sarramkrop

Fushitsusha

This interview originally appeared in Japanese in the second issue of G-Modern, PSF's in-house "Psychedelic, Avant-garde, Underground" magazine. It has since been reprinted in English in the third issue of the New Zealand magazine Opprobrium. The interview was translated by Alan Cummings. Thanks to Alan and Nick Cain, the editor of Opprobrium, for allowing the interview to be presented here.
Yasushi Ozawa1 - Bass
Jun Kosugi - Drums
Maki Miura2 - Guitar

Interview text by: Koichiro Sakamoto & Masakazu Nakajima

As this is the first interview you've done as a band, first I'd like to ask you a bit about yourselves. Starting from Miura, is Fushitsusha the first band you've been in?
Miura Before joining Fushitsusha I was in a band called MTK with Akui3 and another bassist and a pianist for five or six years. Then I also played guitar on that Okami no Jikan track on Tokyo Flashback 2.4
Then you were in Katsurei, and now you play guitar for Shizuka, right? I think there must be a lot of difference between Katsurei and Fushitsusha. Fushitsusha don't really seem to suit heavily structured tunes-it sounds like you just make up the arrangements as you go along.
Miura I wouldn't really say that we don't suit structured stuff .

In that respect, was it difficult for you?
Miura There are inevitably going to be difficulties-it would be boring if there weren't. With Katsurei, we would take hours in the studio to decide where every last drum roll was going to fit in. With Fushitsusha, we put a lot more into the arrangements than everyone probably thinks. But when we play live, we hardly ever duplicate what we do in the studio. I mean, when you play somewhere the acoustics are different and we have different ways to make the most of a particular venue. So the arrangements change minute by minute when we play. Sure, it's difficult but once you become able to enjoy it, then things enter a whole new level. (laughs)

When did you first start to play with Fushitsusha? Around '88?
Miura No, I'd been playing in the studio for a lot before that, but it was probably around then that I first played live with the band. I was originally an improvisation specialist, but with Fushitsusha, the difference was too great for me. If you take it that what Fushitsusha does is improvisation, then there isn't another rock band like it anywhere. That's how different it is. I more or less understood on a sensory level, but it felt like my body and mind were being taught how to think. I became able to sympathize with what Haino-san is trying to do, and there is a lot of common-ground in our pre-music sensibility. It felt like Haino-san had already discovered mystical, unknown things that I too was interested in. So I practiced for an unbelievably long time, but it was fun at the same time. I reckon I must have just practiced for about a year. (laughs) And the next thing I knew I was playing on-stage with the band. Now I come to think about it, the A and C sides of that Fushitsusha double LP are taken from the first show I played with them.
Ozawa There's a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes that no one ever sees. That all takes a long time. There've been times when the drummer has changed several times in those intervals. (laughs)

How did you come to join Fushitsusha in the first place?
Miura The first time I saw Fushitsusha play live, I had this feeling that one day I would come to know Haino-san better. Simply because we look alike. (laughs) Only joking. It's something I can't really put into words, but the songs seemed to soak into my body-it was too cool. Then I thought that I had to video a gig, so I asked and got permission. Haino-san saw the video and said that there our aesthetic sensibility had some points in common, or something along those lines, I don't remember exactly. So he asked me if I would come along on the next tour to video the shows, and there was no way I could turn him down. I was really interested in what he was doing, and wanted to get to know him. And that was that.

Next is Kosugi-san. You were in a band called Dendo Purin5, weren't you?
Kosugi The band is still on-going.

Is that a totally different type of music to what you do with Fushitsusha?
Kosugi When people see it they probably think it's totally different, but to me it's not that much different. Umm, in terms of theory it's different but the way the music is put together is the same. Our aim in Dendo Purin is to fuck things up, not really to give out energy though. There are hardly any bands around now who have real impact, are there? Before I joined Fushitsusha I had always wanted to make something interesting, and that's why I joined, or rather they let me join. I had just started playing the drums and hardly had any technique at all, I thought it was enough if I could just make noise.

How did you come to join Fushitsusha?
Kosugi The first time I saw Haino-san was at a show he did with Kan Mikami6 at Kataashi Kutsuya. That was the first time I had seen him, and I had been completely unaware of him up till then. But when I saw him play, I thought that he was doing something way above my fucking up. . . .
Ozawa Really fucking it up. (laughs)
Kosugi Mikami-san is amazing too though-like I can feel it on my skin. I thought I would invite him to my college festival but things didn't work out and we postponed it till the next year. I also got him to play at the Komabasai festival7. Round about then there was a time when Fushitsusha didn't play for six months or so, but I went to see Haino-san every time he played solo, two or three times a month. And gradually we started talking to each other. Then sometime around the Komabasai festival, I forget when exactly, and we were on a train and Haino-san said "It's really sudden and you're probably going to be surprised, but would you drum with Fushitsusha?"

Was it totally unexpected or had you had some premonition?
Kosugi None at all. I mean Haino-san had never seen me play, though I think he had heard of the band. That was in November two years ago (1990). Then at the start of the next year, Haino-san and Ozawa-san came to see me play. Just the two of them enshrined at the back, (laughs) I was really scared.
Ozawa Haino-san had said to me that there was someone who he wanted to play drums with us, and wouldn't I go and have a look. So that was the first time I heard you too.
Kosugi I was really tense so things got even more fucked up than usual. And afterwards we talked and then I went along to the rehearsal studio with them and jammed a bit.

the rest on here: http://noise.as/fushitsusha