"'Cause What I Do Is All for Me to Choose"
An Interview with Azusa Suga
With the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Palestine, I wish to dedicate this forward to the charities helping support those suffering under such painful occupation and oppression. Please consider donating to the UNRWA or WAQFOREVER to help the vital aid for Palestinians to continue.
Over the past year, For Tracy Hyde’s presence in my life has only grown and grown. I feel like it was a shame to only delve into their discography around the time they disbanded, but listening to the band’s music has felt so distinct from all of my other listening experiences as a result. The livestream of their final ever performance marked a beginning for me as it led to me discovering the other projects of the band’s members, particularly the work of Azusa Suga: the driving force behind For Tracy Hyde since the very beginning.
As a result, when preparing for this interview, I thought it’d be an injustice to limit discussion to just For Tracy Hyde, so I endeavoured to make it as holistic of Azusa’s entire musical journey as possible. Of course it was an inevitable, and firmly integral, topic to cover, but even beyond that I learnt so much through preparing for the interview and then speaking to Azusa: about himself, his music, his world, and the world we share. This led to a truly unique interview experience, and a first for me to share given that it was conducted in English!
An Interview with Azusa Suga
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1.
Mustafa: “Hey Azusa! You had a live show yesterday, right? How’d it go?”
Azusa: “Oh yeah! It went decently, I guess! I mean, I fucked up with the setlist three times! I kept on forgetting what the next song was, it would be like “Are we playing this song?” And the rest of the band would be going into a different song, like “woah, woah, woah, wait, I’m not ready for that one!” *laughs*”
The opportunity for this interview presented itself in December after speaking to Azusa for the first time (and finding out that he’d read my blog before!!), and was scheduled for February, the day after he’d hosted a set of live shows as part of his project Pacific Ocean Park!
Mustafa: “I always wondered if that happens often! Every time I watch recordings of live shows, it feels like everyone’s in so much sync that they just know which songs are coming next!”
Azusa: “Yeah! I mean, it doesn’t really happen that much with me, but I guess last night was an exception *laughs*”
Mustafa: “I saw literally a few minutes ago that you were hanging out with U-1 today!”
Azusa: “Oh yeah!”
Mustafa: “I thought it was pretty cool to see just before doing an interview where I’d be talking about For Tracy Hyde!”
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2.
Mustafa: “Alongside AprilBlue, you’ve been working with multiple different groups over the past year since For Tracy Hyde’s disbandment: RAY, airattic, and recently ponderosa may bloom with the lead singer of AprilBlue, too! What ethos and mindset have you had across all these different projects?”
Azusa: “Well, to be honest, nothing much has really changed! For example, when I first started working with RAY, I consulted with their producer on how much I should adjust what I’m doing for the idol scene. For example: ‘Should I change my style of song writing to fit the idol crowd more, or should I just do what I’ve always been doing?’ He said ‘No, you don’t really need to change anything, just be who you are!’, so that’s kind of been in my mindset when I’ve been working with other projects the past few years. Nothing’s really changed, I’m just doing what I’ve always been doing!”
Mustafa: “With RAY specifically, I was really surprised when I first found out you’d worked with them! I always had this image of the band scene and the idol scene being quite separate, so your collaboration seemed like a really unique coalescence! Of course there’s the shoegaze overlap, and Mav from For Tracy Hyde has also written for them. How did you first start out working with idol groups?”
Azusa: “As you mentioned, I think traditionally the idol scene and band scene have really been two separate entities. I think it was 2015 or 16 when RAY’s producer….. he used to produce for another group called DotsTokyo, who were the precursor to RAY. At that time, DotsTokyo was still starting up and the producer was looking for songwriters who could contribute material to them. He actually has a background playing in a band himself, an amateur emo punk band from ages ago before subscription services, I can’t really remember the name! Having a background in the band scene, he wanted to bridge the gap between the idol scene and band scene, so he was looking for songwriters active as musicians in bands. We had a mutual friend who introduced me to him, because he thought I’d be a perfect fit for them! That’s about it, I guess!”
I smiled and nodded when Azusa mentioned DotsTokyo, as I’d discovered their music half a year prior and become really fond of them! Azusa is the lyricist, composer, and arranger of ‘Soda Float Kibun’, which is my favourite song by the group!!
Mustafa: “That’s so awesome!!!! So that was around 2016 when you were also in For Tracy Hyde. You started AprilBlue whilst you were in For Tracy Hyde too, so with these projects at the time were you considering your options for where you wanted your career to go in the future?”
Azusa: “I don’t really think too much about things, I was just doing whatever I wanted to do and it ended up this way! For better or for worse!”
Mustafa: “I only discovered airattic a few weeks ago when I was preparing for the interview, and I’m honestly really blown away by their sound! I really like their approach to instrumentation! You’d worked on ‘Ghost Girls Generation’, the first song from their most recent EP, and their earlier song ‘Film Reel Of Our Youth’, so what’s your relationship with all these different idol groups right now? Is it a contract thing, or are you close with them in a similar way to how you were close to your bandmates in For Tracy Hyde?”
Azusa: “Yeah it’s the former! In both cases of RAY and airattic, their management office approached me saying they were looking for songwriters. RAY and airattic belong to the same label, so there’s an interchange between those two regarding songwriter recommendations!”
airattic’s franticness comes to fruition spectacularly thanks to the importance they place on live instrumentation for their recordings and live performances!! They’re, aptly, electricity manifest.
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3.
Mustafa: “I was really blown away by your solo work with Letters to Annika, I really love the sound and personal element to it! I’m terrible at ascribing sounds to genres, but it has a heavy Surf-Pop sound usually associated with the US! I know you’ve got a lot of history with inspiration from the West, so I was wondering how you perceive Letters to Annika as a project alongside the rest of your works? Will we see a return to it?”
Azusa: “Well, there’s not really much context to it in my body of work! It was just a spontaneous idea that I had. I’ve always been really into bands like DIIV and Beach Fossils, American bands who are really inspired by the Surf-Rock sound. Both bands have recently been taking different directions with their sound, so they’ve been diving into other genres and they’ve pretty much left their former Surf-Rock sound, so I thought that I might as well fill up the gap by making my own Surf-Rock songs. After seven songs or so, I just got bored of it!”
Mustafa: “Really???!”
Azusa: “*Laughs* yeah! I mean there’s only so much that you can do within one specific niche of sound! Surf-Rock is a pretty narrow niche in that sense, as there’s only so much you can do.”
Mustafa: “So do you see Letters to Annika as solely a Surf-Rock project, and not a solo Azusa Suga venture?”
Azusa: “Not, not at all, not at all! It’s not really a statement of who I am and what I wanna do!”
Mustafa: “In that case: which project of yours so far, or any still to come in the future, do you think is something you can call a personal statement? A true embodiment of your philosophy on art?”
Azusa: “To be honest, that was For Tracy Hyde! I’ve always had total control of the overall aesthetic of the group, the artwork, the lyrics, the song writing, the concepts of each album, their structures. Yeah, I guess all the For Tracy Hyde albums are pretty much that: statements of who I am, what I think art should be, how I want to portray the world, and how I want my listeners to perceive the world!”
Mustafa: “That really resonates a lot with me, and I happy to hear that’s how you perceive the band!
Something I’ve noticed with it….. for context: I was quite late to listening to For Tracy Hyde, while you guys were active I was familiar with your name and music but I didn’t get around to diving into your sound properly. Of course when the breakup was announced, that was when I started to dig in a lot more. I think it’s a shame that I got into you guys so late, that it took a disbandment for me to properly get into your discography.”
Azusa: “Well, better late than never, you know! *laughs*”
Mustafa: “True!
Something that I’ve felt with your discography is that the sounds and the purpose you give the music resonate with me so much! Obviously shoegaze is synonymous with nostalgia, but the way that you do it is multifaceted! On your later two albums, Ethernity and Hotel Insomnia, you moved away from the idyllic, dreamy, ‘suspended from reality’ feel of the previous albums, and began to really hone in on awareness of what’s going on around us. I really appreciate the outlook that those two albums had!
You mentioned before in an interview that the songs of For Tracy Hyde are all kind of like a tribute to/personification of your dream girl. Eureka also mentioned that for each song in Hotel Insomnia she would personify them as a girl and draw them! I’m really interested in that idea of personifying your music! How did that come about, and how does it tie into your artistic ethos?”
Azusa: “*laughs* The dream girl thing only applies to the first three albums! Back then, those albums were more informed by my personal background and what kind of situation my life was in back then. I’m not really outspoken, I don’t really socialise with people. Establishing relationships with people, finding love and attachment, that sort of emotion, has always been pretty tough for me, especially when I was making the first three albums. I was feeling really alone, didn’t have much to hold on to, feeling really emotionally insecure. But then, you know, one day I just…. got a girlfriend *laughs*, and you know, the thing is when your emotional needs are satisfied, pursuing love doesn’t really matter that much anymore, and then all of a sudden you’re a lot more conscious towards society and the world in general, and how things are going, especially with the Covid pandemic, Trump, the Russian war, what’s happening right now. Society has been a huge deal for, not only me, but everybody. It’s a shared experience across the world.
At the start, I just was just sorta turning my eyes away from what’s going on, and was just making this idyllic, nostalgic music as a means of escapism. That doesn’t really resonate with me that much anymore, and especially since shoegaze and dream pop tend to be associated with escapism, and not facing the world as it is. I guess I wanted to change that, and challenge the status quo of shoegaze, if you will. I guess that’s what really drove me to create the last two For Tracy Hyde albums.”
Mustafa: “The way you described it as being detached from reality, I feel like it did fit in with the purpose For Tracy Hyde had when it started. Obviously youth and nostalgia are really important to the band, so I think it’s fitting that the first few albums leaned heavily into them. Of course, inevitably, as all things do, youth ends and in that transition to adulthood you experience that wakeup to reality. I guess in a way, the last two albums are still quite cohesive with the narrative set up by the first three!
Specifically with Ethernity, I was first properly exposed to that album through the album cover of the digital version of Hotel Insomnia, which features a short biography on the side. It speaks about how Ethernity was meant to contemplate America’s nature as a superpower. Back then, it felt like a really vast topic to tackle, but in the past year I’ve started to look at the world a lot more, with open eyes. When I look at America, I’m very jaded by it, the government specifically, and I really like how that’s portrayed on the album. A moment that’s really stuck with me is Interdependance Day Part II!”
Azusa: “Oh yeah!”
Mustafa: “When it plays that speech by Barack Obama on Independence Day Part II……. I’m not a fan of his at all, I don’t think he’s a good person with a lot of the things he’s done, so It was very surprising for me to hear his voice as I was listening to the album, and it made me wonder ‘how am I supposed to feel?’, it was very difficult for me to identify in that immediate moment how to feel in response to hearing him. Then, in the middle of the song, there’s a piano that kicks in, and it feels really tumultuous, there’s so much tragedy and sorrow imbued in it, and that’s the feeling that I’ve latched onto through which I interpret that track. I wouldn’t say it’s a conventionally ‘enjoyable’ experience, because it makes me reflect on very negative things, but it’s such a powerful work of art in the way it invokes those feelings, and I think that power in itself is beautiful.
When I saw the music video for Interdependence Day part I, I was really struck by the moment when Eureka’s covering all these objects and symbols of innocence with blood. I know you lived in the US when you were younger, so I want to know specifically how that bloody and political side to America came up and why you wanted to depict it on the album.”
Azusa: “I guess, likewise to what you said, I’ve become really jaded by what’s been happening in America over the past few years, like with Trump and Black Lives Matter. I really wanted to portray both the good and the bad. I did live in the States when I was little but that was a long time ago and to be honest, I don’t really remember anything about it. What I do remember is mostly the good stuff, like playing computer games, going to see baseball, watching movies, that sort of stuff. But obviously there’s a bad side to everything, and that side was getting more and more apparent year by year. I guess I just wanted to acknowledge that broadening gap between this sort of idealised image of the States, and how the States are currently. This was a big deal because I’ve always been sort of stuck between identifying myself as American and Japanese. I came back to Japan when I was 7 years old, and I dabbled in childhood developmental psychology a bit when I was in college, and apparently 7 is a pretty important age in terms of determining one’s own national identity: you identify yourself with the country you live in, at that time, and I was sort of halfway through the age of 7 when I came back to Japan, and back then I was totally unable to communicate in Japanese! I mean I could sort of understand what people were saying, but I couldn’t speak a word of Japanese myself.
I always sorta stood out as an outsider in Japanese society. Still, to this day, there are some aspects of my mannerisms which I think are really American, like the way I tend to speak louder when I’m speaking English! I tend to have stronger opinions towards things than most Japanese people do, like politics and stuff. In that sense I still feel like I don’t really fit in to Japanese society, and a part of me has always wanted to, I don’t know, not really return full-time to the States, but I’ve always imagined what it would’ve been like if I stayed in America and grew up as an adult there. I’ve always wanted to revisit my American roots, but year by year things seem to be getting worse and worse there, and I’ve become less and less interested in returning there. At the same time, however, I do have this emotional attachment to the States, so it really hurts part of me to see how things are going there recently. Yeah, I guess, part of the album was dealing with this grief, getting over this loss of what I thought could have been a better life, letting go of it….. it’s so hard to put this into words, you know!”
Mustafa: “I really relate to what you described, as even though I’ve lived in the UK almost my entire life, I did live in the US for a little bit as a kid as well! I found it really jarring living in a different place at the time, and of course we ended up moving back to the UK, but I do have good memories of the people I met! I think it can be strange: culturally in the US there’s so much going on there, especially artistically, and even when growing up in the UK, so much of what we’re exposed to is all from the US, so it becomes an integral inevitability, realising how that tether is connected to the grander state of the US, and how that entity isn’t as beautiful or as perfect as we imagined growing up. Especially on a personal level, I really appreciate how you expressed that on Ethernity particularly, and I think the album is one of the most important albums I’ve listened to in recent times!”
Azusa: “Oh really?”
Mustafa: “Yeah! Honestly, even when I first came across it I couldn’t anticipate how I’d be able to relate to it, but after listening to it I realised that it’s a really important statement! So yeah, thank you for creating and expressing it! I really love it!”
Azusa: “No, thank you! Do you know the website Rate Your Music?”
Mustafa: “Oh yeah, I’m on there!”
Azusa: “If you go and see For Tracy Hyde’s discography, Ethernity is by far our least popular album, so yeah *laughs*. I’ve sort of always perceived it as a bit of a flunk I guess, so it’s really good to know there are people out there who actually appreciate it *laughs*!”
Mustafa: “It can be jarring! Even when I first came across it, I knew the sound and style that For Tracy Hyde had, the dreaminess of it all, so the album does throw you off and catch you off-guard a little bit! At first I was intrigued by it, but I can see how some people might be put off by it because they might see it as ‘out of character’, which I don’t really think is an appropriate way to describe or perceive art, especially as the album is very much in-character given your past experiences and how they’re connected to all of your music.
On the topic of the US: when For Tracy Hyde disbanded you hadn’t gone on an international tour, and that was something you described as being quite important to you and something you wanted to do, it being a dream of yours. Now, obviously with your desire to returning to the US having faded a little bit, do you still want to do that tour in the US as much as you did before?”
Azusa: “Well, to be honest, I still want to do a US tour because, obviously it still has a very strong place in culture around the world, it’s so hugely influential, and a lot of my favourite US bands come from the states. For example, I’ve always been a huge fan of The Beach Boys, and I’d been to California when I was a kid, but I don’t remember anything about it, so I do want to revisit California especially! Yeah, I guess as a musician, going back to the States is still one of my personal dreams! I do have friends who have toured the States, the Singaporean band Sobs, for example, and they did seem to enjoy the tour, but at the same time Raph from Sobs mentioned he couldn’t imagine himself living in the States, and he didn’t really care about going back *laughs*. I guess it’s going to be a mixed experience!”
Mustafa: “*laughs* You mentioned wanting to go back to California. If I may ask, where specifically in California did you go? I ask because I lived in Fresno during my time in the States!”
Azusa: “I think I’ve been to both Los Angeles and San Francisco!”
Mustafa: “I remember passing through San Francisco from and to the airport, driving over the Golden Gate Bridge! That’s all the exposure I’ve had to the city *laughs*.
On the topic of international tours too: obviously with America the juggernaut it is, it’s kind of a priority, but please do keep the UK in mind as well *laughs*!”
Azusa: “Yeah! Totally! If I had to choose between the US and the UK, I think I’m inclined towards touring the UK more because obviously shoegaze is from the UK, the Beatles are from the UK. Pretty much about 70% of the music I’m into is from the UK! The UK is obviously a big deal in music!”
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4.
Mustafa: “With the history and years of experience you’ve had, I’m interested in your perspective of the landscape, and industry in general, of Japanese music currently. You were releasing For Tracy Hyde’s music on Bandcamp when you started off, before moving to P-Vine for Film Bleau. How do you feel the Japanese music industry is right now? I can be wary of music labels because I dislike the way some can constrict and limit artists, and redirect the focus away from artistic intention towards marketability. Based on your experiences, and your own contemplations, how do you feel about the state of it all right now?”
Azusa: “Jeeeeez, that’s a huge one…… I mean, most of my musical experience has been limited to the indie scene so I don’t really have any experience in the major label scene, so I can’t really say anything about it. I think things are getting a bit better because artists in the mainstream are sort of diversifying a bit more.
For a long time, being this isolated island nation, Japan has always been doing its own thing regardless of what’s going on outside of the country, but I think that more and more both music listeners and musicians are paying more attention to the current trends of the US and UK scenes for example, and trying to take and learn whatever they can and incorporate it into their own music. In that sense, the mainstream is definitely getting healthier I think, but on the other hand what’s always been the case with the Japanese music scene in general is that people tend to really care about how bands look. How they dress, how they act in public, that sort of thing. One big part of For Tracy Hyde has always been disregarding fashion, I guess. All those superficial values that people in the major scene tend to really care about, which is why I think the major labels hated us *laughs*! I mean, that sort of worries me because there’re so many talented musicians out there who, for lack of a better word, aren’t ‘dressed well’, and those bands tend to end up not getting any attention at all compared to bands and acts who are musically lesser but look better. I don’t really know how it is in the US or the UK, but my personal perception is that that sort of ‘lookism’ to music isn’t really as prevalent there as it is in Japan. Bands can be dressed like ordinary Joes and just succeed on the strength of what they’re doing rather than how they look, which really isn’t the case in Japan, so I guess that’s one thing I’m concerned about.”
Mustafa: “With that kind of ethos in the mainstream, where all the money is, do you feel like that creates a partition/separation between independent music and the more mainstream music? Or do you see some ways that musicians can kind of slip from one to the other?”
Azusa: “Well, yeah I do think that it creates a sort of partition because… it’s kinda hard to say….. on one hand I think the major label scene is opening up towards more indie sounds. You can be playing music that’s really informed by alternative rock/indie rock/indie pop, and still get signed to a major label. At the same time, you’’ll be constantly demanded to be dressed well in a marketable manner, look good, wear makeup whenever necessary, and most indie bands just don’t do that and don’t care about that sort of shit. It is a partition that’s actually enhanced by the fact that it’s less about what you’re playing and more about your looks.”
Mustafa: “I always had a hunch that that was the way things worked, so I’m really glad to hear your insight because I feel like you’ve got really nuanced perceptions based on all the time you’ve spent working with music and being in the live scene spotlight.
That leads me to the live show you did yesterday that’s part of your Pacific Ocean Park project, which is a project I’m really grateful for! I really love how that’s cultivating and nurturing the shoegaze live scene there. What led to you wanting to set that up, and what does the project mean to you?”
Azusa: “I’ve always been sort of doing similar things. Even before adopting the ‘Pacific Ocean Park’ title, I’ve always been hosting gigs and parties at least once a year for the past decade or so. It’s always sort of been what I’m doing.
When I was starting up as a musician, there were always musicians a decade older than me who always giving me advice on how I could do things: how to make friends, how to score slots for gigs. They’ve always been really helpful for me, they’ve been fostering figures for me as a musician who was starting out. I’ve always been grateful for their presence, so I wanted to return the favour by doing the same for musicians who are younger than me and securing places where they can enjoy playing, especially with the…. have you heard of the ticket quota system?”
Mustafa: “Mhm, yeah! I first heard about it in the interview I conducted with Tana from Penguin no Yuuutsu.”
Azusa: “Oh yeah!”
Mustafa: “I learnt about it from her, and it’s come up in other reading I’ve done since then, and I really…. don’t like it! I don’t think it fosters or encourages musicians!”
Azusa: “It’s getting less of a problem year by year, but back in the early 2010’s, when I was starting up, it was still very much a prevalent system in the live scene in Japan. What really helped me was that my seniors in the band scene taught me how to work around the system by hosting my own gigs, or getting friends to invite you to their parties instead of securing regular live bookings on a weekday night, which practically don’t pay at all. That was really what helped me get going as a musician, so I wanted to make sure that my counterparts in the shoegaze scene could just have fun and play music that they feel is dearest to their heart without worrying about finances.”
Mustafa: “As of right now, now that you’re helping other musicians, and given the history and the status of For Tracy Hyde, what is your perspective on your role in Japan’s music scene?
Azusa: “Jeez, that’s kinda hard to answer without self-grandeur!
I think it’s fairly objective to say that For Tracy Hyde has pretty much been the only sort of commercially-viable shoegaze band. I actually earn quite a bit of money through my royalties thanks to my career with For Tracy Hyde. Back when I was starting up as a shoegaze musician in the 2000-2010’s, all the things my mentors would tell me was that “shoegaze does not sell, practically nobody cares about shoegaze”. Actually, one specific detail that a friend of mine told me back then was: when you send out press releases to the media when you release records, if you mention the word ‘shoegaze’ in those press release, record stores will be carrying less copies of your record!”
Mustafa: “Really?????!”
Azusa: “Yeah! At least a hundred or so copies less. I mean, shoegaze was really unpopular back then. I’ve always been passionate about shoegaze, and I really wanted to change that perception of shoegaze. I wanted to prove that shoegaze can actually make a decent amount of money and be decently popular, and you don’t have to betray who you are and what you want to do to achieve as a band. I guess we sort of managed to do that. Every now and then, younger kids come up to me saying that For Tracy Hyde has been a huge inspiration for them, and they actually started playing music and established their own bands because of us, things like that. That’s always been a huge encouragement for what I’m doing. I guess, with Pacific Ocean Park and whatever else I’m doing, I really want to push that further and serve as encouragement and inspiration to others.”
Mustafa: “That’s really awesome to hear, thank you for sharing that!
The basis upon which For Tracy Hyde disbanded, it was linked to you wanting to pursue music as a career while other members didn’t want to. I found that really interesting, obviously because with For Tracy Hyde being so popular, and you mentioned the royalties, I imagined it would be a band that was very financially sustainable, so I initially assumed the reasons for disbanding were instead more regarding the creative side of the band.
On the idea of pursuing music as a career, do you feel like that would provide you with creative opportunities, or do you think that would impose limits on creativity? Do you feel like a balance between the two is possible?”
Azusa: “Yeah, I think I’d actually be able to balance it a decent bit. I mean, a few years ago idols doing shoegaze was totally unimaginable, now fast forward a few years and I’m actually writing a couple songs a year for idol groups and other artists who want to try their hands with the shoegaze sound. I’m sort of becoming the go-to person when someone wants to sound shoegaze. I guess nobody could have imagined that happening a few years ago when shoegaze was still unpopular so I think that there’s a timing for everything. When the timing’s right, if you stick long enough doing your own thing for a couple of years, the time will come when you can actually shine through I guess doing what you want. Thankfully I’ve never really felt the urge to change what I’m doing or who I am, because of the support I’ve found over the years. I haven’t really been feeling creatively restrained by all this commission work and outside work I’ve been doing.
Actually, yeah, I don’t really think that I’d need to compromise on my creative vision to make a living out of music, and if I could pursue a career in music full-time, that would actually just open up more opportunities because I’d have that much more time to dedicate to my craft and learn new things, and find new clients who’d want to work with me.”
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5.
Mustafa: “I wanted to ask specifically about your really early days. You had your own netlabel called Catana Records, through which you released the first ever For Tracy Hyde album onto Bandcamp which never released on streaming! What was it like releasing music in this way?”
Azusa: “The thing was that Bandcamp wasn’t really a thing in Japan back then because they didn’t have a Japanese page at the time, it was all in English, so if you didn’t have a decent command of English then you couldn’t easily navigate through it or upload music yourself. At that time, to be honest, I wasn’t really interested in the Japanese music scene in general. I mean, I didn’t care about the major label scene, and I didn’t really know what was going on underground either, I was sticking to shoegaze and older music from the 90’s like Shibuya-Kei. But then a friend of mine, Yoshiki from this band called Boyish- about half of For Tracy Hyde’s member were from Boyish-...”
Mustafa: “U-1 as well!”
Azusa: “Yeah! Actually this was before Boyish started, but Yoshiki pointed out that there were some cool bands in the Tokyo indie scene who were actually taking cues from the American indie scene and making it their own. Bands like Mitsume, Teen Runnings, Super VHS, those sorts of bands who are really inspired by the US Lo-Fi/Surf Rock sort of scene. I didn’t really know that bands were taking note of what was going on in the US, so I was really excited and I went to see gigs of those bands with Yoshiki and U1 and those guys back then. That really stimulated me! I wasn’t really making music at the time. I used to be in a band before that called Daydrop, which just broke up after a gig or so. I was totally depressed because being in a band meant so much to me, especially as it was the first band I ever started, so I wasn’t really motivated to make rock music back then, but this newfound source of inspiration in the Tokyo-indie scene made me want to make my own music again and find likeminded artists who took inspiration from what was going on in America and the UK. I wanted to form a community of those like-minded artists: releasing music through a common faucet in the form of a netlabel, and organise gigs. That was the main ideal behind the netlabel Catana Records.”
Mustafa: “I feel like that’s a little similar to what you’re doing right now with Pacific Ocean Park, just translated to a more in-person thing!
The netlabel hasn’t been active for a while now, over a decade now. So many people are a lot more active on Bandcamp now, Japanese artists included, and pretty much all of the international audiences access Japanese music through the internet. Do you think netlabels could still have a relevant role in this current climate, or do you think they’re a relic of the past? Do you think they could be versatile in some form?”
Azusa: “I don’t know…. To be honest I haven’t really been following the internet label scene for the past few years. It does seem to be shrinking I guess: I don’t really see people mentioning them that much anymore. There were a few huge internet labels like Maltine Records, but there’s been a huge gap between acts who become successful and move onto bigger things, and acts who just stop activities and disappear from the scene. Especially when the big acts move on to bigger labels and the internet label scene just becomes that much less active as a result. They do seem to be a relic of the past with not much stronghold on the scene anymore.”
Mustafa: “It’s a shame, with how it’s all become so ephemeral!”
Azusa: “It’s sad because it’s really cool to have DIY communities with total creative and artistic freedom!”
Mustafa: “Those values are really important to me when it comes to art in general, so when I came across your netlabel I was really fascinated by it, and it felt like discovering a treasure trove of music!”
‘Halation’, one of my favourite songs from He(r)art, originally released on Azusa’s net label, sung entirely by himself! It feels distinct from Eureka’s performance yet shares that same palpable nocturnal feeling! Their first ever Bandcamp release also includes the first version of ‘Shady Sherbert Lane’, which is another of my favourites!
Mustafa: “I also came across your SoundCloud, where you’d also been releasing music under Shortcake Collage Tape. I find it so interesting how you were making all those sample-heavy tracks alongside For Tracy Hyde. I’m interested in why you wanted to do this sample work alongside the band: was it something you were considering moving into, becoming your forte in the future, or was it just a side-thing the same way Letters For Annika is?”
Azusa: “Yeah, I guess it was a side thing. Back then, chillwave was a huge thing: acts like Washed Out, Neon Indian, and I was really into the chillwave scene. I wanted to make music in that style, and at the same time, back then, there was a lot of sample-heavy music going on in the indie scene. Acts like The Avalanches and The Go Team, and I was really into that as well, so I thought it would be cool to combine the two and make this easy-going, relaxing music. To be honest, my memory’s sort of fuzzy about it so I don’t really remember what I was thinking back then!
Not many people in Japan were really taking notice of chill wave in general, and also the vaporwave scene was sort of budding in the States, but nobody in Japan had heard of vaporwave back then so I thought it’d be interesting if I could be the first vaporwave artist in Japan, but it didn’t really work well because people just don’t care about anything that they haven’t heard of before, so in the end it didn’t really garner the attention that I was hoping it would. The thing is, after about three years, the vaporware aesthetic just blew up in Japan because Japanese people have always sort of been fascinated with how Westerners perceive Japanese culture: the exoticism and sort of distorted, exaggerated, image of Japan, so vaporwave ended up becoming a huge thing in Japan and that really irritated me because…. ‘If I was three years later, I would have totally blown up!!!’ *laughs*. So the lesson I learned was that if you’re too early to the party, nobody would really care about it! *laughs*.
Back then, one thing I was really passionate about was catching up with trends in the US and UK scenes in realtime: doing whatever’s going on at that time as soon possible. However after I did Shortcake Collage Tape, I then started to wait about three years or so for Japan to catch up, and then start imitating what’s going on overseas.”
Mustafa: “Do you think there could be a return to Shortcake Collage Tape?”
Azusa “Nahhh, I mean, it’s too time-consuming! Finding the right sources to sample from, assembling them in a meaningful way!”
Mustafa: “Speaking specifically about sourcing samples: the main song that I’ve listened to from Shortcake Collage Tape, and it really grabbed my attention when I heard it, is the song ‘Del Mar’, on which you sampled ‘Tama Tama Newtown’ by Soutaiseiriron!”
Azusa: “Oh yeah!! You caught it, yeah!”
Mustafa: “That sample….. Soutaiseiriron is one of my favourite bands ever, so when I heard that, it felt like worlds had collided between the realm of For Tracy Hyde, a band I really really look up to, and Soutaiseiriron who are one of the first Japanese bands I ever got into. I mean the song’s just on Soundcloud, it didn’t get a proper release or anything, it felt like I’d found literal gold! I really wanted to ask, if you can remember, why you specifically wanted to use that sample from that song, and what’s your history with Soutaiseirion? ‘Tama Tama Newtown’ is one of my favourite songs by them, and that *hums melody from the song*, that melody is the most memorable part!”
Azusa: “Ah jeez, I don’t know… I think the logic was that the *hums melody* sounded like what the hook of an indie rock anthem would be. I could totally imagine people singing along to the melody, so I thought it would be interesting to incorporate it into a totally different song that sounds nothing like the original Soutaiseiriron song. My memory’s sorta fuzzy about it!
But yeah! I was really into Soutaiseiriron, especially Hi-Fi Shinsho, and…. what was the record after that?”
Mustafa: “Synchroniciteen!”
Azusa: “Oh yeah! I was really into those albums, especially the former! But yeah, as much as I enjoyed listening to them, I don’t think they really inspired me or influenced me in terms of songwriting. I don’t know, maybe there might be some similarities between us if you dig into it, but I don’t really know.”
Mustafa: “I think, maybe in terms of musical style there isn’t much of an overlap, but I think the approach that you both had to band image is really similar. I mean they never do interviews, they do their own thing with their image, so there’s a kind of overlap there!”
Their last release was in 2019, which feels really recent to me as they haven’t released music that often over the past decade! But with For Tracy Hyde, since 2019 you guys released New Young City, Ethernity, Hotel Insomnia and then your disbandment, all in the time since the most recent Soutaiseirrion release. So much has happened, yet even now when I look at the release date for New Young City my brain registers it as “this is a new album”, so it’s a little jarring how quickly everything’s happened over the past few years!”
It’s an understatement to say I love Soutaiseiriron.
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6.
Mustafa: “A common theme that comes up in your music, and when you discuss it in interviews, is the idea of beauty. I really like how you mention that specifically by word because oftentimes when I listen to music and hear something that really moves me, I’ll describe it as beautiful but I don’t often see the artists themselves use that word. What is beauty to you? What does it mean to you, and how did it end up having that importance in your artistic expression?”
Azusa: “Jeeeeeeeez..... Things are getting pretty philosophical! Damn…. ‘the definition of beauty’, jeez, I haven’t really thought about it……. I don’t know, I mean, jeez I don’t really know where to start.
The thing is that my entire life has been one huge existential crisis because ever since childhood I’ve always been afraid of death. I still am: I think about death everyday *laughs*. I’m still afraid of death to the point of that I find myself totally crippled at times, unable to do anything, because I’m so scared of death. This fear of death, I guess, has really made me appreciate these fleeting moments in life. Moments of joy, moments of sorrow, intense emotions I guess. Scenes and things that evoke that sort of strong emotion. I guess that’s what I think is the most beautiful thing on Earth: being able to evoke emotions within other people, or having other people inspire emotions in you, emotions that you didn’t know you had within, or were there all along. That’s what I’ve always aimed to do, because people don’t forget what caused those emotions within. The people or moments that made those emotions manifest within you. I guess I just want people to remember who I was and what I did whilst I was alive. That’s always been a major motive for me making music. Jeez, I can’t really find the right conclusion to this! I guess that’s what I think beauty is!”
Mustafa: “The way you describe beauty speaks so much to me! Things coming to an end is something I’m always mindful of. Whether it’s death, or even when bands disband. I wrote a post about it on my blog a while ago, about how it feels so sad when bands end but at the same time it’s just so beautiful to witness. The same way with watching For Tracy Hyde’s last performance, there were a lot of songs that I was hearing for the first time in that live show, and when it comes to the ephemeral nature of things, it reminds me of a quote from the band before: ‘lending a sense of eternity to fleeting moments has always been the main concept of our music’.”
Azusa: “Oh yeah!”
Mustafa: “That’s perfect!! Even with my own experience of your music, it summarises it perfectly. Even though For Tracy Hyde has come to an end, there is still a boundless world within that music which I’m still exploring one year on from that final live show, which in itself is so beautiful.
If I had to summarise For Tracy Hyde’s music, I would describe it as ‘beautifully ephemeral’. When you described the etymology of the album name ‘Ethernity’, being a portmanteau of ‘ethereal’ and ‘eternity’, I found myself perceiving For Tracy Hyde as both ethereal and ephemeral, and I think it’s special how both those words sound so similar to eachother because of how I feel they naturally summarise the band’s music so perfectly. I guess this is just me voicing my appreciation for the beauty of that one moment, amongst many, of For Tracy Hyde!”
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7.
Mustafa: “When preparing for this interview I deliberately didn’t want to rewatch the final live show’s recording, because I wanted to rely on my memories of that moment. I remember thinking it was quite funny when, just before ‘Leave The Planet’, you said “This is our last song for the night”, but then played ‘Can Little Birds Remember?’ after, and then finished with ‘Her Sarah Records Collection’ after saying ‘this is really, really the last song!’! *Azusa laughs*
That penultimate song you performed, ‘Can Little Birds Remember?’, I remember when I first heard it in that live show that I could immediately tell how special the song was because it’s sung in English. As I was digging through your older interviews, I noticed how you wrote that song because you were a little annoyed at how some Japanese bands would sing in English but it wasn’t that great, so you thought ‘we want to do it better than them’! *laughs*. I really admired that statement and ambition, and I was listening to the studio version recently, I was thinking ‘you literally hit the nail on the head, you perfectly did it!’ Because the lyrics for that song, I’ve spent so much time thinking about them, even more than I do with songs from English artists; it’s on another level, and my favourite lyric has to be “can’t justify the pain of my longing for belonging to you”!
The song’s from New Young City, the title in question being taken from the Supercar song, and you chose that name in particular because you wanted to contrast it with the whole City Pop phenomenon. I wanted to ask about your perspective on that phenomenon in more detail, because in the same way that vaporwave kinda took off in America, City Pop absolutely blew up like crazy. How did you feel about the craze when it started to seep back to Japan, and even now in general?”
Azusa: “City Pop, yeesh…. I don’t really hate it musically, but I guess what sort of annoyed me was how the City Pop culture felt so superficial. It’s all about glorifying the past economical prosperity of Japan, something that we pretty much likely won’t be able to experience in our lifetimes: that short timeframe when Japan was at the centre of global attention, I think will never be the case again in our lifetimes. I think what’s the point in glorifying the past so much rather than solving the problems we have infront of our eyes? That aspect has always bugged me.
Another reason is the City Pop fanbase’s approach towards music in Japan: one moment that really stood out for me was in 2015 or 2016 when I went to see a band called JIV, a really great power pop/pop punk band who have really great songs and a great amount of energy. They were a total blast to see live, but at the show people were just sort of standing politely and clapping with absolutely no sense of excitement or appreciation towards the set. And then right after that, the DJ at the venue started playing a Never Young Beach record and the crowd just went crazy with dancing. I thought: ‘What the FUCK?? You’re just listening to a record, you can do that at home!’. I mean, how can you see a band play with such energy and be indifferent about it, and then go crazy about some random guy just playing a record? That really bugged me, and after that I became more and more dubious about the purpose of the current City Pop revival; it seems so pointless. And so, since then, City Pop has pretty much been my virtual enemy, I guess! I don’t think it’s bad musically in itself, I’m just annoyed by the culture that surrounds it.”
Mustafa: “I feel similarly! When I was 15/16 when City Pop really started to take off, that was one of my earlier exposures to Japanese music, and I did enjoy a lot of the music, but slowly I started to see how it was a very strange and weird case because of the way people would react to it. I feel like people were caught up in this image in their head of what nostalgia should be, something heavily glamourised that focuses a lot on hedonistic city life as you described before, and I think pushing nostalgia to that extent can be a betrayal of authenticity. And then I started to see the whole Future Funk genre that spun out from that.”
Azusa: “Oh yeah, yeah.”
Mustafa: “There are some musicians who make original future funk style music, but there are a lot of people on YouTube who’ll take these old Japanese songs and just speed them up 30%-50%, rearrange it a little, then give it a completely different title and reupload it. So there’ll be people who are enjoying these songs in these really weird Frankenstein forms without knowing the original artist’s name, so I’ve always been really jaded by that as well. I’m not usually this cynical! *laughs*, but these things I notice do bug me a bit, because if we’re going to end up leaning so much into the pasts of these musicians, we should at least give them the respect of acknowledging their contributions and achievements. But yeah, that’s City Pop!”
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8.
Mustafa: “You used to go by the name Natsubot, as stated in your Twitter bio. How did you come up with that name, why did you want to use it, and why do you no longer go by the name? I noticed on the album cover for ‘He(r)art’, where you’re credited as the guitar player by ‘Natsubot’, whilst in the same list of credits it states ‘Written by Azusa Suga’. I’m interested in that distinction which really stood out to me, and what that name means to you.”
Azusa: “Well, I came up with the name quite a long time ago so I don’t really remember what I was thinking and what the logic was behind the name. To be honest, using it in For Tracy Hyde wasn’t a choice I deliberately made. I was sort of forced to do it because everybody else didn’t want to be credited with their real names, they wanted to go with monikers, so I thought it would be weird if I was the only guy in the band going by my real name, so I just had to follow suite and come up with something else I guess. I used the name throughout For Tracy Hyde, whilst I used my real name when credited as songwriter because I thought it would be more helpful if people recognised my real name as I’m building up a career as a musician. That’s the logic behind going by Natsubot as the guitarist while using my real name as the songwriter.”
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9.
Mustafa: “There’s a strong reflective nature in the early For Tracy Hyde works, so I get the impression that you’ve got a bit of a complex relationship with nostalgia as a concept. What do you feel are the blinding aspects of nostalgia, compared to the strengths that the emotion has?”
Azusa: “The strength of nostalgia…. People obviously rely on memories. What they remember, what happened in their lives, it’s always a huge deal because having positive memories that you can look back on is something reinvigorating that keeps you going in your life, especially when things are tough. In that sense, nostalgia is a huge part of human life, and a very important aspect of culture.
At the same time, relying too much on it can distract you from what you should be dealing with, how you should be improving your current state if things aren’t looking great, especially in times like we’re in right now, with all the conflicts going on around the world, and the shortcomings of democracy and modernity as a whole. the faults in the current system that weren’t really apparent in the past decade but are really rapidly getting exposed recently. I mean, I’m not an expert on anything, and I by no means have any ideas on how to solve anything, but I really think that it’s important to take things as they are and think and really openly discuss, or at least express how you’re thinking. It’s becoming more and more valuable, especially as Japanese people tend to shy away from politics and social affairs, so it’s sort of really bugs me that, especially since Japan has been declining in terms of global status, economy, political significance and everything. I wouldn’t say that Japan is becoming less significant culturally- I’m still kind of worried that’s going to happen if things stay like this for longer. I really think it’s an urgent issue for us people involved in the cultural scene to tackle: to bridge the gap between what Japanese people think.
There’s this sort of divide between Japanese people who are active politically and Japanese people who just don’t want to think about anything, especially since in Japan people really dislike artists and musicians and cultural figures who think politically and express their political views because they sort of think that it ruins their appreciation and enjoyment of their work, which has really been annoying. I think it’s our responsibility to change that, and bridge the gap between culture and politics. In tackling that issue we shouldn’t be glorifying what we once were, the economic powerhouse and cultural stronghold that we used to be, we need to be dealing more with the ‘now’ rather than the ‘then’, and in that sense I think the current wave of nostalgia in Japanese culture is serving more as a distraction rather than a positive thing I guess.”
Mustafa: “I appreciate you sharing that, as it’s really meaningful for me on a personal level! With the ongoing genocide that Palestine’s been facing, it’s something that I’ve written about and am mentioning it in the posts I make. I’ve discussed it a little bit with some of the musicians I’ve spoken to in the past, and thankfully they’ve all been really receptive to what I’ve been saying about the matter.
It’s a shame to hear about the divide that you described. Something that’s been so apparent is the disparity between the newer generations and the old way of doing things, so I do hope when they gain more of a foothold in the culture and way of things that we begin to see a lot of change. Thank you so much for sharing that, I know it’s a more serious topic to touch upon, but I really do believe it’s important!”
Azusa: “Yeah, it really is!”
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10.
Mustafa: “You were signed to P-Vine for when Film Bleu released in 2016, so I’m very interested in how you went from being unsigned and working independently to working with P-Vine, who are really big! I know downt signed to them recently as well, who I really love!”
Azusa: “Oh yeah yeah, they did!”
Mustafa: “So I’m really interested in how that came about, how you were noticed by them! What was it like going from being independent to working with a big label. I really want to know about that process!”
Azusa: “Well there isn’t really much behind it: back in 2015 I went to some random show, I don’t remember what the show was, and a friend of mine was there and was talking to some guy I didn’t know. I just sort of jumped into the conversation and it turned out that the random guy that my friend was talking to was working for P-Vine. I mentioned to him that I was in a band called For Tracy Hyde, and he said that he knew us….. and that’s pretty much it! I said I would be really interested in releasing music through a label, and he said that he was interested in us, so it just happened that way! The thing that’s interesting is that my friend who was there was in his own different band, so I was sort of expecting his band to release music through P-Vine too, but that didn’t happen *laughs*! I released through P-Vine but not him, that’s sorta interesting!”
Mustafa: “Can you remember what band he was in?”
Azusa: “He was in a band called Youth Memory, they’re a really great band!”
Mustafa: “I recognise the name from some of your past interviews!
It sounds so spontaneous, and almost like destiny! I mean if you hadn’t been there at that show, then where would For Tracy Hyde be right now? It’s really cool to think about!
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11.
Mustafa: “I feel like I keep circling back to the topic of For Tracy Hyde’s disbandment with my questions, it feels kind of impossible to avoid!
When For Tracy Hyde disbanded, you all released a statement on you website, and you listed some rules that you’ve had throughout the entire time the band’s been active: you never wanted to make the band permanent, so you wanted to bring the curtains down at some point; you didn’t want to describe it as a ‘hiatus’ and wanted to declare it as a permanent thing, and you wanted it to be a positive ending instead of a negative one. I’m really interested in how you came up with those intentions at the start because oftentimes, the impression I’ve had, is that as bands are active they don’t often think much about bringing things to a close!”
Azusa: “Oh yeah!”
Mustafa: “What led to you having those thoughts in your mind? I mean in the middle of the band’s career you guys must’ve been doing really well, so what prompted you to have those thoughts even when being in one of the most important Japanese bands of the past decade?”
Azusa: “Well, I mean, the thing is that….. obviously all bands eventually come to an end. It’s just so untrue to assume that you’ll be in a band forever and that people will be listening to your music forever so I just wanted to make it clear that bands will end, especially given how shoegaze is associated with the fleeting nature of things, and capturing the fleeting essence of things. I thought that it would have been more befitting to have a proper ending as a band.
I also really wanted my band to have its roots in youth culture. I mean, you’re not young forever obviously. People really hate grownups who infiltrate into youth culture pretending to be young. ‘What, you’re in your 40’s and you’re still acting like you’re in your 20’s?? That’s sorta gross!’ you know! So yeah, I thought that it would be totally phoney to not have an ending.
The other thing was that it’s pretty common, especially in the Japanese indie scenes, for bands to just end without announcing that they’re ending. It’d be like: ‘Oh gee, I haven’t heard from those guys for a few years, I wonder what they’re up to….’ and it just turns out that their last Twitter post was from 5 years ago and they’re not doing anything! Like ‘Whaaat the fuuck??’ *laughs*. That’s so insincere and untrue to your fans! I’ve always been annoyed by that. Even when they do announce it, they just sorta release a statement saying ‘We’re going on indefinite hiatus’ or ‘This isn’t the end of our band! We’ll be coming back when we think the time is right!’ and they never come back! That’s so annoying; I’ve seen so many bands do that, and I just didn’t think that was the right move to make as humans, you know: you should be true to whoever loves and supports you and what you’re doing, so I guess that’s the logic behind those rules.”
Mustafa: “Thank you for sharing that! Literally just before you said the words, I was thinking ‘Yeah, it’s quite insincere to end things abruptly like that’!
I think that’s really important: I really appreciate how you have that focus on the relationship between the art and the people who receive it. I feel like oftentimes it can get lost when people are caught up in the logistics of running a band. For me, the main message of artistry and music at the end of the day is expressing something and having that communicated to another person who you may not have otherwise spoken to, so I think it’s really special and admirable to have had those things in mind! It’s artful in itself, I guess, to have thought of those things. It makes the disbandment itself a work of art!”
Azusa: “Yeah, yeah!”
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12.
Mustafa: “I haven’t been able to find any interviews with AprilBlue online!”
Azusa: “Oh yeah, we haven’t done any!”
Mustafa: “I was wondering about the ethos of AprilBlue and what you’re trying to achieve with the band, similar to how For Tracy Hyde wanted to capture the romanticism of nostalgia and youth. What’s AprilBlue’s agenda?”
Azusa: “Well, there’s not really much of an ethos like what For Tracy Hyde had because it was just sorta spontaneous. The reason why the band started in the first place was me and our singer Haruki had been friends for quite a long time- I think it was 2014 when we first met. In 2018 we went to karaoke together for the first time. I’d never heard her sing before but I found out that she had a really good singing voice and she could sing well, and she’d never done music properly in her life: she’d never been in a band, she doesn’t play instruments or anything, and I thought that was a shame so I just wanted to start a band with her so that she can express herself and show her singing abilities to the world!
Other than that, there hasn’t really been a proper concept or ethos behind the work of AprilBlue. If there ever was any semblance of a concept, I guess when we were recording our first album the idea was to record the perfect debut album and then just break up, because we thought that’d have a huge impact on the music scene! We thought that it’d be cool to do that, but it turned out that, by the time we finished recording our first album, we realised that we enjoy being in this band too much to split up! Since then, yeah, it’s just been writing and recording stuff whenever we feel like it without any thoughts about what direction we take as a band, or any concepts, that sort of thing. It’s been really spontaneous, to be honest!”
Mustafa: “I’m really happy AprilBlue didn’t disband because I’ve found the band so interesting, especially more now after hearing such a meaningful story behind how it started, so if you ever get the urge to break up again….. please don’t!!!!”
Azusa: “*laughs* We’re currently recording our second album so it’s not gonna happen for a couple of years at least!”
Mustafa: “I’m happy to hear!! Over the past year I’ve been listening a lot to Blue Peter (the first album released by AprilBlue) as it pops up as recommended whenever I listen to For Tracy Hyde, so I’d already listened to the band quite a lot! Recently I went through the singles released prior to the album, and I love the single ‘Yellow’ so, so much! The way that AprilBlue’s been releasing music over the past few years, I get the impression that you guys are creating and releasing at a comfortable pace, which I’m glad is the case!”
I love the way AprilBlue formed as a result of Azusa wanting to help Haruki share her voice with the world. It’s such a beautiful act of friendship and imbues their work with a teamwork that shimmers in every note they play and sing together.
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13.
Mustafa: “In the past you’ve likened photographs and videos to music, how they all can “contain the atmosphere of a certain era, or could be connected to an individual’s memory”. It might be a bit of a big one to ask, but are there any specific memories that you’re comfortable sharing which influenced big decisions you made with your music. Are there any that stuck out so much that you wanted to capture them in the music you were making at the time?”
Azusa: “Ah geeeeez….. the thing is that, the years we made our first three albums in were pretty much the most troublesome and stressful times in my life so I tend to try and sort of forget everything about that stuff! I can’t really come up with any specific moments. I mean, yeah, that’s sorta tough I guess!”
Mustafa: “I apologise if that was a difficult one to answer!”
Azusa: “Oh nonono!”
Mustafa: “In all the music you’ve made, I really love the sincerity that shines though and the sentiments that they have. It always feels like, whether it’s Letters To Annika or your work with RAY, I always get the feeling that the music you’re making is a celebration of life in general through embracing all of it. That multifaceted approach to it, I think is really important in this day and age in the way that it’s all-encompassing of every facet of existence. I’m grateful for the way I’ve found a sort of compass in your music over the past few months: it’s given me a lot more grounding and really highlighted to me what my beliefs in music are. When I was younger I was very focused on dreaming and being detached, focusing solely on ideals, but as you mentioned with Ethernity and Hotel Insomnia, through them I’ve really started to appreciate being grounded!”
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14.
Mustafa: “You met a lot of For Tracy Hyde’s members through Twitter back when the site wasn’t very big in Japan! *Azusa laughs* So I’m interested in what your relationship with social media is like in general! Something I noticed was that you tend back everyone who follows you, which I think is so cool in itself as I remember getting the notification of you following me back a while ago! *Azusa laughs*
A lot of international fans discover new music through YouTube or SNS, so I’m interested in your perspective of how it’s been. Obviously it must’ve been really big for your to basically form For Tracy Hyde through Twitter, but in other ways are there any noticeable thoughts you’ve had?”
Azusa: “While I do have accounts on Facebook and Instagram as well, I don’t really use them as I’m pretty much predominantly a Twitter guy, so Twitter is pretty much the only social media that I can actually talk about!
I mean, Twitter has been huge: it’s pretty much been my entire life post-college, because what really frustrated me about my life until I was 18 or 19 or 20 or so when I started Twitter was that I was never able to find anybody who shared musical interests with me because…. I mean, there’s only so many people who actually care about overseas music, Western music, especially music from the past. I mean shoegaze is obviously 20-30 years ago, and what Twitter did for me was help me find friends who I can actually talk with and a lot of these friends ended up being lifetime friends, the people that I still hang out with, and the people I started bands with, and I also met a lot of the mentors in the band scene who helped me when I started making music. Pretty much all of them I met through Twitter because I got connected to them via shared interests, especially when Twitter was really small in Japan and the shoe gaze community on Twitter was so small that people just naturally got connected to eachother, and all of the girlfriends that I had in my life *laughs* I met them through Twitter as well, so that obviously has been life-changing as well. I don’t know, come to think of it, so much of my life has actually, at least partially, been rooted in Twitter so, I don’t know.... life without Twitter is just unimaginable *laughs*! It sounds so weird, but it’s actually true! *laughs*”
Mustafa: I really do sympathise with the way it helps you meet people with similar interests! For me, I’ve never really met anyone in person who likes similar music to me, whereas online when I started my blog I was able to meet other people through mutual interests! Obviously social media has two sides to it, it can be detrimental in some cases, but so far it’s been helpful for me and I’m glad it’s been positive for you, thank you for sharing that!”
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15.
Mustafa: “Your first few albums were very inspired by films, and they have similar structures to films as well. You’ve said before that it doesn’t make sense to watch a film halfway through, or just a few isolated minutes, so when you make an album you want it to be an experience from start to finish. That really resonated with me because I’ve always been the same with music: oftentimes when I want to listen to a particular song I’ll listen to the entire album to get to that song! I feel like it grants me a holistic appreciation, and I find it confusing how lots of people tend to focus mainly on singles. Of course they’re easily marketable and music videos are made for them, but I’ve always really enjoyed the journey of going through an album! I’m curious then: out of all the albums you’ve made, what is your favourite full album experience?”
Azusa: “In terms of cohesiveness and flow of the entire album, I think Her(a)rt would be the one. I think that worked out pretty well, I mean it sounds weird to say that myself as the creator, but I think it really succeeds in establishing this nocturnal mood and romanticising urban life, the upsides and downsides of it. I think the other albums didn’t really work that well in terms of capturing a certain theme or evoking a certain mood consistently throughout their entire duration. I think that’s the only one where we actually succeeded in that goal I guess!”
Mustafa: “I’m happy to hear you say He(r)art, because even though it’s always in limbo, He(r)art is my favourite For Tracy Hyde album. One of my favourite songs from the album is ‘Floor’: there’s that bridge just before the end when the saxophone kicks in and Eureka sings the lyric about repetitive dance music…. it gives me goosebumps every single time! I love that bit so much! One of my other favourite For Tracy Hyde songs is ‘Halation’, which is right at the end of the album, which I think is a perfect note to finish the album on! I just really wanted to voice particular appreciation for He(r)art and those songs!”
Azusa: “*laughs* Awesome!!”
Mustafa: “To quickly link back to For Tracy Hyde’s romanticism: I remember it contributing to my impression of the band, I think it was a year and a half ago, even before I’d heard most of your discography. It was when I saw on your merch store that the band did a collaboration with WEAREALLANIMALS and released a t-shirt with Eureka on the front, and on the back was the text ‘THE SOUNDTRACK FOR HELPLESSLY ROMANTIC YOUNGSTERS’. I think that is such an amazing way to describe the band and it really stuck with me even before I dived into the band’s music, plus it’s easily THE coolest t-shirt I’ve seen in my entire life *Azusa laughs*, so I’m really upset I never got one! *laughs*”
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16.
Mustafa: “When I watched the final live show last year, one of my favourite songs from that performance was ‘House of Mirrors’! I love the English rap performed towards the end of the song! As you mentioned, with ‘Can Little Birds Remember Every Song?’ you had a specific reason for writing that song in English. There have been a few other For Tracy Hyde songs with English lyrics since them, like ‘The First Time (Is The Last Time)’ as well. Are there any particular reasons for writing those lyrics in English, the way ‘Can Little Birds Remember?’ was specifically written in English?”
Azusa: “Well…… because Japanese bands still suck at English *laughs*! No, no, no, just joking.
Well, there’s not really much particular logic behind it. The thing is that before New Young City happened, I was staunchly against using English in my music because it sort of felt like an easy way to cop out with working Western influences into your music because, I mean, it’s so easy to sound inspired by Western music if you sing in English because people will obviously take that as a cue that you listen to music from overseas. Especially since, in the Japanese indie scene, people seem to think that bands who sing in English are more ‘authentic’ as indie acts rather than bands who try to incorporate Western sounds in Japanese music because that doesn’t sound as ‘cool’ to them, or it comes across as a sellout attempt, and I really wanted to fight against that trend because it just seemed like a thoughtless and easy way to express yourself.
And then, New Young City happened because we actually discovered that quite a decent amount of people outside of Japan seemed to like our music as well, and I wanted to communicate with them and our music to resonate with them more personally in a way that they can easily understand rather than use translation machines, which are often glitchy and faulty *laughs*. So yeah, writing our first English song (‘Can Little Birds Remember?’) was a big deal to us, and then once we had that done, English wasn’t out of bounds to us anymore, so I realised that whenever I feel that using English is more natural or more appropriate artistically as a means to express whatever I want to do within a certain song, then why not just do it? That’s pretty much the idea behind everything that happened post-New Young City.”
Mustafa: “Do you feel that you were successful in reaching out to fans outside of Japan, both with ‘Can Little Birds Remember?’ and your later music?”
Azusa: “Well, yeah I guess so, to a certain degree because the thing is that, to be honest we’ve sort of always seemed more popular outside of Japan than inside; we don’t have that much of a domestic following. I guess singing at least a couple of songs in English has actually helped that to a certain degree. I mean, whenever I talk to our overseas fans, ‘Can Little Birds Remember?’ often gets mentioned as one of their favourite songs of ours, so in that sense: yeah, pretty much!”
Mustafa: “I remember just before the final live show was about to start, you posted a tweet with a screenshot of the livestream’s chat that had a lot of English comments, and you said ‘No Japanese comments-”
In unison: “-business as usual I guess.’ *both laugh *”
Mustafa: “I think you were mainly joking, but it struck me as quite sad with the legacy you have, especially as how you’re one of the few shoegaze bands in Japan to have gotten big, and that you felt not many Japanese fans would be tuning in. But later on, I started to think that maybe it’s because Japanese fans would’ve gone to the live shows in person instead of watching the live stream!”
Azusa: “Oh yeah!”
Mustafa: “The sentiment of your tweet, was that mainly jokey or was that something you were actively thinking about at the time?”
Azusa: “It’s a bit of both I guess! I do recognise that we have not that big, but a very dedicated following in Japan as well, but at the same time I’ve always noticed that whenever we post videos on YouTube, or our level posts music videos on their channel, most of the comments tend to be in English. Actually on many videos I think at least the first 5 comments are always in English! I think it’s not just a matter of sheer popularity but also various reasons contribute to it. What I’ve noticed is that while our fanbase is really dedicated and loyal to what we’re doing, at the same time the tend to be less vocal about it online or they seem to have less of an online presence. They rarely show up on social media, I guess. So they’re sort of being the silent majority there. I guess part of it is because of that, but I’ve always felt that our Western fans seem to have more of a presence!”
Mustafa: “That reception from international audiences, I’m very interested in that because, as you mentioned with Rate Your Music earlier, there’s an entire side to music listeners online that I don’t really engage much with, but it seems very particular and peculiar to me. On Rate Your Music, if you go to the really popular albums, or the kind of stuff that Anthony Fantano would give a 9 or a 10 to, everyone will rave about it and most won’t accept criticism of it, but if it’s something that people aren’t talking about as much then they tend to just go ‘yeah, I rate it 2.75/5’ and I think that’s such a shame. I don’t know, it makes me feel like there’s some weird underlying bias? I was interested in your perspective on that. Obviously there are a few Japanese artists who have become really big internationally, like Haru Nemuri, Tricot, Otoboke Beaver, even Wednesday Campanella who hasn’t even toured much abroad. I’m interested in what you think about that particular side to music listeners/online music discourse. Do you interact with it that much, is it something that interests you?”
Azusa: “Well, I don’t really know, I’ve never really paid attention to Anthony Fantano to begin with. I do notice that Japanese acts who are introduced by him tend to blow up online, but I don’t know…… there’s not really much I can say about it!
Slightly off-topic but we obviously got a Pitchfork review and for a month or two after that review, our Spotify listener count just blew up to quite a staggering number. I think it was slightly short of 100,000 at its peak, and then it just died out after that, it just dropped! That was sort of annoying because it just made me wonder how difficult it is to sustain people’s interest in what you’re doing, and in that sense I’m really sceptical about online influencer sort of culture I guess. It might help in the short term, but it doesn’t really last that long, you’re just mentioned once or twice casually I guess. It’s also unhealthy in the sense that in some cases, people would be so reliant on influencers as sources of information that they wouldn’t even know you exist if you don’t get introduced by one.”
Mustafa: “I think it’s a losing game trying to chase success in that department. I really don’t get how some people can attribute quality, meaning, and value of music to scores.
With Pitchfork as well, obviously it was really great that it brought fans in but to me it was annoying how they gave Hotel Insomnia a review right at the band’s end, but they hadn’t really bothered to write about your other works. I just can’t really gel with music ‘reviews’. I feel like, as a result, I only perceive the goodness of music as being worth writing about. I don’t like getting caught up in the commercial side either, I feel like music is best when it’s made for the purpose of expressing something: I don’t think music exists to have sales and chart positions compared. I think it’s a shame how For Tracy Hyde got exposed to that, and I think it really highlights how unfair that whole system is. I mean, given my personal feelings on Hotel Insomnia, if I had to give it a score I would not give it something like 7.6 *laughs*”
Azusa: “*laughs* It’s standard for Pitchfork, so I’m totally fine with it!”
Mustafa: “I get you! And then when they do scores like ‘seven-point-something’. I mean, is their metric so nuanced that they’re able to discern between 7.6 and 7.5? This coming from the people who haven’t written about your other music? Can I really trust them to give an authentic review of For Tracy Hyde?”
Azusa: “*laughs* Just give it an 8!”
Mustafa: “*laughs* Sorry to rant, but yeah, some music journalism….. not a fan!”
Azusa: “Yeah, when you’re dealing with something so abstract it’s hard to be objective and have a cohesive standard throughout with so many people dealing in the world of music criticism! You can’t really expect that much. *laughs*”
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17.
Mustafa: “Which bands active currently have caught your eye?”
Azusa: “There’s a lot of them! I don’t know if mentioning any one in particular would be fair! The Pacific Ocean Park show I hosted last night was pretty much centred on this band called dansa med dig who are from Sendai. They’re just amazing, I mean if you listen to their music they don’t sound Japanese at all: if you told me that they’re one of the best dream pop acts from Sweden or somewhere, I’d totally believe it! But because they’re from Sendai, which is in the countryside of Japan, they’re pretty far from any major city like Tokyo, Osaka or Nagoya. Practically, no one seems to have heard of them and that bugged me, so I wanted to organise a show for them in Tokyo so that they can at least get a slither of the attention they deserve! So they’re definitely one band I would definitely recommend to anybody who would hit me up for Japanese indie band recommendations! And other than them, there’s a band in Tokyo called butohes!”
Mustafa: “Ah yeah!! I know them!!”
Azusa: “Yeah! They’re really cool, I mean I don’t really know how to describe them: they’re sort of vaguely shoegazey, vaguely emo, vaguely post-rock-ish, vaguely ambient, but not really any of them! I don’t really know how to describe them, but they’re just a really good band, insanely tight live too, just amazing on all fronts! I really like them!”
It only takes a few seconds of listening to confirm, without a doubt, why Azusa has so much faith in dansa med dig and butohes. I discovered dansa med dig through Azusa’s answer, and the below video was the first I’d heard of them and the first of many moments they’d left me in awe of their vision.
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18.
Mustafa: “There’s a lot of emphasis on the cinematic nature of For Tracy Hyde’s music, and the band’s music videos themselves are all really unique and particular. I was really surprised as a result to see that you’d cited anime as a big personal influence for you! I think that influence is a lot easier to spot with your early Bandcamp net label work, but I was very surprised to see it mentioned in regard to For Tracy Hyde because with a cinematic band, I assumed the visual influences would mainly be from films! It got me thinking: what is it about anime in particular that inspires you in a different way to films?”
Azusa: “Well, that’s sort of a tough question because to be honest: I haven’t watched any anime in, like, I don’t know….. maybe 15 years or so?”
Mustafa: “Really??”
Azusa: “Yeah! I don’t watch anime anymore at all, so it’s been present in my life and music less and less. I can’t really say, but the thing about anime is that…… I know there are exceptions, but practically there aren’t many anime that have bad endings, I guess. They tend to present a really idealistic view of the world and life in general: they all pretty much end happily, even the bad guys in anime tend to reform themselves after recognising what they’ve done is wrong, and they just sort of live happily ever after *laughs*. I guess it’s that sort of optimism that really attracted me to anime in the first place, especially since I’ve always been pretty much unhappy with my life during my younger years. Since I haven’t been watching any anime in quite a long time, my memory’s really really hazy and there’s not much that I can really discuss about that, I guess!”
Mustafa: “I get you! I’m curious if you’ve heard of…. I know you haven’t seen it, but there’s an anime which came out recently called ‘Bocchi the Rock!’?”
Azusa: *groans* “Ohhhh yeaaaaaah!”
Mustafa: “I figured I’d get that kind of response from you! It’s blown up and there’s a lot of people everywhere watching it, but I find it strange how the story’s about music and the setting leans into the Shimokitozawa scene, yet I feel like people are taking the wrong thing away from it: they’re focused on the socially anxious protagonist instead of the real life scene that the series is paying homage to. I think it’s a shame how people are taking away a very diluted image of what the scene is. I kind of got an idea based on your reaction, but how do you feel about how many people are getting this certain image of this particular music scene in Japan, whilst the real-life scene is kind of being overlooked?”
Azusa: “To be honest, I haven’t really been following ‘Bocchi The Rock!’ either, so I can’t really say anything about it.
I mean, rock IS for the angst-ridden youth after all, so I guess that can’t be helped! I know this is slightly off the topic of your question, but to be honest it’s sort of been helpful for the music scene over here! I mean instruments are selling better! Also, the Tokyo indie scene is centred in Shimokitazawa, which plays a big role in ‘Bocchi The Rock!’. I mean there’s the venue Shimokitazawa Shelter which plays a big role in the anime. The thing is that whenever I go to a show taking place in Shimokitazawa Shelter, you’d always see a handful of Westerners there and you strike up a conversation with them and ask what brought them here, and they say “I’m here because this place showed up in ‘Bocchi The Rock!’! I don’t really know any of the bands playing tonight, but I just wanted to be here!”. The thing is, they actually seem to enjoy the experience of being there! They buy merch from the bands playing there; I once went to a RAY show that took place there, and the thing with Japanese idols is that at the show you get to take photos with them!”
Mustafa: “Ah the chekis!”
Azusa: “Yeah, chekis, yeah yeah yeah! These Westerners would just be taking chekis with them; I mean when RAY are on stage they just seem to be bewildered by what’s happening because the Westerners don’t come to Shelter expecting to see an idol show, and they don’t have any knowledge of idol culture whatsoever, but they just end up taking pictures anyways *laughs*. So yeah, I mean it’s actually been helping attract attention to Japanese music culture, and it’s generating a decent amount of cash I think, so that’s good *laughs*!”
Mustafa: “That’s awesome!! The perspective I looked at it was online, when I saw people talk about it they’d focus on the easily-marketable image of the anime as opposed to great amount of substance behind it!”
Azusa: Ah yeah, yeah!”
Mustafa: “But I’m glad to hear it’s been helpful as opposed to presenting a false kind of image, because I saw recently a tweet from Patrick St.Michael, who interviewed you guys last year…..”
Azusa: “Oh yeahyeahyeahyeahyeah!! He’s a longtime friend of ours!”
Mustafa: “Yeah!! He made a post on Twitter recently of a sign up in Shimitozakawa that’s like ‘You’ve seen us in ‘Bocchi The Rock!’!’ and I thought how it was a bit funny how they put that there to stand out to tourists! But yeah, I wanted to give a quick shout out to Patrick because he did such an amazing final interview!”
Azusa: “Yeah he did!”
Mustafa: “I remember the moment he released the interview, I was in Leeds and I was just stood there in one spot on the street because I was so excited to read through it!”
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19.
For the next section, if you haven’t seen the video for ‘Subway Station Revelation’, I highly recommend giving it a watch before proceeding as I think watching it for the first time is an experience that’s impossible to replicate and really important to what the work stands for!
Mustafa: “Moving onto the visual side of your work: you’ve said before that with your music videos, you tend to give control to the directors and leave them to work with their own interpretation of the song, and allowing things to fall in place from there. A video I really want to know about particularly is ‘Subway Station Revelation’ because I love that song and video so much! The story within the music video isn’t set in the exact same structure as the lyrics, so I wanted to know how that ended up happening and what your thoughts are on that particular ending from ‘Subway Station Revelation’!”
Azusa: “At the start we were consulting with our label about which songs we should make a music video for, and we had to choose between ‘Milkshake’ and ‘Subway Station Revelation’. We consulted the director of the music video: “which song would you want to make a video for?” And he said “it’s a tough pick, so why not just do both of them?”.
I was always interested in the idea of linking two different music videos, so I pitched that idea. The thing is: ‘Milkshake’ and ‘Subway Station Revelation’ have very very different tones and themes. I mean they sound different too. The concept behind Hotel Insomnia was to capture all these troublesome aspects of modern-day life and what’s going on in the world: ‘Milkshake’ is about empowering women and freeing women from sexual exploitation in terms of objectification, while ‘Subway Station Revelation’ is more of an optimistic song that’s an innocent ode to love and its power. I mean the lyrics can pretty much be summarised into ‘It’s the fucking end of the world but who cares because we’re in love and nothing else matters!’, that sort of innocence was the driving force behind the song! I thought it would be interesting to juxtapose two very different videos that contrast each other in tone and theme, and the end result was that!”
Mustafa: “I’m really fascinated by that, especially concerning the lyrics of ‘Milkshake’ as well. I was interested in the way the two tie together because ‘Subway Station Revelation’ is shot very much like how a film/tv show episode would be, and I remember on my first time watching it I got so caught up in the story of this couple, and then at the end it glitches out and we see a guy in a dilapidated building obsessing over this same story. I was literally on the edge of my seat to see how that couple’s story would end, and then when I got hit with the video’s ending I started to laugh because I realised ‘This is basically what I’ve been doing with this story for the past three minutes!’ *Azusa laughs*. I love the way the video’s cynical in the way it criticises seeking escapism and projecting our own ideas and ambitions for life and love onto what we see on a screen, and how that ends up becoming part of the norm for us. I think it was done in a very contemporary way, especially with the video’s use of the VR headset! I just thought it was executed with absolute genius when I first watched the video!
It ties in to ‘Milkshake’ at the end when Eureka smashes the TV, and the song itself is about breaking down objectification and sexual exploitation of women. That TV she smashes is the same TV that was showing that fictional romantic story moments earlier, so is that meant to be a link between the two? Like a statement of how getting caught up in idealised, fantasy love could lead to becoming distorted into objectification?”
Azusa: “That wasn’t what I personally had in mind, it was entirely the director’s idea, but in that sense I think it’s really up to you to interpret! The way I see it, it’s not really a matter of tying the two songs together, it’s about enhancing the contrast between the two I guess! I think it’s the total, complete different nature of the two songs which makes it work!”
Mustafa: “I tend to overthink things sometimes, so my thoughts end up becoming kinda abstract when I voice them!
You’ve done a fair few videos for AprilBlue yourself as well, and Letters For Annika too. Going forward with your work, do you anticipate having more of an active role with visual art, or do you think you’ll be sticking to the music side of things for now?”
Azusa: “Well, to be honest I do actually enjoy video editing quite a bit! I mean there’s an AprilBlue video that I actually shot and directed myself for one of the singles we released in 2022. I’ve always enjoyed making these DIY music videos, so I do have an interest in going down that path further and improving my skills but I guess I’m just a bit *too* busy at the moment to actually do that so maybe in the next few years or so I might do it again, but not for now!”
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20.
Mustafa: “You mentioned a new album in the works from AprilBlue is on the horizon. Is there anything else you’re able to discuss at this moment in time that you’ll be releasing in the future?”
Azusa: “Well our work has pretty much been spontaneous and random so we don’t really have any specific plans for the future! We are working on that second album right now so that should be coming out this year! The thing is that our feeling over the past few years has been that we took things way too slow during Covid; pretty much the entire world stopped doing business at the time, at least for the first two years, so it couldn’t really have been helped, but we’ve been inactive for too long and we really need to catch up with things because I think over the past four years there are people who’ve actually forgotten about us and forgot that we’re still up and running! I really hope that after we get our second album out, it won’t be too long before our next body of work is out. I guess I just shouldn’t be that lazy and just get down to writing songs, I guess!”
Mustafa: “So will AprilBlue be the main vehicle for your artistic expression and ambition?”
Azusa: “Yeah, for the time being at least! And hopefully I’ll get to start working on solo side projects. I mean I’d been meaning to do that last year but then this Ponderosa May Bloom business sprung out, so I haven’t really been able to do anything about it yet, but hopefully this year!”
Mustafa: “I listened to the Ponderosa May Bloom demo literally three hours ago and it’s so interesting to me, especially as Haruki from AprilBlue’s involved with the project!”
Azusa: “She’s the producer of the group! During the auditions for the group, the idea is that we thought it would be interesting for us to actually present one of the songs that the group would be singing, in full form, so she did the vocals for the demo and we released it as an example of what we would be doing in the group!”
Mustafa: “That sounds like a really new undertaking: to be doing auditions for an idol group! What was that like??”
Azusa: “It definitely was fun, I enjoyed talking with these people who are from a totally different background from us in that they’re not really familiar with indie music or alternative music, but at the same time they have this strong passion for singing and dancing which we don’t really have. It was really interesting to meet all these people, but the tough part was letting people know that they’re not gonna make it!”
Mustafa: “Oh maaaan, I can imagine!”
Azusa: “That’s been really heartbreaking for me! I mean I’ve been having a bit of an anxiety disorder over the past few months, to be honest, and I think a small part of it, at least, is because of the whole process of auditioning people and then telling them that we’re not gonna let them in. I struggled a lot with job hunting when I was graduating school so I can really relate to the pain that these people must be feeling when they’re getting rejected so in that sense, yeah it’s been fun but also stressful at the same time! Thankfully I’m feeling really grateful that the whole auditioning part is over and I’m hoping that I’ll never have to do it again in that sense! But yeah, other than that: the idol business in general has been really really fun so far, and I have really high expectations for the group as a whole!”
Mustafa: “I’m sorry to hear about the anxiety it’s been causing you, but I’m really excited to hear about the opportunities the group is going to afford you, and especially excited to hear what Ponderosa May Bloom’s going to end up being because this is going to be an idol group that you’ve had a lot of influence over! How far into the group’s future have you planned? Have things only just settled down or are you getting to work making music for them straight away?”
Azusa: “Actually we already have enough songs for us to do shows, and our first show is happening next month! I think we’ll have an album out this year too, if things go well enough!”
Mustafa: “Do you think that’d be cataclysmic with its impact when it releases?”
Azusa: “I have noooooo ideaaaa! I have no idea how things are turning out, I mean it’s my first time committing myself full-time to the idol industry, so I have no idea how things are going to pan out! At least, in theory, the idea of having this Pitchfork-approved indie musician writing all the songs for an idol group, on paper it sounds interesting so I hope that people will show some interest in it! Hopefully!”
Mustafa: “To me, that just seems really really big, so I’m personally really excited! Whether it be seeing which artists/group they collaborate with for live shows, how their discography comes together, I’m just excited to see it al!”
Ponderosa May Bloom recently released the official recording of the previously released demo, as well as a live performance video!
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This interview experience was a really big step for me, not only because of its length and density, but working with the vast status of Azusa’s works was a worthwhile challenge that was really fulfilling for me as someone who has such respect for what he and his music stands for, which towers high and continues to guide countless.
Even now, Azusa’s art is constantly in motion with how much he’s working on, to the extent that even the past barely feels static with how much has been built upon For Tracy Hyde and the history it’s preceded by. Living through, and witnessing the bloom of, such passion-driven work is a spectacle to cherish, and it feels like I’ve only just seen a fraction of what Azusa wishes to share with the world. Whether it be through band, solo, or idol work: I know my life with music is enriched through his art and I’ll be carrying the impact thereof with every step I take into the future.
-Mustafa
The music of For Tracy Hyde, AprilBlue, DotsTokyo, RAY, airattic, and ponderosa may bloom are all available on streaming.
For Tracy Hyde’s HP: http://fortracyhyde.com/
AprilBlue’s HP: https://april.blue/
My sincere thanks go to Azusa for taking out the time to speak to me, as well as my friend Ryushiro Ogushi for his continued help and support with my interviews!!
Thank you to the members of For Tracy Hyde, AprilBlue, DotsTokyo, RAY, airattic, and ponderosa may bloom for all the music they’ve expressed to the world!
This interview is dedicated to the continued support of Palestine during this dire time of need.
Probably one of the longest interviews I’ve ever read but I throughly enjoyed every bit of it! Been such a fan of all the work Azusa has been involved with over the years so love that your interview tackles such a wide range of stuff that he’s worked on. It was also just fascinating learning more and more about Azusa as a person throughout the interview, looking forward to revising the music he’s worked on with all this added context. Also looking forward to all the things he has planned but especially that upcoming AprilBlue album, loved everything I’ve heard from them so far so this is something I’ll be looking out for when it drops!
Thanks once again for providing such an amazing interview, keep up the amazing work!
Btw, totally with you on soutaiseiriron lol, absolutely love em!
Thank you so much for this incredibly insightful interview! I'm a massive fan of all of Azusa's work and For Tracy Hyde are one of my favourite bands of all time. It was great to learn more about him as a person, about FTH and his future musical plans.
I don't think that the importance of FTH (and Azusa in particulars) influence on Japanese shoegaze and dreampop can be overstated. Because of him, I've found so much amazing Japanese alternative/indie music and I've become a little bit obsessed. I probably listen to more Japanese music than Western music at the moment!
I was lucky enough to bump into and chat briefly to the man himself when I visited Japan last year at a RAY concert and he was very cool.
Like yourself I was a bit of a latecomer to FTH. I'm gutted I never saw them live before they broke up.
Luckily Azusa's doing great stuff with ponderosa may bloom and AprilBlue and the other members are doing cool things as well - I really like Eureka's band Ferri-Chrome. I am visiting Japan in November and I really hope to see an AprilBlue or PMB show if the timing works out.
P.S. also love Soutaiseiriron - they were another one of my gateway bands into Japanese music (as well as Spangle Call Lilli Line). I hope they release some new music soon as its been so long since their last record!