PENICILLIN, with
Ni~ya as a guest performer, was finally realized during the "stylish wave '07 MATRIX", which was held at Shibuya AX on November 28th. On that stage, all four members played together, appearing very happy, as though this lineup was permanent for the band. In this interview we find out how
HAKUEI,
CHISATO and
O-JIRO received
Ni~ya, who covered songs by
PENICILLIN when he was a student, and what kind of chemical reaction happened when they played together on stage. This is the post-live interview, including many inside stories!!
First of all, I'll ask you about the rehearsal. How was your first rehearsal in a studio?
Ni~ya: I was so nervous. I was told by
O-JIRO, "You look stiff." I thought, "Oh no! He knows!" (smile)
CHISATO:
O-JIRO likes to say such things to people who tense up. Once, when we played a session with some people, there was a man who was wound up so much that he looked at code scores really desperately, so he said to him, "Tear them up and throw them away!" (laugh) But he tried to communicate with you,
Ni~ya, in his own way.
Ni~ya: I know. He gave me a sign with his eyes every time we played, to let me know what to do.
During the live, O-JIRO kept watching Ni~ya all the time while hitting the drums?.
CHISATO: He doesn't look at me even though I turn back to look at him so many times. (laugh)
Ni~ya: I'm not looked at in
Nightmare because
RUKA doesn't look forward. (smile) So I was very happy that
O-JIRO looked at me like, "This kind of communication is good and matches with the rhythm, right?"
CHISATO: Ahahaha. (laugh) Anyway,
Ni~ya is very popular among our members and, when we played
the WORLD, I thought the roots of
Nightmare and
PENICILLIN might be similar. There are some artists with whom my formation of codes and my way of timing doesn't work well. Even so, it's still interesting, but I can't help feeling that
Nightmare almost feels like they are family as he picked up our codes and timing so well.
Maybe also because the WORLD
was made by RUKA? Both RUKA and PENICILLIN have punk roots.
CHISATO: Yes, I think so.
Ni~ya: Well, I saw
PENICILLIN lives in September and October, and I thought the flow and the tension was like
Nightmare's somehow.
CHISATO: That's why you could understand when I said "Let's mix here," and you answered, "So just like this?" You know, to explain that to musicians of a totally different field is very hard. Don't you think so?
Ni~ya: I think so.
CHISATO: To play with people who have similar feelings to me is better because it's so much faster.
Also, how you play on stage is similar too. (laugh)
Ni~ya: Our band is far worse than them. (smile)
CHISATO: No, we were generally awful. In our generation, most bands didn't do MCs. But we, the guitarist and the bassist, talked for about 30 minutes. (laugh) But I could really sympathize with that. I think there are many bands who really constrict what they are and that is it, no room for anything else. But we thought it was uninteresting to be like that and we tried to be more and more different. I felt the same with
Nightmare.
Ni~ya: You know, nobody has ever said that before, but I think so too.
CHISATO: Of course the music is cool, which is more important than anything, but it's fun to play with people who enjoy playing new things, just joking around. As we play rock music, having no stimulation is no fun. I hope we can provide stimulation to one another from now on too.
So getting back to things, why did you decide to play the WORLD?
CHISATO: When we told our manager that not only did
Ni~ya play our songs, but we wanted to pay our respects back to him, I joked "How about playing
the WORLD?", and got an "OK" really quickly. That was unexpected. Then, when we played
the WORLD,
Ni~ya suddenly became the boss.
Ni~ya: No way!
CHISATO: But that was a good thing. The audience didn't listen to us, but just to his bass. (laugh)
Ni~ya: And we didn't tell anyone that we were going to do it either.
Did you keep it secret from Nightmare's members?
Ni~ya: Yes.
CHISATO: When
YOMI came to our studio and the set list was made,
O-JIRO said "Hide it!" in a panic. (laugh)
For the rest of the interview, please refer to Zy 38.
© 2007 Zy.connection Inc. All Rights Reserved.
