jkleinAfter watching a tremendous live set Oct 30th at Oni-con in Houston, Texas, JRR.com was honored with a bit of born’s free time for a quick interview. The entire band was present and appeared ready to meet with their fans later in the day. We were able to speak with them and gain a bit of insight on how it feels to meet so many fans in the United States.
Ryoga: Vocals
Kifumi: Bass
K: Guitar
Ray: Guitar
Tomo: Drums
How are you enjoying Houston, Texas?
Ray: We really enjoyed our live but we haven’t really had time to go out and see anything yet.
Kifumi: We would like to go out into the city and see more but we’ve been stuck in the hotel.
Will you get to go out and see Houston? Will there be any time before you go back?
Kifumi: We have one day off.
Is there anything that you want to see on your off day?
Kifumi: First I want to go eat.
Ray: I want to go over there. There’s some kind of park or green patch (Pointing out the window from the 10th floor).
Ryoga: I want to go eat. Texas barbeque sounds good.
Tomo: I like meat.
K: I want go so see some of those buildings. I want to go downtown.
Is there anything you’ve liked or disliked about your visit?
Ray: There is a lot of fast food.
Is that good or bad?
Kifumi: Neither
K: It’s not just in Texas but in America. I think Americans are nice. Very friendly.
How do you feel about your performance last night?
Ryoga: I want to do it again.
How was it different than performances in Japan?
Ryoga: The reaction from the fans was completely different.
Is this because Japanese fans tend to go along with each other?
K: In Japan the fans react to different songs. For a particular song they react this way or that way. But it’s not like that in America. Whether we are doing a ballad or something else, the fans here are just crazy.
Tomo: There is freedom for individuals in the fans. The fans here are really here to have fun and we can feel it.
How are the sizes of the audiences here compared to back home? Were you expecting more people?
Kifumi: I didn’t expect that there was going to be this much of an audience here [at Oni-con]. We were happy.
Will your music be available for U.S. fans to purchase through iTunes or some other outlet?
Ray: We haven’t made ways for people to buy our music through the internet.
Kifumi: For now we have previews of our songs on Myspace.
Prior to the formation of born, you were all in two bands together. How did you change to become "born"?
Kifumi: During the time we were doing Renny Amy we started questioning ourselves and we decided to do music that was more representative of ourselves.
Ryoga: We decided to find a new direction and that’s when we decided to change the name.
What is it that ultimately encouraged the band to become "born"?
Ryoga: We found this road that we decided to walk on and that’s how we became "born".
Is there a message or concept that born tries to express through its music?
Tomo: As a band called born we wanted to give to give birth to different types of music and that is how we became "born".
Ryoga: That was our concept- that we wanted to create different types of music.
Your recent release in July, Felony, came in two types: Boldness Session and Decadance Session. Could you explain the difference between them?
Tomo: It’s basically a story about cause and effect. It’s about a person who made a mistake.
Ryoga: In Type A, even though they cause a felony the person really decides to go through with it and then they get over it [meaning there is no remorse]. In Type B the person that committed the felony feels regret.
Tomo: That’s why we decided to do two types of songs. It shows both sides.
born uses both harsh and clean vocals in its music, is it at all challenging to match the vocals to the music or the music to the vocals?
Ryoga: It’s just crazy inspiration.
It seems that Ryoga writes the lyrics, Ray and K compose the music and then the entire band comes together to arrange the songs.
K: After we finish Ray and I bring in our composition and let the rest of the band hear it. The ones that we think are good and that we want to use we keep. Then we separate out the different parts and give the band members their own parts to arrange.
Do you all share credit on the songs?
Ryoga: We pretty much make all the songs together.
Ray: The entire band gets credit for the arrangement but whoever brought the composition to the rest of us gets credit for that. There are credits for lyrics, music and then "born" is always credited with the arrangement.
How do you know when a song is complete?
Ryoga: After we think we’ve got it right we record it and if everyone agrees that it’s right then we know it’s complete. It’s a group effort. Everyone has to say yes.
Your first live was "bug screamo vol.01", you just held vol.05 a few days ago and vol.06 is schedualed for late November. Can you tell us about the event and what it represents?
Ryoga: We get together with bands that we think are cool. We want bands that we think will bring an impact to the fans to be involved.
Is there anything you’d like your foreign fans to know about the band or yourselves that they might not be aware of?
Tomo: Truthfully, we’d just like them to watch our lives.
Does the band have any influences or inspirations overall?
Ray: Whatever comes to my mind.
K: We decided that we want to have these types of songs in our lives. We want to have a live with these types of songs.
When you listen to music what do you listen to?
Ryoga: I listen to pretty much everything. Jpop to foreign music. We all listen to different kinds of music.
Will you come back to America?
K: If we can, if we have a chance to, we’d like to come back.
born mixes both English and Japanese into their songs. Where do you get the idea for the words that you use in your music?
Ryoga: Translator sites. Japanese is different than English. In Japanese we can’t always express things easily. Sometimes the word with the exact meaning we want to convey is is only found in English, so we use English to express that. We study really hard.
Do you have a personal message for your fans?
K: Please listen to our music and if you can, come to our lives.
Interview questions by: Jen
Interview conducted by: Haleigh W.
Edited by: Ali W.
Photos by: Hans W.
Special thanks to CURE and born for the opportunity!