Here are some comments hide chan made concerning
the songs on his
first full solo album "Hide Your Face"
The comments are from the Magazine Rockinf 2/1994
translated by
Iguana. The comments are sometimes pretty technical,
but I think they
reflect hide chan's professionality and his attitude
toward composing very
well. So here we go:
.
Psychommunity
hide:
In order to start a live gig you need some sort of an opening, so this
is what I came up with.
An opening with an "It's enough"
feeling (laugh). The intro is sampling all songs of the
album. I put them in a reverse
order.
Question (Q):
Is the orchestral arrangement reflecting the style of X Japan?
hide: Yes,
probably. Well, but I prefer "Disney" music rather than classic, the "Disney"
kind of orchestration. I made it according to this image. I wanted the
arrangement to feel like
some "marching band" style
that I liked for quite some time. And thus the soldiers are
slowly starting to change one
by one. The sound of the snare is getting louder and louder.
The orchestra is coming in
louder and louder too but it's close to the real sound of an orchestra.
Q: How
many guitars did you use?
hide: Just
too many (laugh). I forgot how many actually, but I thought it's a damn
lot during
recording. For the backing
I used Les Paul and for the rest MGs (Fernandes).
.
Dice
hide: In the pre-production
of the album this was the first song that I did and I thought it should
be the opening piece of the album right from the
beginning. I released the "positiveness" of the
lyrics with this "poor song style of mine", but I
don't say it's reaching up to my style of living, because
my way of living changes by the second (laugh).
I let the sequencer go together with the bass to
add to the rythm, but the real drums and and the
bass are done by the T.T. team (Terry Bozzio, drums
and T.M. Stevens, bass). It was pretty
difficult to reach a balance between the human's
groove and the electronic's groove.
Especially because T.M. uses his own time scheme.
I had quite a hard time
with the guitars, to sustain without sustainers.
But the double sounds that came up suddenly
sounded pretty good. Of course I also used the sustainers.
But I guess you won't hear it, that's
the sustainer's excellence (laugh).
.
Scanner
hide:
When I did the pre-production I had just the melody finished. When I came
back to Japan
I recorded the guitars, keeping
the melody in mind. The lyrics were the last thing I added.
Q: The
guitars sound very linear.
hide:
Well, it's just taken from the recording I had on the computer's hard disc.
But of course I used the pre amplifier and a speaker simulator. I got two
sounds into the mixer and the equalized stuff that came out I put on the
hard disk as well. I thought to put plain vocals over the electric groove.
The vocals are
horryfying (laugh).
.
Eyes Love You (T.T. Version)
hide: Well, since I
let T.T. play an over-dubbing of the Single CD version and the groove was
pretty
much different to the completed Single CD, I also
changed a lot of the guitars.
At the Single recording the guitars were in line
and I had mixed in the pre-amplified accoustic
guitars as well, but this time I took the sound from
a mike that recorded what came out of the
amplifier directly. When I recorded the guitars I
could really feel the impact of T.T.'s tension and
groove. Although it is a rather cool song when the
two of us come in (T.M. and hide chan)
coldheartedly, then there flows hot blood!
.
D.O.D.
hide: I
recorded the guitars in L.A. and up to then it was only one sound. But
then I got my hands on a
1959 Les Paul and made a new
recording back in Japan with it. I wanted to have some sounds from
the speakers. It took a pretty
long time to create the right sounds.
They all say the lyrics are
perfectrly me, but I don't even drink Shochu (Rice Liquor)
or Tequila (laugh). Don't take
that too serious, it's just about drinking in general!
.
Crime of Breen Street
hide:
That piece I made because I wanted to insert something before "Doubt".
When you go from town
to town there are a few roads
that don't even have street lamps, right? I thought something like that
would be necessary before "Doubt".
I did this together with my engineer Ricky Breen. Ricky likes
Jazz piano very much and in
the end this piece became a little bit like "The Doors" style. It also
resembles the images of this
movie "Angel Heart". I had about the same feeling doing this piece
like in "Seth et Holth" where
I did the music while looking at the story on the screen. It's a piece
made
for a situation. At the fade
out you can hear a cat whining, at least you think so, but you know, in
fact that's INA chan! Nobody
thinks that to be a human sound, right?! (laugh). Ever since then
we all call him our cat technician
(laugh)!
.
Doubt (Remix Version)
hide: Although
it's a complete remix the sounds are the same like in the Single version.
For me it's
now the perfect version. But
I want to remix that one again. I want to show everybody my trial and
error feeling with this piece.
There are only minor changes but I like this version much more now.
.
A Story
hide:
You know... The motive of this song: After a big world war the people are
coming out again
back into an air they can breathe.
It's the feeling in the very moment you appear again from
the underground and take a
first look around.
Q: Is
it the first time you ever played a song only with accoustic guitars?
hide:
If you put it that way, yes. In 1992 I bought a "Martin" (an accoustic
guitar) and can play it
by now I guess. I also used
the accoustic guitar for the Singles. I don't remember the cords though,
but it have been very very
open cords. (A sentence follows I can't understand...). And the accoustic
guitar I used during pre-recording
I had tuned on an open cord as well. Well, I liked this sound, so I
also tuned it that way when
I did the real recording. I think it was tuned on "D" something, but it
was not a real tuning.
.
Frozen Bug 93
hide: I
arranged that imagining the year 93, but if you consider it as a cover
version of the project
I took part in back then, I
also don't mind. (MASS: hide + J + Inoran - "Dance 2 Noise 004"
album, released 1993)
.
T.T. Groove
hide:
You know the ending of "Honey Blade" is a fade out, right? But before it
became a fade out
T.T played like this here...
It was very nice, but I wanted to have a fade out for "Honey Blade".
So I made it a new piece "T.T.
Groove". It's just like we were doing a session of three people in
the studio. But I added the
guitars later after listening to the rhythm track. I also thought that
a
break was necessary after "Frozen
Bug's" hard rhythm so I put this piece in here.
.
Blue Sky Complex
hide:
In the end this was the song that needed most people and staff. It was
always something
like a plus alpha feeling.
Q: Well,
there are the horns and all in all it's a pretty funky feeling.
hide:
Well, it has not much changed from the pre-recording, but it's a very groove-centralized
piece,
isn't it? And this groove has
pretty much changed after I put in all the people. That was very
interesting, especially the
ending. I told T.T to play with the rhythm. And according to this
fooling around I added the
guitars later. I also fooled around! The clear sounds you can hear
are from the Jeff Beck model,
I think.
.
Oblaat
hide: This
is about the same like "Doubt", I like the remix very much.
Q: Are
there some sounds in it that are not on the Single CD?
hide:
Yes, a lot. It's because of these exploding guitar sounds. And my vocals
are like that
of an idiot! (laugh)
Q:
This crazy guitar sound at the ending, did you have that before too?
hide: Yes,
that has been in from the start, but I changed it a little. That's the
noise of
a secret effecter of mine.
The noise is pretty well checked.
.
Tell Me
hide: I
made that song with a folk guitar. There is a little raggae in it and the
transposition was
in it from the start as well.
Somewhere in between there is some SE and also some scratching
and that was in there too already
when I did the song on the folk guitar. It's a recording as fresh as
in the beginning.
Q: Some
single coil guitar sound is the main feature, right?
hide: Yes,
even the backing is in single coil. I used the Jeff Beck model most the
time, only the
loud one in the background
is an MG. In the pre-recording I used only accoustic guitars and
then put the E-guitars over
it later.
.
Honey Blade
hide:
I wrote this song after I saw a movie about incest. When I saw this movie
I got drunk
with the idea of such a forbidden
love. So I chose the "first love" as a topic for this song.
Q:
How about the guitars?
hide: The
backing is Les Paul Custom. I didn't take the real sound but picked it
up from
a small speaker and played
just after the mute section with very direct sounds. I didn't want
to have this scratching in
there.
.
50% & 50% (Crystal Lake
Version)
hide: To
be honest, what's here on the album is the original version. I asked
Yukinojo Mori to
write the lyrics for me in
the style of: A woman wants to make fun of a guy, and while she says
"Yes Yes" to everything he
says, he however thinks in fact "You are a much bigger idiot than me"
and then he wants to kill this
damn conceit girl. He should take her to the "Crystal Lake" like in this
movie: "Friday the 13th". But
somehow this doesn't show in the lyrics now at all (laugh).
Q:
And then from this funny country music style at the lake it develops into
something harder.
hide:
Well, the idea and the real music, that's still a different story, but
in order to fit this song, that is
really too positive concerning
the music, to the rest of the album, I decided to ignore the
actual theme of the song.
Q:
This country music side of yours you have never showed us before, right?
hide:
Well, but when you get a folk guitar into your hands this kind of style
comes out
pretty often, don't you think?
I like the opening cord pretty much. What I have not shown
you was simply that I had not
done a song like that until now. I like Led Zeppelin more than
Deep Purple. I learned that
atmosphere from Led Zeppelin. From Led Zeppelin I came to "Japan"
and on to "The Doors" and finally
also to "Silverhead", and I got a fancy for punk finally. I
think it shows a lot on this
album what I learned from the musicians I like.
.
Psychommunity Exit
hide:
When you really get into my world via the Psychommunity, you will become
someone who does not want the
Psychommunity to end again. I've been still raised in the
analog record world and I always
find the abrupt endings of CDs a little sad. In the end I
would like to end the record
by my own hands by putting back the needle. There is an
antithesis to technology. And
also I didn't want it to end somehow, because the pre-production
has been so much fun and I
wished somehow the production might never end. So when
you enter the Psychommunity
world and my crazy character, I thought it would be
best to end it the same way.
.
.
So hope you liked the comments...
hide chan's comments to "Psyence" Album will follow
some day...
And by the way... The photos
you see here are from the "Musoureki Calendar III 1994" from
