LM.C has released their new single, “My Favorite Monster,” which utilizes electronic dance music. They are also garnering attention for the clear differences between maya and Aiji’s appearances. "It’s a song packed full of what our current selves can do. It’s as if we’ve become adults, and I mean that in a good way," says Aiji about the new song. They also announced that they have a new album near completion and that they will be going on a nationwide tour. According to maya, "Our works are like a new toy we can play with at concerts." It will be impossible to take your eyes off their free and uncontrolled activities in 2014 as well.
■We’ve had seven years to build up LM.C’s point-of-view and characteristics, so the theme of this song is “to shake free.”■
──”My Favorite Monster” is your first new single in about a year. It’s a song that has turned in the direction of dance music.
maya: The actual song already existed when we were working on our previous single, “DOUBLE DRAGON.” Putting aside the idea of when we would release them, we recorded about five songs, and “My Favorite Monster” was one of them.
Aiji: At the time, we talked about releasing “My Favorite Monster” instead of “DOUBLE DRAGON.” maya: We did talk about that.
──From the beginning, you thought about doing a song you can dance to, that utilizes step recording?
maya: I don’t know much about dance music. All I really know is that it uses four-on-the-floor with the kick drum. I entrusted the arrangement to Aiji, and I thought I maybe wanted give it more of a current feeling. The atmosphere and the composition of the song haven’t changed from the demo, but when it comes to me, I want to make the guitar more prominent.
Aiji: I arranged the song thinking that I wanted it to have a modern feeling. I wanted the music to be the sort that could make even people who like club music think, “They’re doing something interesting.” For instance, in the interlude, the only sounds are the beat, the sequencer, and a small amount of voices, but we hadn’t used that sort of approach with LM.C until now.
──The song uses various voices, and it has a feeling of playfulness that is appropriate for LM.C.
Aiji: But I think that’s something that we also haven’t done before. We’ve had seven years to build up LM.C’s point-of-view and characteristics, so the theme of this song is “to shake free.” If I’d arranged it like I usually do for LM.C, it would have been more noisy and lively, but instead, I held back where I could. It’s a song packed full of what our current selves can do. It’s as if we’ve become adults, and I mean that in a good way.
──You also ventured to use a dance tune in one of your earlier singles, “SUPER DUPER GALAXY” (2011). It’s grown through your live performances, and now it’s a song that everyone dances to and enjoys. This time, you’re also going in the direction of EDM, but is it because you thought, “we can do this kind of thing too”?
Aiji: Exactly. This characteristics of this song are catchy, but it’s definitely not a pop song. Rather than wanting people to listen to the melody, we wanted them to listen to the beat and pay attention to the atmosphere and more of the sound of the song overall. The lyrics to the chorus also feature catchy words like “BANG!!” and “PUNK!!” Maybe our approach to this song was similar to that of our song “BOOST BUSTERz” (2007). That song is a little catchier and it also has a polished feeling.
──I thought that the intro sounded like a movie theme. Or perhaps I should say it’s a song that brings an image to mind.
Aiji: I always make music keeping an image in mind. This song makes me think of a kind of hard-boiled Hollywood movie.
──The lyrics are about a mischievous, funky monster living in one’s head, which is appropriate for LM.C.
maya: Yeah. There are new elements to this song that we haven’t used before, but I was told, “The lyrics sound like LM.C,” and even though I wasn’t conscious of it, that’s how they turned out. I use a monster to represent the various facets that are part of each person, and then I decided how to express that common theme in a way that fit LM.C. The end of the song says, “If you hesitate, then ‘Ah!’ your life will end in a flash!” but what I want to say is the same as always. Which is that we all only have one life to live, so isn’t it better to live it happily? We have various problems, like the gap between reality and our ideal, but you shouldn’t get lost because of that.
Aiji: I think the lyrics are maya-like. His choice of words is, as always, interesting.
──The lyric “PUNK!! As much nonsense as you’d like. Whether or not you call for PEACE!! Jump out, voila!” is amazing.
maya: That’s from “The Genie Family” (laughs). (An anime that was broadcast in 1969, in which a genie appears from a bottle whenever someone sneezes).
Aiji: I wonder if anyone will realize it’s from “The Genie Family.” (laughs)
──I know that there’s a free and uncontrolled monster living inside maya’s head, but what about you, Aiji?
Aiji: ……I think……there is. (laughs) At my age, maybe the monster will just burst out completely. (laughs)
maya: The lyrics are a little bit of an exaggeration, but I’m singing about when, at unexpected times, emotions surpass reason and sense. So I think that everyone has a monster inside them.
──An out-of-control monster that you can’t hate. People should also check out the music video. It’s a sharp and cool video, and fans can see maya dance. It’s also fun when people’s depictions of monsters submitted to your homepage from all over the world appear in the video.
maya: It’s the kind of music video we haven’t done much before.
LM.C has released their new single, “My Favorite Monster,” which utilizes electronic dance music. They are also garnering attention for the clear differences between maya and Aiji’s appearances. “It’s a song packed full of what our current selves can do. It’s as if we’ve become adults, and I mean that in a good way,” says Aiji about the new song. They also announced that they have a new album near completion and that they will be going on a nationwide tour. According to maya, “Our works are like a new toy we can play with at concerts.” It will be impossible to take your eyes off their free and uncontrolled activities in 2014 as well.
■The nationwide tour is like a “best of LM.C.” Though that, people will be able to feel a sense of variation, or rather we’ll be able to show fans who we essentially are as performers.■
──It’s also rare for you to be wearing black and white clothing.
Aiji: The director advised us on the styling and we decided together, but this was a first for us. Previously, we’ve decided on our visuals and video based on the song.
──The visuals are linked to the lyric “Angel or demon?”
maya: It’s my first time wearing white, but that also fits well with the lyrics.
Aiji: When I saw the pictures of monsters that people had created for us, I thought that it’s amazing that there are so many people with great powers of imagination. The history of LM.C has been made along with the fans, but the idea of creating our works together with the fans is a characteristic of LM.C as a band.
──Certainly. The coupling track, “Dolce Vitter,” is a song with a bittersweet melody, and it made me think, “This is going to be a famous song.”
Aiji: “Dolce Vitter” was created in a more solid way than “My Favorite Monster.” It’s a song that I wrote when I thought, “I’ll make a good song…a song with a good melody.” The kind of song that will strike people’s emotions with just the melody. I thought, “I want to make a new standard song for LM.C.”
──The melody and the beat are prominent points.
Aiji: Yeah. It’s a folk-type song, but it’s also got techno-pop and has a brass arrangement. If I come right out and say it, I think that sense of balance is what makes LM.C. With songs like this, if you focus too much on the vocals, it becomes difficult to create a hook with the sound. I think that, including in the chorus, there are parts of the arrangement that make listeners think, “Oh!”
──The lyrics have a youthful feeling but they’re also incredibly heartrending.
maya: I simply wrote it about my memories of my grandma. In “Doraemon,” there’s a story about “Memories of grandma,” and the feelings are something close to that…… My grandma died at New Year’s in 2012, and just before we started LM.C, the dog that we’d kept at my parents’ house also died, and these lyrics came to be because of those sorts of things.
──Is the lyric, “Until that day we meet again, out there someday” about meeting in heaven?
maya: If that could be true, it would be an ideal. Those are words to distract from the painfulness of the final line.
──You’re singing about the death of someone special, but it seems there’s also an episode included about seeing a UFO.
maya: That’s a true story. I wrote about something that happened with my grandma.
Aiji: I remembered hearing that story from maya, so I immediately thought, “It’s about his grandma.”
maya: In my early years of primary school, I used to go to swimming school. My grandma always brought me by bicycle to the place where the bus would pick me up. One day, she said, “Between those mountains, there was a UFO flying,” and I remember thinking, “Is my grandma okay?”
──But as a child, it seems as though you’d be really curious and say, “Huh? Really?”
maya: Reversely, I was worried. (laughs)
──It surprised me that that’s a true story. But even with such powerful lyrics, not becoming too sentimental is very LM.C.
Aiji: Yeah, it is. Including with maya’s word choice. It’s not pessimistic. There’s only hope.
maya: The title is a pun off the Italian phrase “dolce vita.” It means “sweet life,” but I don’t think that life is like that, so I changed it to “Vitter,” a play on the English word “bitter.”
──You mean that life isn’t just sweet, it’s bittersweet?
maya: Yeah, I think that’s what life is. When we announced the title, we got inquiries of, “Did you mess up the spelling?” but it wasn’t a mistake. (laughs)
──Is this a preview of what is coming in your new album “PERFECT FANTASY,” which will be released in February 2014?
Aiji: Rather than say it’s a preview, these songs are part of a trajectory. Including the trend of our sound.
──LM.C has always been fanciful, but just seeing the title makes me look forward to hearing it.
Aiji: Yeah. It’s a mini-album, but I think the volume and strength of the material makes it close to a full album. I think it’s an album that will leave listeners breathless until the end.
──Well lastly, will you tell us about your nationwide tour that will begin on February 7?
Aiji: LM.C doesn’t do encores, and when we follow an album up with a tour, the album is always strongly represented. But this time is a mini-album, and because the contents are compact, we’re going to show you our new world with a set list that’s something like the “best of LM.C.” Though that, people will be able to feel a sense of variation, or rather we’ll be able to show fans who we essentially are as performers. I think fans will absolutely enjoy themselves.
maya: In 2012, I simply realized, “Concerts are fun,” and it was a year in which I discovered, “This is what LM.C is.” Every day, I could feel the acceleration of power and passion in the people who came to the venues, so I’m looking forward to the next tour even more. My feelings recently are that concerts are…well, to say it simply, our works are like a toy that everyone can play with together. Like when you’re playing in the sandbox, and it’s fun when you have a new shovel or watering can. That, and recently we’ve been appearing at club events under the name “RUN LM.C,” and I want the people we met there to see our concerts as well, so now I can’t help looking forward to the tour.
source: barks.jp
