[ENGLISH TRANSLATION] MIYAVI x Natalie.mu ー working on ARCANE (LoL) soundtrack and voice acting

         

Original source Natalie.mu
Big thanks & credits for JP/ENG translation to @linhambabey / Janjan

Riot Games online game League of Legends has a player population of over one hundred million people and that world has just gotten an anime with 9 episodes set in its world called Arcane on Netflix. (ed: season II has been confirmed)

Arcane is set in a society where science leads progress in the town of Piltover, overshadowing the lower-town, Zaun, showcasing the dystopia between the two towns. The two towns are the backdrop to a chance reheating of the conflict between the two towns and picks up the sisters Vi and Powder to tell the story. The Japanese dub cast features Uesaka Sumire, Kobayashi Yu, and Hanae Natsuki.  The soundtrack features musicians from all over the world from Imagine Dragon’s to Sting to Pusha T.

We here at Natalie are crossing the three genres of Arcane into one; comic books, film, and music.  That is why we are happy to have been able to put all three together and be able to interview MIYAVI who both contributed for the soundtrack and provided the voice for one of the characters. MIYAVI spoke of how it felt watching the show with his two daughters, who in a way reminded him of the characters Vi and Jinx, he said “I got emotional.”. MIYAVI faced those emotions to create a girl power theme for one of the songs in Arcane. He also talked about the challenge of debuting as a voice actor in English and Japanese simultaneously. Read on for all this and more!

This rose my awareness as a father (lol)

--First of all, can you tell us the details of how you came to be part of the soundtrack for Arcane?

My management company got contacted by Riot Games. They talked about how there were artists like Imagine Dragons, Sting, and Pusha T. so they wondered, “What about MIYAVI?”  Because of their fast feedback, I got the opportunity.

--Do you yourself like games?

When I was a kid, I played a lot of Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, and Street Fighter. But they have a way of taking up all your time.  When I was in London filming a few years ago, my daughters got me to start playing Fortnite but I tended to loose track of time while playing so I realized “oh, this is dangerous” and stopped.  At the start of the pandemic, I had a ban on games at home but I started to lift it so I could play Riot Games Valorant with my daughters haha.  Being able to get involved with Riot Games through their anime based on their game League of Legends made me more aware of many things as both an artist and as a father.

--I see

E-sports are getting more and more recognition, such as being considered an official sport by the Olympics, this makes me want to look again at the importance of other sports.  What exactly is categorizable as a sport? For example, the abilities to be considered “good” at both soccer and archery are very different. At the same time, with e-sports you not only get a game that will expose you to other cultures and let you mature but it also allows you to develop communication skills to work well with a team.  Within things like the Metaverse, you can meet people and that feels so futuristic to me, I feel it opens a lot of new opportunities.

--What is the appeal for Arcane?

Firstly, I think the mixed media aspect is really interesting. With the addition of the new element “game” to the established dimensions of novels, film, and music, players can now participate as one of the characters already within the world. I think this is a really great achievement. It means we are getting a step closer to things like virtual reality, with being able to be immersed in it. We are able to feel both the pain and the joys that unfold in the story this way.  The work itself is completely new to the entertainment world and I think that is the greatest charm it possesses.

--That’s really true. There have been countless books or movies that I’ve watched and thought to myself, “wow, it would be so cool to be part of this world.” and now we are starting to get at least halfway to that dream coming true thanks to games.

 That’s right.  You get to live in them! But that’s also dangerous because you can get too much into it so we gotta be cautious haha.

What I told to my daughters

 --The plot of this story centers around the relationship between sisters Vi and Powder (Jinx). Having 2 daughters of your own, MIYAVI, did you have any emotional insight on these characters?

I saw a lot of my daughters in them haha.  I watched the show with my daughters and they both cried while watching. Their personalities are really quite similar to Vi and Jinx.  My eldest, Aily, is a bit of a tomboy and is very confident in herself.  She has a strong sense of duty to be strong and is the type to follow through with something to the very end.  She is very much like me. If you were to ask who my second child is more like, I would have to say she is like my wife, Melody, in that she has a very calm and has positive vibe, very Hawaiian. She also does ballet and is a talented drawer so she is similar to Jinx in that way.

--In the anime, the feelings of Vi and Jinx keep passing but missing each other….It feels like you can’t think of it as being someone else’s business.

I think the story drawn by Arcane is made to make us wonder if it would happen in our own world. A society where there are large differences, everyone is struggling to find a future where we can shine more brightly.  Whoever has a reason to believe that their brand of justice is right for everyone else will eventually pass others and such results-oriented people will create a situation that no one wants.  The irritation, the painfulness of that is it makes you feel a true clenching in the heart.  I took finishing this series as an opportunity to talk to my daughters about the importance of “having proper communication”. In order to overcome the unreliability of the world, you need someone on your side to confide in be it a friend, a lover, or a family member.  Under such circumstances, I think it is very important to always have open dialogues and to eliminate the friction between people and the heart as much as possible in order to build a healthy human relationship.

--It is natural that people’s hearts will change along with the passage of time. That is why I think that daily maintenance is very important in order to improve mutual relationships.

It’s absurdly crazy.  To go a little off topic for a moment, It is extra important to understand the context and pacing of things to understand the communication of today. That skill is always growing. We always have the pacing and time to reply within a conversation such as a phone call but the amount of communications taking place over text message or Line is very growing.  It is extremely important to be mindful of what emotion you are exactly communicating, and on the other hand what emotion the person reading it is interpreting.

--And it has become even more difficult to talk to people in person because of the pandemic.

Even with things like the stay at home orders, we are now easily able to interact with people even on the other side of the planet thanks to the development of technology.  There are even emojis or stamps that can be used with a certain nuanced feeling to convey words for us. But this is not something that is taught in schools and that frustrates me.

--Going back to the anime. The two worlds of Piltover and Zaun are a very strong metaphor for the profound poverty we find in our world.  I think you might see these kinds of problems first hand doing your work to help refugees?

That’s right, I think this anime did a really good job of vividly expressing that problem.  The differences between Piltover and Zaun really showcase the differences between those who have everything and those who are poor, it feels very realistic to our world.  As an official ambassador for the UNHCR I have had the opportunity to visit refugee camps and it proves that the views of LA and Tokyo are very different. Even with my work with Gucci (MIYAVI was chosen as the first Japanese ambassador to be a face of the brand with their campaign Gucci Off the Grid) I am working with a consciousness, keeping in mind that Gucci has a strong interest in solving the refugee issues and environmental crisis. We are also actively engaged in activities.  Disparities are widening around the world and the factors cannot be clearly distinguished as black or white. Even in things that seem white or black, there is still a gradation to it.  A key detail to Arcane's story is the Hextech. If it is to become real, who is allowed to have access to it and who can use its power? It is something for us all to face. There are a lot of expectations from the people in the story for how it should be used and it would be the same in the real world.  That made me think really deeply.

 

Girl power that can be conveyed by guitar riffs

--How was your song Snakes – feat. Pvris written?

This song is used in the scene where Vi and Jayce (a student of science who wants to adapt ancient magic.  He became an important person after announcing this technology at a conference in Piltover) have their fight. The key-word that Christian, the producer, gave me is “girl power”, requesting a song that “symbolizes the strength of a tough woman through guitar riffs”.  I thought of ways that I could put together the casual beat, a forceful sound that had pop hidden in it, that would show off the colorful delicateness yet strong nature of women. Until it was done, we just kept adding to it.  It actually started out very much more pop but Christian said “pull out some more dark parts” so we did. It was kind of moving toward answering “how do we find light while living in the dark?”.  And that’s kind of the base theme of Arcane as a whole.

--Did you listen to the other songs on the soundtrack by other artists?

Yes. I listen to Imagine Dragons & Jid’s Enemy and Sting ft Ray Chen’s What Could Have Been a lot. I think they’re both awesome.  I’m also friends with BonesUK who also featured on the soundtrack. We’ve played together in Japan and at a private party I had in America, their singer performed with me once. The choice of artists who participated in this are rich in variety but they somehow feel the same darkness in the world and we are unified in that message.

--What do you think of the theme of your song “girl power”?

Nowadays, it is common to hear songs about gender equality, erasing what we know to be “girly” and “boyish” and just existing as oneself.  I do still think “oh that’s something a girl does” or “that’s how boys do this” but I think it is time to get rid of such terms as “manly” and “womanly”.  It’s important for us all find a balance between both of those aspects within ourselves.  Soon, we won’t have to worry about whether it is a woman’s or a man’s burden.  So with that in mind as what the origin of gender equality is, we can then define girls power as being “charm and strength that is different from men”.  In fact, there are many moments when women are more enthusiastic than men. I think there are many strengths that only women have, including childbirth. I think we humans are all designed to complement each other, men and women, patching up the parts that we are missing with the parts that the others have.

--Is there anyone that you are reminded of when you think of “girl power”?

The number of cool women out there has really increased lately.  In the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, I was greatly inspired by the table tennis and gymnastics athletes, there’s the US Vice President Kamala Harris, Greta Thunberg from Sweden.  They all come to mind but if I were to talk about someone I know personally, it would have to be Angelina Jolie. And of course, the very first “cool woman” I ever met is my mother. I’ve also met Ogata Sadako, the first Japanese High Commissioner for Refugees; Yusra Mardini, the Syrian swimmer; and Sonita Alizadeh, the Afghani rapper. They are all strong and fighting women. I have been surrounded by people who are all very strong. To put it simply, there is a beauty in the relatability all these women hold.

 

A hope MIYAVI feels

--This time, you did not just participate in the soundtrack but you were also able to become a voice actor in this show.

I was really worried about it and decided to kind of overact it haha.  Before participating in Arcane, back when my tour was cancelled because of the pandemic, and while all the films and tv shows were cancelling production, there was a film starring Will Smith called Bright and there was a spin-off anime for it called Bright: Samurai Soul and that is where I was first cast as a voice actor. While we were finishing the recording for it, Christian, the director, said “hey, I have this character. What would you think of voicing him?”  They only had a tiny bit of the script, but I recorded it.  I thought “there is no way I’ll get this” but then I was cast haha.

--After trying it, what was it like?

Honestly, it was really difficult.  When I’m acting, I usually have my whole body but for this, I had to express everything with just my voice and I needed help.  Even more so because it was in English. It was as different as a soccer playing stopping playing soccer in favor of taking up flower arranging.

--It was that different? Haha

It really is haha.  I was absurdly nervous so I practiced so so much before challenging it.  I’m not a native speaker so there are a lot of nuances that I am unable to put into my performance but I still challenged myself to try and I think it went okay.  In the future, if they were to recast to a native speaker, I’m sure they would to a better job but I still went ahead and did my best here, I think.

--MIYAVI, the character you play, Finn, is nothing but a villain isn’t he.

This character wasn’t ever actually in the game so there weren’t any lines for us to work on with but we created that and grew him into quite a largely established character with just some small establishing lines, it was cool.  Finn acts within the organization based on his own beliefs and sense of justice but he just makes me think about his fragility instead.  Moreover, that brittle and weakness is beautiful because they are the reason why we are human beings.

--The way that video contents are able to impact people has greatly changed due to the corona pandemic and, as MIYAVI said at the beginning of this interview, the addition of an interactive layer has made it possible to experience new things once again through things like games. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Sure thing.  There is a strange sense that things that are local are disappearing. This is something that the show Squid Game (a Korean survival drama series) touches on very well. We now live in an era where even works that aren’t in English can become big hits.  I think a big cause of that is how fast things like subtitles are translated after a work is finished. With technology growing the way it is, one day I don’t think we will have categories like “Hollywood work” and “international” work anymore.

--I see.

And, following that trend, music will also just become more standardized. I myself can be in Tokyo and broadcast live all over the world.  I am always mindful when I am making my music that anyone from all over the world could be listening to my music. I am hopeful and I feel like is the beginning of the new era for the entertainment industry.

Original source Natalie.mu
Big thanks & credits for JP/ENG translation to @linhambabey / Janjan

[ENGLISH TRANSLATION] MIYAVI x Natalie.mu "MIYAVI has released his new album Imaginary on 9/15."

 

Original source Natalie.mu   

Big thanks & credits for JP/ENG translation to @linhambabey / Janjan   

MIYAVI has released his new album Imaginary on 9/15.

It has been one year and four months since MIYAVI released his previous work, Holy Nights, and because of the coronavirus pandemic the time has both flown and crawled by monotonously.   Imaginary announces to the world a presence in society as yet unseen, sending a message of pride from MIYAVI as an artist for publishing this item.  This album is composed of many hit songs handled by Jeff Miyahara, featuring artists such as Kimbra, Kang Daniel, and Troi Irons.  Permimetron participated in creating both the album artwork and the music video giving MIYAVI a novel variety for fans to peruse.  Is it his intention to set the world on fire to change its appearance with Imaginary? We asked MIYAVI this and many other questions.

Nonstop MIYAVI

--You are turning 40 on September 14 (this interview was conducted mid-August).  What are your thoughts and feelings on that milestone?

Of course.  Turning 40 is more than just a number, you feel the years starting to actually build up and feel the body start to change.  A while back, Ichiro said that, for example, the physical abilities start to deteriorate on a cellular level.  I have to reflect on the way I exercise because if I get hurt, it takes me longer to recover (lol).  But I am continuing to try to balance what I’ve experienced and my past knowledge to be able to keep growing.  Who I am now likes to learn how to find the joy in life.  I think I will continue that way until the day I die, even if my body cannot continue my heart will never fail on me.  Every day, I’ll keep like that.

--Your last interview with natalie was held in March of last year, right when the pandemic started to get serious.  You were doing variety shows with your family, hosting your virtual project Virtual Live, and were appointed ambassador to the ECC Language Education Promotion.  You were so busy you gave off the feeling of being chased.

“I can’t stop” is all I could think.  I felt like it was bad to stop in 2020, like things would be taken away if I did.  Of course this was because I was anxious.  We didn’t have any idea about having a vaccine even in development so we were nowhere near being able to hold live shows.  But I decided that I would continue ahead by creating the various shapes of the Virtual Live.  Having my family on social media was the same.  I wanted to be able to give something to the world. I showed how I fumble and make mistakes by considering new things and was changed by this.

--When did you have time to start working on Imaginary?

I actually planned to release it when the 2020 Olympics ended.  There were plenty of songs I’d been holding onto.  But then the Olympics were put on hold.  The coronavirus pandemic was shifting into high-gear around the world, it made me want to scream out.  I took that feeling and put it into this album and remade some of the songs, so most of this was written this year.  We finished all the vocal recordings in March in one go.  I wanted to be able to show we can still resonate no matter where and when we are.  I think we finished everything around June. 

--If you were to shout out right now I wonder what would resonate.  I feel like the answer to that question can be felt in the word you used for the title of the album: Imaginary.  

Yes.  In my work supporting refugees there is a commonality whether it is caused by man or nature, the first step to overcoming any calamity is having medical care, water, and food.  If you have that then you can start working on education and culture.  Each of us humans have dignity when we are allowed to learn and study culture.  It’s really scary that we can’t see the future.  I think it’s pretty special that we are able to imagine what the future will look like and use that to indicate what it should be.  I think that’s the reason music exists, of course I mean anime and manga and movies too.  As a musician, I am able to indicate the future’s shape with my imagination.  I think that’s part of who I am, what I live for.  On the reverse side, that’s the only way I can think of myself being.

--Maybe that’s why I feel that Imaginary has a more cohesive concept as a whole album compared to your past works, indicating one whole message.

But aren’t all artists the same now?  Whether we are alive or dead, there is nothing we can do about reality right now.  Along with the new variants of the covid virus making things uncertain there is the unstable administration handling Afghanistan, the earthquake in Haiti, and the dangerously heavy rains flooding China making things extremely subjective at the moment.  Even now the whole world is changing.  It’s as though this situation is asking me “What is there to sing about” and my answer to that question is this album.  Shaping myself into someone who will “keep my eyes up and keep walking”.

 

The commonality between Jeff Miyahara and Perimetron 

--I can strongly feel the presence of the co-writer Jeff Miyahara in this.

 

We met last year.  He was originally just doing the vocal direction but his gushing energy came across so strongly he ended up deeply affecting the sound direction.  He has a lot of hot passion.  Both of us were unable to go back to Los Angeles so we imbued a far east feel that can only be tasted in Tokyo.  The overall sound production is the root of the skeleton and that was done as usual Lenny Skornik, approaching the vocals with a sound that Jeff was able to greatly add to.

--Can you be more specific?

He is active in the field of j-pop so he uses an approach that helps swell in a moderately Japanese way, making it feel “Japan’s pop world equals j-pop”.  I think he brought something that has never been brought to MIYAVI.  We were able to put together sounds from all over and created a vision, Jeff, Lenny, and I, all together of how to make a new kind of album.

--What was something new for you, MIYAVI?

The biggest was taking direction for my singing.  He gets specific inspiration from anime characters or scenes from a film that he shares so I had to add the story-telling delivery of lines when performing to my existing way of singing which was really new for me.  Also I’d say the sound dynamics.  Rock sounds usually get stacked up in a more haphazard way but he takes each sound, one by one, mixing them together smoothly until they are polished decorations.  There are even some hip hop parts.  I had to cram study the sophistication of pop music.  I think it will greatly influence me from now on.

--What was the reason for entrusting the art and the beauty of the music video (NEW GRAVITY) to Perimetron?

For the visuals, I was unable to fly to LA so I hit the Tokyo market of colleagues and wanted to make something that could only be made here in Japan.  While having a conversation with KingGnu’s Tsuneta, we started playing with the idea of making something for today’s generation with the same beauty and value that the band YMO (Translator Note: YMO or Yellow Magic Orchestra is a band from the 70’s) or the collective Tomato in London (Translator Note: Tomato is a collaborative practice for artists, designers, musicians, and writers formed in London in the 90’s) once held.  There is a strong connection and a lot of trust there, like a group project but in a good way, that I personally don’t get to have as a solo artist.  To groups like that, I probably seem like Matsuoka Shuzu (Translator Note: Matsuoka Shuzu is a former single tennis champion and sports commentator) to them.

--Matsuoka Shuzu haha

Honestly, they all sound like they would be pretty my pace lol.  Concerning the intention and understanding of creation is not a simple thing, it’s next to impossible when there is no compromise.  We just have to drink together, work together, feeling the warmth that other creators have and possess a sense of true borderless-ness.  They are able to feel things even when I’m wrong and are able to help teach me a lot as I go.  If I get the chance to, I’d love to work with them again.

What to look for in an era that appears in textbooks

--This album starts strongly embracing the topic of “what should I sing” with the first two songs, New Gravity and Imaginary (feat. Kimbra).  You were able to draw a really rich background simultaneously with these two songs and it feels like the experience you gained from Virtual Lives really helped.  Or that’s how I felt.

Yeah.  Frankly, the album could just end with those two songs lol.  That’s how well I think they fit the theme.  The rest of the songs are like the freebies for anyone to receive.  I was worried whether New Gravity was good enough for the title of the album.  I thought about it but the language jumps so well along with being catchy so I decided on Imaginary.  So these two are the songs that comprise the core of the album.

--In these two songs there are words such as “unbound”, “beyond weightlessness”, “My story”, “no more hesitation”, and “new world”.  What kind of feelings do you mean with these lyrics?

The world today is rewriting the pages from good to bad.  There are a lot of uncertain what-ifs floating about right now like “There might not be any fish left to catch by 2048” or “In 60 years, there won’t be any more agriculture to harvest”.  Hearing people saying things like that makes you look at the materials we have available today and stresses you out.  Like, 60 years is a long time but it will actually pass pretty soon.  I think the only way we will be able to continue to have a society is to dematerialize.  We live in such a materialistic time today and we need to become a society that “goes without” I think.  That’s something really obvious in the fashion industry.  I think it is important to not let people like Alessandro Michele from Gucci, for an obvious example, to set the standard anymore.  We have to dry off from the extravagance in order to  break the cycle.  That is to say that we are currently in a “state where we have no choice but to reverse”.  Of course there is confusion on top of confusion because change takes the ceiling and makes it the floor.  But when looking to the future it is definitely more beneficial and we should be able to find a methodology that makes us all unique.

--Because of the coronavirus pandemic we have to get used to the language around the “new normal”.  What’s that like for you?

I’m setting out on a tour in America in October (MIYAVI North America Tour 2021 “Imaginary”) and I definitely feel like it has changed so much just watching footage of things in America.  I feel a sense of a void inside and my physical strength is weakened, I don’t want to forget that.  I want to go back to doing lives where it feels like getting onto a packed train but with the way things are right now, that seems a little dangerous and impossible to do.

--That’s right.  How fast things become “back then”.

Right lol.  But still, person to person direct contact is really important, we cannot lose that.  I want that part of it to stay the same.  There are still mistakes we are going to make with wanting to go back to concerts.  But for however much the world is changing, we have to be able to adapt along with it.  Freedom is not “I’m going to
do what I want”.  I think the world has evolved to a point where we need to put ourselves in each other’s shoes and follow a doctrine “be charitable”.  In order to change what we value, we need to urgently look at our SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals).  With things like the Black Lives Matter movement, we are able to support and bear witness to it from outside, participating in events like hunger strikes for the movement.  We have to be wary of what we are going to leave behind in this era for the history books, including the spread of infectious diseases.  I think that facing things straight on will lead to suggestions for the future.

--That’s where the 7^th song on the album “Youth Of the Nation（feat. Troi Irons)” comes to play, I guess.

At the time I was writing this, there were lots of student protest groups in America gathering strength, and here in Japan we had the moment SEALD (Student Emergency Action For Liberal Deomcracy) also keeping the youth active.  I also started to notice Greta Thunberg from Sweden.  That’s why Jeff recommended I include the guitar solo I created to the Star-Spangled Banner back when I performed it at the Dodger Stadium in 2019 so we hurriedly included that as well.

It is the duty of sound to free people

--What can you tell us about the song featuring Kimbra?

It was casual lol.  All of the artists who featured on this album got here very casually, honestly.  This song is not quite Kusanagi Motoko from Ghost in the Shell but it has a novel cyber feeling, despite her poorly pronounced Japanese.  Truthfully, we were thinking of collaborating on a different song but the timing worked out that we got this song instead!  Kimbra’s wonderful singing voice, including the Japanese lyrics, was great.

--This song has a very heavy metal feeling in the drums, coming from a strikingly tasteful person like Jeff Martin.

That’s right, the beat is kind of a revival so I don’t know whether to say it is a new sound or not.

-- MIYAVI’s guitar style has also definitely changed.  You’ve developed from the signature sound of danceable songs found on NO SLEEP TILLTOKYO (released July 2019) to a more mature approach with this album.  There is a more frank dynamism expressed, changing gears from the mincing rhythm of the past album, I feel.

That’s right.  By accepting the duty of sound being to free people I decided to change up how I use my guitar.  I still slap it, I’ll never lose that, but I want it to become more than just a song.

--In Imaginary, you cover Nirvana’s famous song Smells Like Teen Spirit.  I was surprised to hear how the lyrics properly compare the feeling of dark conditions to the coronavirus pandemic.

At the start, there was no such deep meaning.  This was a song I planned to cover even before the pandemic, it’s kind of my favorite song to sing at karaoke lol.  But this song changed up the pattern of the music scene.  It was fun to take their famous attitude and put it with MIYAVI’s sound to put on this album released in 2021.  It was an honor to finally have the freedom to do something that I have wanted to do for so long.

 

A sense of variety, no matter what

--I was really interested in the chorus of the song Living in Fire, the melody gave me almost a country western feel.   

This is a song I thought about putting on Holy Nights.  I worried that it was going to be too dark of a song to be on this album but everyone on my team recommended I put it in.  Message-wise I feel this connects the continuity from Holy Nights to Imaginary.

--The song Hush Hush (feat. Kang Daniel) features an unusual, kind of boy band taste with the inclusion of Kang Daniel.

I tried to sing about the contradictory nature of “freedom” and “restraint”.  Daniel’s kind of neutral tone created an odd detune when put together with my voice.  For this album, I kind of had a different color for every song.  Honestly, the way I put together an album has changed a lot.  It’s influenced a lot by the market.  We are at a point where a lot of people don’t listen to full albums so I tried to make this album one that you could just pick a song here or there and have it still have a catchy pop feel.  That might go away again though.

--Speaking of each song having their own color, the development of the 8^th song I Swear and the 9^th song Are You With Me are strong.

That was what I was hoping for so I’m glad that’s how you felt.  Of course the order of the songs is important but this time the team wanted to work on creating a complete sound within each song.  No matter what, I keep a consistent message in my work “liberation of the future” so it feels like a natural match to me.

--Lastly, Dance With Me was a fresh feeling.  It felt like listening to a record player, with a  tempo that makes you want to go ballroom dancing.  It was an unexpected discovery for me but I have fallen for it.  But it still felt like standard fare for MIYAVI with the message “look up and keep walking”.

At first, I had the image of it being like Beauty and the Beast but Jeff in Jeff style arranged it while thinking of the scene in The Avengers where Captain America is sitting at a bar lol.  It’s pretty far from my usual repertoire.  This song tells the story of someone who can only meet someone they love in their dream, in a non-reality kind of like Inception or The Matrix.  Wouldn’t it be a happy thing to be able to have a dream and it feel real and stay aware of it?  With things like virtual reality and the metaverse, the difference between what’s real and what’s virtual is disappearing so we need to think deeply about what is really important.

We are once again loving “Super Hero”

--What was the reason for including the bonus track Super Hero from your 雅-miyavi- era?

Simply speaking I just wanted to make the fans happy.  Last time I did a self-cover of the song DAY 1 so this time I wanted to add my sound from now.  The line “If separating is for the sake of us both
From now on I will always always keep praying” in the chorus links well with the core message of this album.

--I feel like you said it yourself that you are learning to find a way to keep true to the roots of MIYAVI.

That’s right.  Taking a song that I wrote over ten years ago, I can feel my youthful rashness but I also feel in my rock sound my desire to save the world and bring people happiness.  It makes me think about the people that I think are important to me, like my family and my fans, makes me think about what the true meaning of love is.  It gave me the chance to think about these kinds of things again.

--Now that you’re finished with this work, what do you think you’re next project will be?  You yourself are always changing your appearance under the watchful eyes of the world, recording music at a breakneck pace.

I don’t know what’s next.  Because of the coronavirus pandemic, we are in a very uncertain state.  I’m

just going what I can with all my power, day by day.  But at the end of September, I am planning on holding a Virtual Live from the Kiyomizu-dera in Kyoto.

--Ooh.

I’ve always wanted to do that but it has finally finished being under construction from last year.  I kinda wanted to take a crack at an iconic stage, “What if I did the Olympic Opening Ceremony?” lol.

--You always seem very busy, between your tour in America, the Netflix film Kate, the Amazon Prime Video program The Masked Singer, and your ambassadorship with the ECC.

I’m actually way more relaxed than before because of corona.  I’m spending more time with my family.  Of course, I really want to do a full tour in Japan.  The travel restrictions should be lifted next year so everyone, please look forward to all the future plans I have to be announced!

 

Original source Natalie.mu

Big thanks & credits for JP/ENG translation to @linhambabey / Janjan