Translated by Iguana, original page now deleted

Psychommunity

hide: In order to start a live gig you need some sort of an opening, so this is what I came up with.
An opening with an "It's enough" feeling (laugh). The intro is sampling all songs of the album. I put them in a reverse order.

Question (Q): Is the orchestral arrangement reflecting the style of X Japan?
hide: Yes, probably. Well, but I prefer "Disney" music rather than classic, the "Disney" kind of orchestration. I made it according to this image. I wanted the arrangement to feel like some "marching band" style that I liked for quite some time. And thus the soldiers are slowly starting to change one by one. The sound of the snare is getting louder and louder.
The orchestra is coming in louder and louder too but it's close to the real sound of an orchestra.

Q: How many guitars did you use?
hide: Just too many (laugh). I forgot how many actually, but I thought it's a damn lot during recording. For the backing I used Les Paul and for the rest MGs (Fernandes).

Dice

hide: In the pre-production of the album this was the first song that I did and I thought it should be the opening piece of the album right from the beginning. I released the "positiveness" of the lyrics with this "poor song style of mine", but I don't say it's reaching up to my style of living, because my way of living changes by the second (laugh).
I let the sequencer go together with the bass to add to the rythm, but the real drums and and the bass are done by the T.T. team (Terry Bozzio, drums and T.M. Stevens, bass). It was pretty difficult to reach a balance between the human's groove and the electronic's groove. Especially because T.M. uses his own time scheme. I had quite a hard time with the guitars, to sustain without sustainers. But the double sounds that came up suddenly sounded pretty good. Of course I also used the sustainers. But I guess you won't hear it, that's the sustainer's excellence (laugh).

Scanner

hide: When I did the pre-production I had just the melody finished. When I came back to Japan I recorded the guitars, keeping the melody in mind. The lyrics were the last thing I added.

Q: The guitars sound very linear.
hide: Well, it's just taken from the recording I had on the computer's hard disc. But of course I used the pre amplifier and a speaker simulator. I got two sounds into the mixer and the equalized stuff that came out I put on the hard disk as well. I thought to put plain vocals over the electric groove. The vocals are horrifying (laugh).

Eyes Love You (T.T. Version)

hide: Well, since I let T.T. play an over-dubbing of the Single CD version and the groove was pretty much different to the completed Single CD, I also changed a lot of the guitars.
At the Single recording the guitars were in line and I had mixed in the pre-amplified accoustic guitars as well, but this time I took the sound from a mike that recorded what came out of the amplifier directly. When I recorded the guitars I could really feel the impact of T.T.'s tension and groove. Although it is a rather cool song when the two of us come in (T.M. and hide chan) coldheartedly, then there flows hot blood!

D.O.D.

hide: I recorded the guitars in L.A. and up to then it was only one sound. But then I got my hands on a 1959 Les Paul and made a new recording back in Japan with it. I wanted to have some sounds from the speakers. It took a pretty long time to create the right sounds.
They all say the lyrics are perfectly me, but I don't even drink Shochu or Tequila (laugh). Don't take that too serious, it's just about drinking in general!

Crime of Breen Street

hide: That piece I made because I wanted to insert something before "Doubt". When you go from town to town there are a few roads that don't even have street lamps, right? I thought something like that would be necessary before "Doubt". I did this together with my engineer Ricky Breen. Ricky likes Jazz piano very much and in the end this piece became a little bit like "The Doors" style. It also resembles the images of this movie "Angel Heart". I had about the same feeling doing this piece like in "Seth et Holth" where I did the music while looking at the story on the screen. It's a piece made
for a situation. At the fade out you can hear a cat whining, at least you think so, but you know, in fact that's INA chan! Nobody thinks that to be a human sound, right?! (laugh). Ever since then we all call him our cat technician (laugh)!

Doubt (Remix Version)

hide: Although it's a complete remix the sounds are the same like in the Single version. For me it's now the perfect version. But I want to remix that one again. I want to show everybody my trial and error process with this piece. There are only minor changes but I like this version much more now.

A Story

hide: You know... The motive of this song: After a big world war the people are coming out again back into an air they can breathe. It's the feeling in the very moment you appear again from the underground and take a first look around.

Q: Is it the first time you ever played a song only with accoustic guitars?
hide: If you put it that way, yes. In 1992 I bought a "Martin" (an accoustic guitar) and can play it by now I guess. I also used the accoustic guitar for the Singles. I don't remember the cords though, but it have been very very open cords. And the accoustic
guitar I used during pre-recording I had tuned on an open cord as well. Well, I liked this sound, so I also tuned it that way when I did the real recording. I think it was tuned on "D" something, but it was not a real tuning.

Frozen Bug 93'

hide: I arranged that imagining the year 93, but if you consider it as a cover version of the project I took part in back then, I also don't mind. (MASS: hide + J + Inoran - "Dance 2 Noise 004" album, released 1993)

T.T. Groove

hide: You know the ending of "Honey Blade" is a fade out, right? But before it became a fade out T.T played like this here... It was very nice, but I wanted to have a fade out for "Honey Blade".
So I made it a new piece "T.T. Groove". It's just like we were doing a session of three people in the studio. But I added the guitars later after listening to the rhythm track. I also thought that a break was necessary after "Frozen Bug's" hard rhythm so I put this piece in here.

Blue Sky Complex

hide: In the end this was the song that needed most people and staff. It was always something like a plus alpha feeling.

Q: Well, there are the horns and all in all it's a pretty funky feeling.
hide: Well, it has not much changed from the pre-recording, but it's a very groove-centralized piece, isn't it? And this groove has pretty much changed after I put in all the people. That was very interesting, especially the ending. I told T.T to play with the rhythm. And according to this fooling around I added the guitars later. I also fooled around! The clear sounds you can hear are from the Jeff Beck model, I think.

Oblaat
hide: This is about the same like "Doubt", I like the remix very much.

Q: Are there some sounds in it that are not on the Single CD?
hide: Yes, a lot. It's because of these exploding guitar sounds. And my vocals are like that of an idiot! (laugh)

Q: This crazy guitar sound at the ending, did you have that before too?
hide: Yes, that has been in from the start, but I changed it a little. That's the noise of a secret effect pedal of mine. The noise is pretty well checked.

Tell Me

hide: I made that song with a folk guitar. There is a little reggae in it and the transposition was in it from the start as well. Somewhere in between there is some SE and also some scratching and that was in there too already when I did the song on the folk guitar. It's a recording as fresh as in the beginning.

Q: The single coil guitar sound is the main feature, right?
hide: Yes, even the backing is in single coil. I used the Jeff Beck model most the time, only the loud one in the background is an MG. In the pre-recording I used only accoustic guitars and then put the E-guitars over it later.

Honey Blade

hide: I wrote this song after I saw a movie about incest. When I saw this movie I got obsessed with the idea of such a forbidden love. So I chose the "first love" as a topic for this song.

Q: How about the guitars?
hide: The backing is Les Paul Custom. I didn't take the real sound but picked it up from a small speaker and played just after the mute section with very direct sounds. I didn't want to have this scratching in there.

50% & 50% (Crystal Lake Version)

hide: To be honest, what's here on the album is the original version.  I asked Yukinojo Mori to write the lyrics for me in the style of: A woman wants to make fun of a guy, and while she says "Yes Yes" to everything he says, he however thinks in fact "You are a much bigger idiot than me" and then he wants to kill this damn conceited girl. He should take her to the "Crystal Lake" like in this movie: "Friday the 13th". But somehow this doesn't show in the lyrics now at all (laugh).

Q: And then from this funny country music style at the lake it develops into something harder.
hide: Well, the idea and the real music, that's still a different story, but in order to fit this song, that is really too positive concerning the music, to the rest of the album, I decided to ignore the actual theme of the song.

Q: This country music side of yours you have never showed us before, right?
hide: Well, but when you get a folk guitar into your hands this kind of style comes out pretty often, don't you think? I like the opening cord pretty much. What I have not shown you was simply that I had not done a song like that until now. I like Led Zeppelin more than Deep Purple. I learned that atmosphere from Led Zeppelin. From Led Zeppelin I came to "Japan" and on to "The Doors" and finally also to "Silverhead", and I got a fancy for punk finally. I think it shows a lot on this album what I learned from the musicians I like.

Psychommunity Exit

hide: When you really get into my world via the Psychommunity, you will become someone who does not want the Psychommunity to end again. I've been still raised in the analog record world and I always find the abrupt endings of CDs a little sad. In the end I would like to end the record by my own hands by putting back the needle. There is an antithesis to technology. And also I didn't want it to end somehow, because the pre-production has been so much fun and I wished somehow the production might never end. So when you enter the Psychommunity world and my crazy character, I thought it would be best to end it the same way.