Sometimes a single meeting can change a person’s fate dramatically. Indeed, the meeting between Suzuki Ami and Nakata Yasutaka (capsule) on this occasion may have been equally as profound. “FREE FREE / SUPER MUSIC MAKER,” the latest single in her “join” series of artist collaborations, is an expression of shocking upheaval and emergence from the singer’s identity before this moment: you could even go so far as to call it the fountainhead of the newly reborn Suzuki Ami. Now, her dialogue with Nakata Yasutaka in this interview has made it clear that no one felt that change and impact more than Suzuki Ami herself.
―― Before collaborating with Nakata Yasutaka-san on this release, what impression did you have of him and capsule? Suzuki: I was aware of capsule already, so I knew him as someone doing music in a slightly different world from mine. Then, for my “join” series, I was collaborating with musicians across several different genres, so I thought it’d be nice to try out a new genre and sing in capsule’s style exactly as-is. I really love capsule — their music becomes like my theme song when I’m walking at the gym. That four-on-the-floor style is perfect for keeping me going nonstop until I finish a whole album of theirs (laughs). Nakata: That’s good to hear. Next time I release an album, I’ll be sure to write “effective for exercising” into the ad copy.
―― (laughs) Suzuki: It’s great for that. I can push myself all the way with it. I feel like a fighter (laughs).
―― Then how did your impressions of each other change after meeting and communicating over the course of working on these songs together in person? Nakata: First of all, I thought it might be lacking something if I went ahead and made the song without knowing her well, so I invited her to one of the events where I usually DJ in order to fix that. I personally feel like the work started from there, though, because I consider that to be an important aspect of the process as well. Rather than directly asking what sort of track she wanted me to make, we just talked about all kinds of things and I was able to feel out how she wanted to progress on the music side from there. After that, I basically went straight to work in my studio. For sure, if we’d just abruptly started off in the studio, we might not have been able to tell each other what we wanted to say. Suzuki: I saw him for the first time as part of the audience — normally, I’d go right into the studio and meet the producer there, then the recording session would begin a little formally with a stiff “nice to meet you, let’s hear the song, please” kind of mood — so my first thought was to make the essence of that fun atmosphere into a song, and I realized I really did like it. Getting to be on the dancefloor with the audience and see them enjoying the music in real time also shaped my approach to it in a big way. Nakata: That’s pretty important. You can hear the sound as long as it’s on a CD, but you can’t know how everyone will react to it without being there. Suzuki: It was really important to me to know how everyone listened to and enjoyed this person’s songs, so as much as possible, I didn’t want to see that on video or even to the side of the stage but feel it for real on the dancefloor with everyone else. That’s when I thought, “I want to leave everything in his hands.” We talked for the first time after his event — well, being that it was right after he left the stage, there was naturally a lot of excitement in the air (laughs). Nakata: I was already hammered by the time we were exchanging simple “nice to meet yous” (laughs). Suzuki: Right, right (laughs). And I was happy to have the chance to work with someone like him too, so I was really excited myself. Since we were both really pumped up when we talked, I don’t really remember anything we discussed (laughs), but it felt like two ordinary music lovers chatting. Nakata: I felt some kind of thrill at that moment. Suzuki: That was really great. So, through doing this “join” series, it was like I finally got to see how important it is for me to engage with these musicians from a fan’s perspective.
―― Um, I did hear a rumor that Suzuki Ami came on as a special guest during Nakata-san’s DJ set at ROCK IN JAPAN FES 2007 the other day. Suzuki: It’s not a rumor, it’s true (laughs). Nakata: When I mentioned that I’d be appearing at ROCK IN JAPAN FES 2007, she told me she’d come by. Suzuki: I really would’ve been happy even sneaking a peek from backstage. At the second event [featuring Nakata Yasutaka] I watched, he played our new song on this single immediately after it’d been completed, so I looked out on that from behind him and I was happy. Then I went to see him at ROCK IN JAPAN FES 2007 on that momentum, and before I knew it, I was standing on the stage. I had some nerve to be standing there (laughs). It was the first time I’d gotten to do something like that on the spur of the moment in all the time I’ve been working in music. I really liked that sort of unconventional, outside of the norm feeling. Nakata: At live events I organize myself, of course, it’s natural to play the standard or classic songs people know from my work, but at DJ events, if the song is hype, the audience will respond to it even if they don’t know me especially well. Even this track got a good reaction without me having to introduce it or say “this song comes out whenever.” Thanks to that, I could relax and feel relieved to have made it. I think stuff like that is fun. It’s a party. Suzuki: I thought, “It must be nice to be a DJ.” (laughs)
―― (laughs) Nakata: You could do it yourself if you wanted to. I’m sure it’d be interesting. Suzuki: I really want to try it. I want to play my favorite songs! Nakata: Playing your favorite songs because you like them and seeing the crowd get pumped up to them along with you is definitely a lot of fun. It feels like you’re really sharing the same parts you both enjoy. When you DJ, it doesn’t feel like a performer and their audience, but everyone coexisting in the same space. Everyone can take on the leading part, so it’s very fun.
―― Now that you’ve even participated in an event like that together, what sort of creative exchange took place between the two of you as you progressed through the recording for this single “FREE FREE / SUPER MUSIC MAKER”? Nakata: I normally do everything in my studio, but that’s probably an unusual method compared to others. Even if there are some differences between everyone’s respective artistic processes, I think they’re all following mainly the same approach, but the bigger a project is, the more standardized that becomes. I think how well I’m able to use the differences in my approach to my advantage sets me apart from the rest. I feel like I do almost all of my production on the stage, and I wanted to show the virtues of that through this collaboration, too. So at the start, Ami-chan may have thought, “The way he works is so different!” Whether it’s how I record vocals or just how I proceed through my work in general, there’s no order to what I do. I test something out, then I go back to where I was before, and the song gradually reaches completion over the course of that back-and-forth. For me, recording vocals isn’t one stop on an assembly line: they can come in anywhere. At the very end, the sound might change as I add to and take from it, but it can go any which way depending on the ideas I have. I really play it by ear and I was given full allowance to follow that method on this release as well. Suzuki: Since the studio belonged to Nakata-san, it felt really cozy and honestly like the room of a house. Yet there was a vocal booth in the middle of that. I kept my staff to a minimum this time and I was allowed to focus solely on preparing the songs, so it was nice not to have to think about anything extraneous. I’d go into the booth and sing for a minute, then come out and watch him listening to and fiddling with the track for a long time next to me. I felt like a child in a way (laughs), thinking, “Oh, so that’s how you do it.” The longer he toyed with it, the more it changed and got to be cooler. And the vocals were really worked into that just like an instrument. Watching it change shape like that, I’d start to have the desire to alter other parts of it and introduce new ideas into the mix, so the song grew more and more through that process. Nakata: Right, right. I’d think “Shouldn’t this be enough?”, but then she’d come up with some other idea, and when I gave that a try, it’d be like, “Oh, nice!” Sometimes we’d go through a few cycles of that. She can see how it’ll affect the sound when she does something different with her voice. I thought she must know her voice well to have that kind of remarkable power of imagination. So when I listened to her new vocal take, I’d think “then the track needs to be like this” on my end, and then I’d change the sound again. It felt like it was steadily getting better and better that way. Suzuki: We could’ve changed it around forever if nobody put a stop to it (laughs). As long as time allowed, it’d keep changing. So there are multiple versions of it too. Enough to make a full album just out of those. It felt like, “How far is this going to go!?” Nakata: Her staff would go out for a smoke, then come back in and be like, “Whoa, it’s different!” (laughs) Suzuki: There were no established rules in place. Our only goal was to make it sound cool. That was a first for me — I’d never broken through those barriers to that extent before.
―― That stance is a constant fixture in your work with capsule as well. Nakata: You’re right. I avoid deciding how something “has” to be wherever possible and just focus solely on improving the final product. Suzuki: It’s crazy, you went and taught me something weird.
(everyone bursts into laughter)
Suzuki: If I want to keep broadening my musicianship down the road, I can do that — it reminded me that there are possibilities open to me. Like I really recognized that there’s no need to force myself into one box. I’ve gotten really excited for the music I’ll work on after this. Nakata: There are different things people do ordinarily as a normal part of their work, but rather than being asked to create within a specific set of limits, I think having the ability to work freely when you’re making something ultimately brings out that person’s unique color much more clearly. Not only me, but I believe all creative people feel that way. I think it leaves a good, strong impression behind when you can avoid losing that sort of personal touch or emotional connection to an individual’s songs, and I want to hear lots of that kind of music myself.
―― Nevertheless, I imagine there must be a lot of people who’d feel envious of you getting to absorb so many different music professionals’ creative approaches each time. Suzuki: I think I’m really lucky in that respect. It’s been one surprise after another of discovering all the different ways other people create. This collaboration in particular was really unprecedented even compared to the rest of those. For Nakata-san, that’s his own style and what he thinks of as his “normal,” but I only learned about it for the first time after nine years since my debut. That was a huge shock for me. So it made me realize that there are still people out there doing stuff I don’t know about at all. Especially in Nakata-san’s case because he’s doing it all by himself, so that was extremely impactful to me also. Nakata: What I think is really great about this is that for artists like Ami-chan, making music in this way is thought to be something of a taboo. That’s true among listeners and even other creators like myself. Artists seem like they’re separated to some extent into categories of people who can do whatever they want and people who have to protect their image, don’t they? But I hope everyone can take this as an opportunity to see that it’s not like that and there’s nothing wrong with doing something like this. I think it’d be really good if things changed along those lines. Well, creators should feel free to have differing opinions, but no matter how I look at it, I feel like it’s strange for even listeners to have a say in how an artist ought to work, so I’d like for that odd conception to die out. Because I think it’s good to have variety.
―― Your new song “FREE FREE” came from that kind of limitless expression of ideas. What impressions or thoughts did you have about the song upon its completion? Suzuki: It turned into something totally different from the first time I heard it. The more he played with it, the more punch and sexiness it developed, and I was like, “Where is all of this headed?” (laughs) But then I ended up going along for the ride regardless (laughs). Nakata: That’s the plus side of there being no demo tape. If you make a demo and the song turns out differently afterwards, it’s no good. But if there’s no demo tape, you can do everything you want to take a stab at. Since I’ve never done that, it never feels like anything is “too late” to turn around and fix. We basically shared our opinions on anything and everything, keeping only the good ideas and leaving the rest, and it came together genuinely. So I think it was always going through good changes. I do think there are often situations involved in making music where it occurs to you that there might’ve been a better way of doing something, but by that point, you’re too far along to step back and take it into consideration. There was none of that this time, though, so it felt like we tried everything that came to mind. Suzuki: And “SUPER MUSIC MAKER” was done first, so when we produced “FREE FREE,” we could put all our energy into taking it straight through in one shot to finish line. That made me want to show a completely different face from “SUPER MUSIC MAKER” on “FREE FREE,” so we splurged on adding more and more vocal layers and effects to the latter as we recorded it over time. That’s why it’s all over the place (laughs). Like, “Where is the chorus? Is it the upper or lower melody?” So “FREE FREE” also has more vocals we took across every stage of production. At the very end, we recorded my breathing and wrapped it up there. We supplemented that where we felt something was lacking. Nakata: It feels like a stack of all the stuff that made us go “This is so sick!” as we were working on it.
―― And so you chose “FREE FREE” for the title as well. Suzuki: It could’ve even been “FREE FREE FREE” (laughs). We could stand to add at least ten exclamation points (laughs). Nakata: But that’s really about how much energy we had making it.
―― I’ve actually had capsule’s latest album Sugarless GiRL on heavy rotation since it came out, and when I heard Nakata-san would be the newest artist to take part in Suzuki Ami’s “join” series, I predicted that I’d be into the song for sure. This new track “FREE FREE” fits exactly within the sphere you’ve been gravitating towards as of lately, doesn’t it, Nakata-san? Nakata: I think so. Naturally, after you’ve released however many albums, people will say your new work sounds like “that song from that era.” I don’t do anything like that myself. If I can’t do what I want right at that moment, I typically won’t do anything, so it feels like I did what I wanted to do this time the same as always. That’s why I think you got the impression that they fall within the same concept. Suzuki: I thought “FREE FREE” was very fresh. Like nothing I’d ever heard before. Nakata: I feel like it came out well once I gave it a shot.
―― Like “Wow, listen to this awesome track!” (laughs) Suzuki: It really feels like that (laughs). Nakata: Before I record the vocals, there are songs I think will turn out decently and songs I can’t be certain about until I get down into the work, but “FREE FREE” was one of those I really couldn’t be sure of until I gave it a try. Once I took that chance, it went smoothly. I thought, “Damn, this one is wicked.” (laughs) Sometimes the vocals and such will come back to me differently from how I envisioned them, but that’s fine by me, so the song only gets better from there. Instead of “this is different from what I imagined — I want it to be more like this other way,” I think, “It’s different from what I imagined, but… yeah, it’s good like this!” It’s not the same as what I had in mind, but I get all these new angles coming at me and I want to make the best possible use of those, so I push myself to make a cool track that’ll measure up. I guess it’s like a loop of that. The production improved little by little as I repeated that cycle, so it was really like once I tried it, I felt glad to have followed it through to the end. Because I couldn’t see the finished picture, it was like I worked on it while thinking, “How much better can I make this?”
―― As for the “FREE FREE” PV, it feels strange to say this in front of the artist herself, but I was shocked that Suzuki Ami could be this sexy! Suzuki: I think how I express myself varies a lot from song to song. What comes out of me changes. “FREE FREE” made me feel that especially strongly. Because I had this song, I really felt like I wanted to live up to the standard it set. So I was more insistent than I’d ever been before in telling the director how I wanted it to be during the meetings. I absolutely wanted the visuals to hold up to the song. From there, I advanced the negotiations really carefully in order to film something truly beautiful. When I got in the studio, the set looked exactly how I’d envisioned it, so there was nothing left to do but let myself go and feel good after that. Nakata: Truthfully, “SUPER MUSIC MAKER” was the lead track in the beginning stages. Once “SUPER MUSIC MAKER” was completed, there was a meeting about what sort of PV it should have, and I heard Ami-chan saying “I want to do this, I want to do that.” At that moment, I thought “oh, then this is different” and made “FREE FREE” instead (laughs). Instead of using “SUPER MUSIC MAKER” for the video Ami-chan was describing, I thought I should come up with something fresh to suit those planned visuals better, and that turned out to be “FREE FREE” in the end. So I think there’s probably a very strong sense of unity between the visual atmosphere and the sound. Suzuki: It’s right on the mark. No need for any story, just enjoying feel-good music and getting intoxicated by it — that was all I wanted to express. It’s not in a club, but there’s only the lights and a person there. Enjoying the music in that place. It’s my image of that moment when I met Nakata-san for the very first time. Nakata: I make a small appearance in it, so I was at the shoot where they filmed it, but I thought “damn, check out this lightshow.”