COLTEMONIKHA is a collaborative unit between capsule’s Nakata Yasutaka and fashion brand MADE IN COLKINIKHA designer Sakai Kate. COLTEMONIKHA, who pull back the curtain on their album with the glittering, magic-filled evening of “fantastic fantasy,” is created when Nakata, using Kate’s worldview as his base, writes the tracks, into which Kate injects her world again with her lyrics — “like an exchange diary,” she says. Kate is in charge of the album cover design. “Soratobu Hikari” and “Party Carronade” are danceable electro, while “communication” surprises with the fancy, novel sound of its rap. And finally, Kate’s charm, simultaneously rife with fantasy, humor, and sex appeal, stands out on “Yum yum yummy.” With the pair’s increased sense of mischief, it strikes me that COLTEMONIKHA is really the unit both of them needed.
―― You’ve talked before about your concept being high-grade chocolate, colors like black, silver and white... Sakai: The overall image is reminiscent of nighttime, but I feel like keywords along the lines of parties and chandeliers kept multiplying. So it’s like black and disco balls. The essence of luxury isn’t really in a color but more like sequins and glass that give off a sparkling feeling. Nakata: I especially wanted the first track to feel like “COLTEMONIKHA,” so we had a thorough meeting concerning that, but I’ve been free to do everything else as I please.
―― Do you have a particular framework for how COLTEMONIKHA should be? Nakata: The songs would be unappealing if anyone but Kate-chan sang them, to start (everyone laughs). On that point, capsule would be OK sung by anyone other than Koshijima-san, though. That’s about the only limit, and on the contrary, I think the sounds I’m making are mostly like, “This really doesn’t seem like COLKINIKHA’s image.” Kate-chan has power in her voice, so I can envision what sort of balance the songs will finally settle into. Even if I create an electro sound, there’ll be fantasy lyrics over it (laughs). I think that’s fresh. Sakai: For lyrics, I first listen to the music and then my imagination unfolds from the words that pop out to me, but writing them is fun. I think matching them to the sound of the music is the fun part also. Nakata: When it comes to types like Kate-chan, I think there are a lot of people who I’d say “please let me write the lyrics in advance” to, but I find her amazing in that respect, too. She has a very good sense for the rhythm in words.
―― “Soratobu Hikari” in particular is quite amusing. Nakata: English uses a lot of consonants, so the words sound light, don’t they? I’ve been trying hard to see how much of that feeling I can get using Japanese for songs like capsule’s “jelly,” but we talked about just doing it in English as it was, and then “so a lot of heat curry” [soratobu hikari, “soaring light”] happened (laughs).
―― There have never been lyrics like this before. It’s very new, I think. For instance, it sounds so romantic if you only hear “itsumo suki to iu” [“you say you’ll always love me”], but you’ve written it as “it’s a mosquito! you” in English — something like, “What are you, a mosquito?” (everyone laughs uproariously) The gap between those two is incredible as well. Sakai: Right, right, it’s just an ordinary sad love song in Japanese. Like “aitai [I want to see you/‘I am tight’] kedo yuwanai [but I won’t say it/‘your night’]” and “yuugata meiru [evening depression/‘you got a mail’].”
―― There are five more tracks, but are you planning for all of them to follow this trend? Nakata: I imagine we probably won’t include any songs more intense than this. I’d been thinking I should add one more fantasy kind of thing to balance everything out, so I’m working on a waltz now. If this were capsule, there’d be no place to put a song in triple measure (laughs).
―― Have you been considering any COLTEMONIKHA products? Nakata: It’d take a whole lot of money if we tried to bring this world to life. It’d start to turn into Disneyland (everyone laughs). Kate: The silver print on our album cover feels like “We spent money on this!” anyway (laughs).
―― Until now, Nakata-kun had always made all of his album covers, so this is groundbreaking in a number of ways. Nakata: It’s true, there’s not very many people I can leave them up to. But I’d thought for a long time that I wanted to do something like this, and our sensibilities for what we each want to do right now are similar, so we’re a good match. Sakai: I want to print that [design] on clothes. Maybe we could make them at events. Nakata: “The COLTEMONIKHA chandelier tee”? It might be cute if you put sequins or something on the silver print. Then again, they’d be for an event, so it’d probably turn out like, “Just how much are you charging for one of these!?” (laughs)
―― How do the two of you view your places in COLTEMONIKHA? Sakai: I’m really happy that it’ll be able to reach people who never knew about COLKINIKHA before now. I’ve always loved elegant shops with a French taste, but I was reluctant to stop there, so it feels really good to have all these brand-new pieces coming into my world, I think. Nakata: As we both contribute what we each have inside of us, I want to turn this into something that’s full of everything we wouldn’t be able to create on our own. When you keep doing what you want to do and not what you have to do, I think those are the best circumstances for others to appreciate it. The individual flows of COLKINIKHA and capsule have that point of similarity, and I think that’s the feeling we’re doing this together with right now. So if we do plan an event, maybe it’ll go in a different direction than they have before. Of course, you never know — it might end up being a buffet party! (laughs)
<aside> 📎 Ueda Usako for MARQUEE vol. 54 (April 10, 2006)
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