Chronicle, recordings in Sweden (Translation of the post on 28th Feb)

Today is the final post on the 4th album, "Chronicle", and we are going to focus on recordings in Sweden from 19th January to 12th February 2009.

First of all, how come had Fujifabric decided to do recordings in Sweden?
Shimura kun explained in DVD attached to a CD of 'Chronicle', "I wanted to work with people who possessed an atmosphere which we don't have. No drummer in Fujifabric at the moment, so if there is an opportunity offering a drummer, producing, recording, and a new input to our music at one place all together, then it is killing three birds with one stone, I thought.", "It was the first experience for Fujifabric to make something in cooperation with other artists.".

It was The Merrymakers, a Swedish based musical duo composed of Anders Hellgren and David Myhr, chosen to work with Fujifabric.  (The band decided to dissolve in 2010 to go on different ways, though. Please find more details in their website, The Merrymakers.)

This is merely my guess, but Puffy, who belong to Sony Music Artists, as well as Fujifabric, has worked with The Merrymakers before (music of "Boom Boom Beat" released on 18th July 2007, "My Story" released on 6th August 2008, were made and arranged by The Merrymakers.  The latest single CD of Puffy, "Happy Birhtday" is also composed by David Myhr.).  That's might be why Fujifabric was offered an opportunity to do recordings not in the other countries, but in Sweden.



All the songs in "Chronicle" were recorded in The Merrymakers' private studio called "Monogram Recordings" in a suburb of Stockholm in Sweden, except two songs, "Sugar!!" and "Onaji Tsuki" (The Same Moon).
Referring to this cozy little studio, Shimura kun said, "there are studios in Japan which satisfy our requirements, but regardless of technology and facility, we could do recordings being surrounded by land, town, buildings, people and atmosphere of Europe.  So thanks to the surrounding environment,  this album must be different to the one recorded in Japan, I think.".
The 15th song in the album called "Stockholm" was made there in Stockholm, and the state that snow falls silently and piles up on the ground, and Scandinavian white silence in Sweden is beautifully described in the song, I personally feel.  Not only in the lyrics, but more on the musical aspect.  It is lucky that the songs was chosen to be included in the album because of a silly reason that there are not songs like this in Japan!



During their stay in Sweden, Fujifabric members visited the world's first open-air museum (find more details in their homepage Skansen in English) to celebrated Daisuke Kanazawa's (keyboardist) 29th birthday.  Sweden is a country with splendid culture in Scandinavia.  Swedish people have accumulated great wisdom under harsh weather over centuries.

Ricard Huxflux Nettermalm, who was a native-born man of Stockholm, joined in Fujifabric as a support drummer to make the album.  All the members praised loud him, and Shimura kun said in his book that he even wanted to take him back to Japan!  "Drum sound that Ricard played is the sound that Japanese drummer will not be able to make, but not like the one of American - it was the sound of Swedish, maybe.", said Shimura.

When being surrounded by foreign language, weather, people and food, we can see what we normally don't see...Good and bad sides of our own country, also ones of foreign coutries, vice versa, including ourselves.



After having done a hard work, "It is not a pipe dream for us to do our concerts at abroad.  This journey broadened my view, and was meaningful really.", he recalled.

If he had a chance to move to somewhere young artists (not only music, but paintings, ballet, theatre acts, and so on) have freedom to do their work, like in UK.  In fact, "wish to go somewhere like Italy or France to observe many things there.", Shimura kun said in interviews in DVD.

"Chronicle" is the album that makes us feel a grief and evanescence of life.

Today's song is "Anthem".