Interview with Dir en Grey

Our interview with Dir en Grey is organized in a room of their hotel in Paris. I'm told whom I'm going to interview only 5 minutes before our interview begins: Kaoru and Shinya will be with us today. Both of them are on my right, I'm between translators, and I only have 30 minutes for this interview so I decide to ask them straight away about their latest news.

Nice to meet you, I represent Jmusiceuropa... and promise I won't ask you the meaning of Dir en grey or what visual-kei really is about.
First of all, I'd like you to tell us about your next maxi-single a little: Clever Sleazoid. Musically, will it a ballad like Kasumi, something more violent like Saku, or in between like The Final?
Kaoru: It will be the most aggressive song in our history.

Who found the title for this song?
Kaoru: Kyo-kun did.

And what does it mean??
Kaoru: He's a vulgar and wise person, both at once. He's someone who went so far into darknesss and glaucous that he cannot come back from there.

Three live songs also appear on this maxi-single, where were they recorded?
Kaoru: They were recorded at our concert at Shinkiba Coast in late April.

I'd like to speak of your concerts in Europe now, first of all the one in Berlin. We could feel you were a little stressed at the beginning of the concert, how did you feel like?
Kaoru: We were very surprised when we saw fans waiting in front of the venue several days before the concert. We believed that people probably wouldn't move because it was so hot (nota: 32°C), but they shouted and moved a lot. We were glad, but we were scared.
Even before we came on stage, some people had already fainted. Kyo was worried. But the audience was quite motivated, so we were too. When we came on stage we were happy, and we were for all of the concert. No one got seriously injured, so we enjoyed the show.

At Rock am Ring you shared the stage with very improtant/famous bands, were you impressed?
Shinya: Every band there inspired us more or less, it would be too difficult to name one only.
Kaoru: We were very impressed. There was a huge contrast between Japan and Rock am Ring. We're famous in Japan, so we get the big dressing-rooms, while here we were with a lot of bands who are famous all over the world and our dressing-room was small compared to theses other bands'. It made us remember who we are. Before we came, we thought: We're gonna do the Rock am Ring, after that we can die!. Now we want to go on to get the big dressing-rooms.

About your concert in France yesterday now. How was it this time?
Kaoru: We are very happy we could play at the Olympia because this venue is very famous. But we had a little problem: it had been two months we hadn't played any concert, the last one was in Berlin. So we feared we could be a little rusty, but we got a lot of support from the crowd, who was yelling and getting excited. We arrived early in the morning and had nothing to do backstage. When we arrived on stage, we saw that the crowd was glad, and it went crescendo until the end of the concert. The two-three last songs were fantastic, we were at the level we usually are.
Shinya: What impressed me the most was that the balcony was very close from us, I had a perfect view over the crowd. I was very impressed by the audience.

Why don't you play Garden anymore, not even at the 5Blitz where you played a lot of songs from every album? Is this song part of a period of Dir en Grey you'd rather forget about?
Kaoru: It seemed natural for us not to play it at 5Blitz. We choose the songs we play depending on our mood. If we had to do the 5Blitz again now, set-lists could be different.

And finally: could you tell us about your plans for the future?
Kaoru: After the maxi-single that will be released in September, we're planning to go on tour in Japan until the end of the year and to do some promotion in magazines and on TV. But we can't tell more because nothing is official for now, nothing was announced. Next year, there will be a new album and an exclusive release for our fan-club. There will also be a big surprise very soon.

Thanks to the both of you for this interview!

Translation from Japanese into French: Seb