produced by the members. However, since the video is expressed through the director, it is important to have a sense of trust between the members and the director.
- - Differences between “Video” and “Music” Expressions [28:02]
Kaoru：The feeling of moving outward from the foundation of the music is strong, as if something had come out of it. Of course, we’re expressing what we want to express, but the video is a little different from what we do. It can be used as a second way of expressing music, but I don’t think it’s going to be the same.
Die：Sometimes the video is not always directly related to the lyrics of the song. There are times when the result is completely different from what we thought it would be, and the perspective of the music changes accordingly. But the most important part is usually hidden deep in the music, and that’s why we make videos.
Toshiya：Just the video alone can make people feel that “pain”. And the sound of the music will impact the hearing and make people feel the pain as well, that’s what I think. Without these two things, it would be impossible to build the worldview of DIR EN GREY. I want to try something that no one has done yet.
- - Things want to Convey through Video [29:59]
Shinya：I think it’s about expressing the deep content of the music, the worldview of the lyrics, and so on.
Kaoru：Sometimes it’s the theme of the song itself, sometimes not always. After all, it’s useless to look at painful images every time. In each moment, something interesting, something that is interesting to us, we just make something that we want to express.
Die：So I think it’s good to have more than one music video. There can be other versions, so that the imagination can be expanded.
Kyo：Just putting music and lyrics in a way that’s easier to understand, I don’t have anything to convey myself… I don’t think it’s meaningful if it doesn’t seem stimulating.
Toshiya：There is no answer to what I/we want to convey. There are 10 different ideas for 10 people, so just find your own answer.
(To be continued...)
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