Zy 54: MUCC

There are many people who have been waiting for the release of MUCC’s new album Karma, which will mark a year and seven months since their last release. This new album is totally different from the MUCC that we have grown to know. With Tatsuro and Miya paying special attention to the composition of the music and the lyrics, YUKKE we remember from creating the explosive track Ame no orchestra and SATOchi bringing some brass funk into MUCC for the very first time, MUCC, although sounding a little different, still has that great underlying feeling that only they can offer.


With the recording of Karma, was there anything different about how you did things compared to your previous albums?

YUKKE: I think that more than anything else we were in a light mood while recording. We didn’t have to work really hard at it, and didn’t stay up all night quite often doing it.

SATOchi: Most of the time, we went back home at about 10 or 11 pm. It was good mentally and a change of pace. I thought it was more efficient than usual.

Miya: We didn’t want to work too much on things this time, but we gave ourselves more time to look at what we were doing. When recording sometimes you play a song and you think that it sounded really good, but then when you go back and listen to it you think “Huh?” So we tried to keep a balance between being impulsive and reflective.

So you had time to listen to the recorded songs calmly after you went back home?

Miya: Yeah. And after we composed songs, it’s not good to live too close to the studio. I think that the time it takes to get home is the most important in a day. You work on songs and you get stressed, so I go to bed and awake refreshed. That way when I travel to the studio I often get some good ideas.

Tatsuro: I think about the lyrics while commuting.

Miya: And it’s better to have sunlight in the studio. For example when we say “Here, the rhythm is totally bad”, the words just feel softer when there is sunlight.

All: burst out laughing

YUKKE: It's good we had sunlight this time then! (laugh) We could see outside and on some days we could see it raining. We were working on a song with the temporary name Rain, so once when we were thinking about what song to play next, it was raining so we played Rain.

Tatsuro: In an underground studio, I feel like I’m shut in and put into a corner and told, “You have to work hard!!”

Miya: But that doesn’t mean that we want to work in a resort studio, because we never go out.

YUKKE: There are good points to doing a music camp and staying somewhere, but we wouldn’t go out at all.

Miya: That’s why our songs are introspective.

So the environment can have an effect on the music you create.

Miya: When we made Shion, we worked on it in a studio in Yokohama for a while, and we drove along the highway to get there. Along the way we would think about the arrangements. A good example is Shiva. It had been a ballad but became much harder than before as we thought more and more about the arrangement.

Really?!


For the full interview, please refer to Zy 54.
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