THE GALLO will be releasing their 8th single, Incubus, on the 27th May! An Incubus is a demon that violates the dreams of sleeping girls. How will you react to this concoction of bizarre callings from a burdened heart?
Interviewer: Let’s start with what your aim with this single was.
HIKARU: This time we centered around the titular dream-eating incubus. The songs on it really represent The Gallo’s worldview, and it’s the start of our second chapter, so we’d love it if you could all listen!
Interviewer: You brought some almost erotic elements to the studio this time.
HIKARU: Yeah, it’s pretty intense – the title track especially really conveys this sensual feeling of eroticism which is quite unique to us.
Interviewer: Was The Gallo always this erotic?
HIKARU: I think so. We’ve always been quite a shameless band, not afraid to confront what’s taboo for others, and this time is no exception.
JOJO: Hikaru, you’re so eloquent (laughs).
Interviewer: JoJo, there’s a really idiosyncratic obscene and bizarre worldview displayed in your lyrics.
JOJO: I’d probably say that’s what I was going for (laughs), although I do just sort of use those phrases and expressions naturally. I think at the same time, as a musician you need to have the sort of presence which makes people want to hold you!
Interviewer: I don’t really get that. The Gallo is full of dark characters, and I think even you’re seen as a dangerous character. Although I imagine that holds its own unique sex appeal for a number of girls.
JOJO: I think I’ve always wanted to appear insane, but I can’t always commit to that in the lives. I have friends who go all out with those insane lives, but they just tell me “You’re doing awesome lives no-one else could do”. I think rather than insane, I go for a slightly erotic feel.
Interviewer: The impression I get is a combination of the two.
JOJO: Because there’s no-one around to hold me back right now. Maybe you could even say I’m doing lives I couldn’t do at any other time!
Interviewer: So we might see more roundabout performances from you?
JOJO: I’ve definitely seen other people do that, but as long as I have no-one to restrict me, I’ll charge straight ahead doing exactly what I want to. It’s all down to my own judgement – I pretty much just stop where I think is right.
Interviewer: So in that way, you restrict yourself as well?
JOJO: Of course, I think when I’m expressing myself, I have a pretty good sense of when saying something is going too far. So I think I push it as far as I can, and find a natural stopping point.
Interviewer: Kaede, how do you feel about all this?
KAEDE: I don’t really interfere, I just sort of wonder how far he’ll push it! Sometimes I’ll think “Is that really okay?!” (laughs).
JOJO: And I’m all like “It’s fine!” (laughs).
Interviewer: Of course (laughs).
JOJO: I think a lot of people in the indie scene stop singing such crazy stuff when they make the leap to commercial music. And that was what brought a lot of fans in the first place, so I think that’s definitely a bad thing.
Interviewer: I think things are definitely a lot more lenient than they used to be, but I get the impression that a lot more people censor themselves more harshly than they used to. In that respect, The Gallo are a lot more unrestricted.
JOJO: Right. Inflammatory is best (laughs).
Interviewer: How about everyone else? Do you all work more or less freely?
ANDY: I don’t really worry about it either. What will be, will be (laughs).
Interviewer: So you’ve also got the appetite of an incubus?
ANDY: If you mean lust, then maybe I do, maybe I don’t! (laughs).
KAEDE: That’s part of self-censoring I guess. (laughs).
WAJOW: To be serious for a minute, I think we’re restrained above what we present in the songs. A guitar’s only got so many strings, so many frets, but we try and work within that and push out. I think that’s what making music’s all about. About the eroticism, I think there’s a tendency to portray that as embarrassing, but at the same time, everyone’s interested in it.
Interviewer: In the song, you sing “You buy me”…is that something you really want?
WAJOW: Maybe not to be bought, but to be kept (like you would an animal), I guess. (laughs).
Interviewer: The lyrics are about the dynamic between a host boy and a customer, right?
JOJO: Everyone says that, but I didn’t really notice that connection. I think it’s more about us and our fans.
Interviewer: Really?! The lyrics “Drowning in a game of piled-up banknotes and lust, you buy love, you buy me” made me think it was all about hosts!
JOJO: No, like, our fans buy our CDs, our tickets, and we pile up the money. Look at the lyrics “Heavy breathing echoes all around, at a hall in the middle of the red-light district”. We’re talking about concert venues and the chaos our fans cause.
Interviewer: When you say it like that, it makes sense, but I’m sure there’ll be a lot of people who don’t know that.
JOJO: Well, I suppose I’d better say it here then! Incubus is a song we wrote about us and you guys.
KAEDE: And we’re selling a happiness called “music”.
Interviewer: Jojo and Wajow, you worked on the composition together, right?
JOJO: I gave Wajow a melody that I’d made, and basically just told him to make a song with this sort of feeling behind it.
WAJOW: What’s funny is, when I first heard it, I thought it was a bit weird, but then as we developed it together I really got into it. That sense of progression is another one of the great things about composing.
Interviewer: Andy and Hikaru, how did you feel about Incubus?
ANDY: I think normally all our songs really shine in the chorus, but it’s also a lot more simple here.
HIKARU: I’m using a theremin, and I think that’s given a great tone to the song.
KAEDE: Like Andy said, the chorus really shines, but I think it’s got the most draw out of all our songs so far. Incubus has a lot of parts where we’re all singing together, so we made sure not to clutter the instrumental section too much. I also really like how the lyrics can be interpreted in a number of ways. The host boy thing, and loads of other stuff you can read in based on your own life experiences.
Interviewer: “Kamikazekei Kuchikukan – Yamikaze” was Andy’s composition, right?
ANDY: I wanted to make it sound like something Psychobilly would do. Me and JoJo both love that band, so I took stock of that and made this song. I was interested to see how it would turn out if The Gallo tried to make a song like them, you see, and so it’s got a great twist.
HIKARU: It’s a very straightforward rock song, and so I just made the guitar relentless to fit with that.
WAJOW: I just played like Psychobilly might. The whole intro’s on one string!
KAEDE: Although our starting point was them, when we put our own sound into it, it became very different. So I compressed the hi-hats, cymbals and toms a lot, and turned the mics right down. So it’s got a really fresh sound. We do a lot of gang vocals, but here we pushed that even further.
Interviewer: That line just after the chorus, “Dinner time!”, is stuck in my head.
JOJO: That part in the instrumental demo had such a punch, so we thought the lyrics should be just as impacting.
Interviewer: The song’s about cannibalizing a girl, right?
JOJO: A certain band member said “You’re always singing about rape.”, so this time I thought “Let’s remove the sexual element and focus on another violation….cannibalism”. So that became the theme for this track. The title, (“Kamikaze Destroye: Dark Wind” in English), sounds like a ghost ship, like the Black Pearl in Pirates of the Caribbean. So I envisaged a man riding this ghost ship, killing a girl, and dining on her. The ship in the title was actually a Japanese ship in World War 2, which was meant to have been sunk, but people still claim to see it. So all of this went into the lyrics.
Interviewer: You sing a lot about that sort of time period, don’t you.
JOJO: I do sing about the present occasionally, but usually I limit it to around World War 2 and its aftermath. So this song’s set just after the war.
Interviewer: What attracts you about that time?
JOJO: I think it’s really easy to envision, and so many horrible things happened around then. But of course, we don’t know what it was actually like. So that’s why it draws me so much – I love researching it, and painting a picture of what was a cruel reality.
Interviewer: The third track, “Kuro Tori Shioki Sousoukyoku Daiichiban – Doube -” is about necrophilia, right?
JOJO: Whether it’s about actually doing it, or just rubbing yourself on their body, I don’t know. It’s probably the first, but it might be the second.
WAJOW: The gang vocals were tricky on this one.
KAEDE: We don’t use playback live, so it’s even tougher. I did all the drums electronically, so I’ve still yet to actually play it all. It looks like it’s going to be pretty tough to do though (laughs).
ANDY: Recently I’ve been using a jazz bass, but this time I decided to use a Precision Bass, so listen out for that. We also put a bit in from one of our other songs, “Maou – Taidou”, and I think that playfulness is really great.
HIKARU: The guitar here was pretty simple. Obviously I don’t know much about the subject matter of the song, so that was a challenge (laughs).
Interviewer: How’s the single turned out overall, would you say?
KAEDE: I think we’ve almost gone back to our roots. But with each single we progress, so that’s come through extremely nicely here as well.
Interviewer: In August, you’re performing your live show “THE INCUBUS CIRCUS”. Beyond that, you’re returning to where you began your tour this year with your September 11th final show at TSUTAYA O-WEST!
KAEDE: Every band develops in their own way, but this time we chose this venue, so we can maximise our live performance in a venue that’s perfect for us. Maybe that’s how The Gallo does it.
JOJO: TSUTAYA O-WEST is a venue we wanted to play ever since we started activities. It still holds an almost spiritual significance for us – our oneman there was awesome. So we want to do another oneman show there, almost by way of thanks. Of course we want to progress, but we also want to play that venue again!
KAEDE: This tour, wherever we go, we want to stand on stage full of confidence. And that’s exactly what it’s going to be!
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ViSULOG 