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Newspeak, a three-piece band made up of vocalist Rei, drummer Steven, and bassist Yohey, have released their third full album, Newspeak. Newspeak has been praised for its bold, borderless sound, influenced by UK and US rock. It’s drawing attention from all corners, having been selected as an opening act by artists such as The Fratellis and Mando Diao. Billboard Japan talked to the trio about what went into their new album.

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Since you named the new album Newspeak, I get the strong feeling that you see it as a crystallization of what you are as a band.

Rei: After we finished our last album, Turn, we decided to work with Warner Music Japan. We were thinking about what kind of album to make next, and our minds kept turning to why we started Newspeak in the first place and why we were making music. We kept thinking about how we started this band because we wanted to make this kind of music and to share this kind of message, so what else could we do besides making it a self-titled album?

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Starting with this album, I get a feeling of hopefulness and expectation for the future from you for the first time. The songs are powerful, positive, and energetic. It’s like they have the power to just blow away any uncertainty or worry. I think that you can especially feel that strength in what is, effectively, the album’s first song, “White Lies.”

Rei: We wrote “White Lies” after “Be Nothing,” and the director of the music video asked us to send pictures of times when we found ourselves at crossroads or critical moments in our lives, along with pictures of people who are important to us. Looking back on my own photo albums, I remembered how I felt back when I was 20 years old, in America, looking down at the scenery below me from the top of the Empire State Building. I think everyone feels that way, when you go up somewhere high: “I’m going to make it big!”

That hallmark of youth!

Rei: Yeah, exactly. Like, I had no particular foundation for that belief, just this vague desire to make my mark on the world. I was like, “I’m going to achieve something!” [Laughs] But even now, looking back on it, I feel like that’s the way it had to be. Now, I want to express that unfounded confidence.

The songs are so powerful, it’s like they could rekindle that motivation slumbering inside — tap that well of energy deep within.

Rei: That’s why the album starts with the question “What would you do if you weren’t afraid at all?” That concept is at the root of everything I do, and I feel like I’ve finally been able to express it really well.

Having a powerful will is important for anything you do.

Steven: I like powerful songs with that confidence of “I am the best!” “Nobody stop me!” with no deeper thought, but the songs that speak to me even more are the ones that demonstrate an understanding of the darker aspects of reality. In that sense, Newspeak’s songs, like “White Lies,” are well-balanced, showing that we see the negative parts of reality, too.

Most of Newspeak’s lyrics are in English, and your sound is heavily influenced by the UK and US rock scenes. There’s a strong sense of focus on the foreign music scene, but you’ve also established a unique position in the Japanese music scene. How much attention do you pay to trends or fashions?

Rei: Just trying to revive old music all the time would be fruitless. As a musician, I think it’s important to enjoy music, to convey a message, and to create a new sound, so I listen to new music, and when I hear new or interesting sounds, I try to incorporate them.

Yohey: I don’t just listen to rock. Lately, I’ve even been thinking about going to see Dua Lipa (Editor: She is scheduled to perform in Japan in November). Trying to incorporate every kind of different sound in our own style of music would be impossible, but there are some sounds where I think “this might be interesting to work into our music.”

Rei: We like sounds that are really striking. Not things we’ve heard before, but more sounds like “booooiiiing.” [Laughs]

Steven: Sometimes we use modern synth sounds, but sometimes we go the other way, using old-school drums or old bass sounds. It’s a mixture of classic and modern. I think there’s some originality in that approach.

“Alcatraz” is a danceable song with a catchy melody. The phrase “So many faces and faces to please” stands out.

Rei: No matter where you go, there are always faces to please, whether they’re other band-mates or even in situations like this interview. In “Alcatraz,” we’re singing about how you can’t let yourself always get caught up worrying about that. You have to make yourself happy, or what’s the point?

We’re in an era in which there are a lot of “faces to please” online.

Rei: That’s true, of course. But the message of this song is more about “let’s enjoy the music.” The main message is to have fun and set yourself free.

The song “Tokyo” has a line that stands out: “This city can hurt you or ignite you.” What’s your image of Tokyo?

Steven: It’s huge — I think it’s the world’s biggest city. It’s always busy, and so many people come to Tokyo from the countryside to make money. I think that’s why even for people who love Tokyo, there are times when it’s hard. The song “Tokyo” sends the message to those people that “We understand. We think the same way. I know it’s hard, but you’re not alone.”

Rei: There are a lot of songs about how hard it can be to live in Tokyo, but what I wanted to convey through this song is that no matter what city or community you’re part of, it’s the same. I mention it in the lyrics, too, but we’re using Tokyo as a symbol to represent being a member of a community, so instead of Tokyo it could just as well be London or New York or Kuala Lumpur. No matter where you go, there’s stress. How you respond to that is up to you. You may find your school or your company tedious, but then when you go outside, you realize that you were agonizing over something inconsequential. So what I wanted to say is that all you have to do is just go out. Why are you clinging on so tenaciously? Why do you look at the world like it’s your enemy? I think the same about myself. Just because I’m in Tokyo, or just because I’m in Japan, doesn’t mean I can’t go overseas.

The last song on the album, “Nokoribi,” closes with the line, “A wingless believer on the night before the revolution.” It feels like here you’re singing about Newspeak itself.

Yohey: The lyrics to this song are an answer to the question posed in the intro to “White Lies.” It’s the kind of song you’d expect from Newspeak, but surprisingly, we’d actually never written a song like this. We have a lot of songs that are like “just be yourself” or “don’t give up,” but we hadn’t written any songs that praised the beauty of striding forward. It’s a song with the power of self-affirmation, like saying “we shine because we act.”

Rei: It’s a song about how there’s a beautiful world out there, so why don’t you go set out into that world? You’ve got “Tokyo,” about being stuck within a community, unwilling to step out, and then that’s followed with this song, the final one on the album, about the moment when you finally take that step forward. We thought it would bring the album to a nice close. We actually wrote the song a long time ago, but it just happened to fit here really well, so we were like “Now’s the time to use it.”

In closing, what kind of future do you want to see for the band?

Yohey: I want to play at Coachella.

Rei: I used to perform as a musician in Liverpool, so I’d like to make a triumphant return by playing at the Glastonbury Festival.

Yohey & Steven: Yeah!

—This interview by Azusa Ogiwara first appeared on Billboard Japan

On June 29 and 30, Revo put on a series of concerts, “Revo’s Orchestra Concerts,” at Hitomi Memorial Hall, in Tokyo’s Showa Women’s University. Revo leads two groups of artists: Sound Horizon, which tells original stories through the use of musical suites and is celebrating the 20th anniversary of its debut this year, and Linked Horizon, which he created for collaborations and tie-ups with other works, such as the Attack on Titan anime. In this concert series, Revo performed pieces from both groups along with a full orchestra. There were four shows over a two day period—two during the day and two at night. In this article, we’ll be looking at the June 30 performances.

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The “Revo’s Orchestra Concert” series presented not only works by Sound Horizon, but also Linked Horizon’s “Guren no Yumiya” and “Akatsuki no Requiem,” from the TV anime Attack on Titan, “Onward Into the Light: An Overture,” used in Square Enix’s fantasy RPG BRAVELY DEFAULT, “MOON PRIDE,” a Momoiro Clover Z song for which Revo wrote the lyrics and wrote and arranged the music, and more. It was almost like a retrospective of the best pieces Revo had created over his long career. Conductor Hirofumi Kurita led the 70 members of the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra in a powerful performance that conveyed Revo’s sweeping worldview.

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In the first part of the show, all the pieces were performed entirely by the orchestra, except when Revo took the stage to speak. Toward the middle was a discussion between Revo and a music critic. For the daytime performance, he spoke with Akihiro Tomita, and at night he spoke with Akimasa Munekata. In part 2, guest singers performed “Guren no Yumiya,” which Revo himself sang in 2013 on NHK’s 64th Kohaku Uta Gassen. The guest singer for the daytime show was SAK., while for the nighttime show it was voice actor Yui Ishikawa. The show came to a close with Revo inviting guest performers and guest speakers to join in a performance of “Sunawachi…Hikari wo mo Nigasanu Ankoku no Chou-juu-ryoku” and “Eikou no Idou Oukoku – The Glory Kingdom.”

Revo makes use of his classical music background in both his Sound Horizon and Linked Horizon pieces, but with this concert series performed entirely by an orchestra, these sensibilities have finally come into full bloom, elevating expectations for Revo’s future as a musician. The great cheers of “Bravo!” from the audience of fans were a testament to this.

—This article by Akimasa Munekata first appeared on Billboard Japan

On June 29 and 30, Revo put on a series of concerts, “Revo’s Orchestra Concerts,” at Hitomi Memorial Hall, in Tokyo’s Showa Women’s University.
These performances by Sound Horizon, the collective of artists led by sound creator Revo, were part of a series of events held to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Revo’s major label debut. One of Revo’s projects is Linked Horizon. He launched Link Horizon to carry out collaborations between Sound Horizon, which tells original stories through the use of musical suites, and other works such as the Attack on Titan anime. The concert consisted of orchestral performances of Revo’s works—not only those of Sound Horizon, but also pieces by Linked Horizon. The pieces were played live by the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, led by conductor Hirofumi Kurita. Kurita and the Tokyo Philharmonic have enthralled countless audiences not only with their numerous classical music concerts, but also concerts in which they play orchestral arrangements of modern music, such as their Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba orchestral concerts, the FINAL FANTASY XIV ORCHESTRA CONCERT 2022 -Eorzean Symphony concert, Galaxy Express 999 cinema concerts, and more.

Sound Horizon is known for its distinctive musical style, but this two-day concert series showed Revo’s talent as a composer and his pride as an entertainer. First, let’s look back at the daytime and nighttime shows of June 29, the first day of these joyous opportunities to experience the superb music prepared by Revo.

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“Revo’s Orchestra Concerts” consisted of a total of four shows over a two day period—two during the day and two at night. The venue was Showa Women’s University’s Hitomi Memorial Hall, which has a reputation for excellent acoustics. Each show was divided into two parts. The first part was a pure orchestral concert, which began with “Onward Into the Light: An Overture” from BRAVELY DEFAULT, a classic RPG-like theme well-suited for orchestration. After this, the program was like a chronology of Revo’s works, with early pieces such as “Chronicle 2nd,” from Revo’s indie album era, followed by songs that marked his debut into the majors. These included performances of music that he created for Momoiro Clover Z and for the anime Attack on Titan.

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Speaking to the audience, Revo said “Even one-hit wonders have a history.” Compared to his early period, which was characterized by dreamy, mysterious short pieces, the latter pieces, closer to his more recent compositions, were longer and more classical. Their structures grew more diverse, with dynamic shifts within individual pieces. At the same time, they also became more melodic and had more of a pop feel. One of the charms of this instrumental music was how well one could feel Revo’s evolution as a composer and gain a true sense of his history.

The vocal portions of songs were replaced with various instruments, such as flutes, violins, and harps, bringing smiles to the faces of everyone familiar with the original versions. Some of the concert’s more famous pieces included “Akatsuki no Requiem,” which took the completely opposite approach, using majestic horns to perform the fevered soprano part while maintaining the original piece’s dignity. In addition to pieces which used the tried-and-true technique of performing vocal solos with instruments, there were also pieces like “MOON PRIDE,” with castanet triplets evocative of the floor tams of “Moonlight Densetsu.” The playful approach, brimming with love for the source material, provided a cornucopia of joy for listeners.

Another example of Revo’s playfulness was “Gyoukou no Uta.” In the original version, the song ends with the lines “Mutti. The light. It’s so warm,” and then the sound of a book being closed. In the concert, this sound was created by all the musicians on stage turning their sheet music over at once. This performance instruction was even written directly in the conductors’ and performers’ sheet music. This was evocative of the famous final page of the sheet music for Mauricio Kagel’s “Concert Piece for Timpani and Orchestra,” which directs the percussionist to plunge head-first through a drum. In “Shinwa -Μυθοs-,” the sound of a chirping bird was performed using a bird call, and in “schwarzweiß -Kiri no Mukou ni Tsunagaru Sekai-,” a wind machine replicated the sound of wind. Both of these instruments are used in classical concerts, but they also tickle the ears and open up the gates of classical music to a wider audience.

The first part of the concert ended with a discussion by Revo, which provided the conductor and orchestra with a break. Revo was able to engage closely with his “Laurants” (Sound Horizon fans), after which the second part of the concert began with a vocal piece featuring a guest vocalist well known to the audience and singing by Revo himself.

At the June 29th daytime concert, the guest vocalist was RIKKI. The original version of “Ishidatami no Akaki Shaytan” was sung by RIKKI and three other female vocalists, joined by one male vocalist. In the concert performance, RIKKI and Revo performed multiple people’s parts. Revo showed a deft ability to instantly switch between falsetto and his normal singing voice. Likewise, in the “eleven letter message” sung by RIKKI in the original song, backed by the tide of emotion provided by the orchestral backing, she now brought out a more motherly voice, having matured over the 17 years since the song was originally recorded.

At the nighttime concert, the guest vocalist was Fuki. Her performance featured numerous highlights, among them her performance of “Star Dust,” in which she directed the line “Tell me why?” at conductor Kurita. This was an ad-lib direction from Revo. Kurita responded in top form, “That’s what I want to know. Why?” It was a striking example of Revo’s dedication to entertainment, seeing live performances as carefree, liberating spaces. The show’s finale used a racing starter pistol to reproduce the sound of a gun, causing those in the audience who knew the original piece to break out in grins.

The encore began with Revo asking the audience, “Has anyone here sung with an orchestra before?” He sought to provide the entire audience with the opportunity to form a giant chorus. From start to end, beautiful music flowed through the hall, while various clever ideas, both within songs and within the show’s performance direction, broke the tension and opened the audience’s hearts. Kurita encouraged the audience to show their feelings without reservation, applauding until their hands turned red. It was evident that he, too, felt the enthusiasm of Revo, ardent explorer of the arts. Every moment of the two performances was a testament to Revo’s talent as a creator.

—This article by Koji Shimizu (Seven Days War) first appeared on Billboard Japan