MEG and Nakata Yasutaka “Amai Zeitaku” interview for MARQUEE magazine

reporter: MMMatsumoto
publisher: MARQUEE vol. 61
published: June 10, 2007

“Today I’ll be calling in some dancers,” MEG addressed the audience. When they emerged from the tunnel, the dancers were cats… I flash back now to the moment I watched the club performance of MEG and Nakata Yasutaka (capsule) and thought, “This is fun!” What that reminded me of was… Back when Pizzicato Five was still active, they had that kind of theatricality, and while it may not have been four-on-the-floor, the music had a good beat, exemplifying the fun of nightlife.

MEG and Nakata Yasutaka. Continually releasing music since her debut in 2002, MEG has also been active as the designer and director of her fashion brand CAROLINA GLASER in addition to working as a model. And needless to say, Nakata Yasutaka has increasingly demonstrated his ability as a producer primarily through music. There was no chance that these two wouldn’t eventually cross paths. Their sensibilities are much too similar: that flexibility, pop-orientedness, self-production ability, and playful imagination (that is to say, creativity). In honor of MEG’s latest single “Amai Zeitaku,” produced by Nakata Yasutaka, we asked the pair what they consider to be the platonic ideal of parties.

―― When did you two meet?
Nakata: We first met about two years ago. I went to see a show for my friend’s brand, device, and she was one of the models. But it’s only recently that we’ve been doing events together.
MEG: Ever since we worked on a song together. I asked him to remix something on Dithyrambos for the first time last year.
Nakata: That was when we started interacting musically.

―― Nakata-kun, what do you think is MEG-san’s charm from your perspective?
Nakata: Uh… That she’s curvy (everyone laughs).

―― Then what was your impression of Nakata-kun, MEG-san?
MEG: At the outset, he said to me, “Doing fashion and music and appearing in magazines, MEG is an interesting tool.” I thought, “This person really is a producer.” (laughs)
Nakata: You can tell just by looking at her that she has a lot of potential.
MEG: Then when I considered what kind of music to do going forward, I thought Nakata-kun’s songs were really catchy. Like communicative dance music, or how should I put it… I thought that if I wanted to do something more than just sing over a good beat, then with Nakata-kun, I could do that.
Nakata: Part of that has to do with how much easier it’s gotten to do those kinds of things in a wider variety of places, I think. In the past, whether in genres of music or clothes or whatever, there needed to be a reason. Everyone had to share the same reason for liking something, but nowadays, there’s less of that type of justification.

―― Speaking of that freedom, there were those stuffed animals at the live show you two did the other day [two dancers in cat costumes appeared during MEG’s performance]! Things like that are important.
MEG: It’s Nakata-kun who’s willing to agree to that, too, after all. Even among the other remixers I’ve met, Nakata-kun is a really flexible person. What I realized through performing in clubs is that even if my fans will come here wanting to see my shows, there are a lot of girls among them who have never gone to a club before and don’t know how to approach it. So when I thought about how I could show them the fun of this environment, I thought that maybe they could get into it more easily if there was choreography. Then I ended up placing an order for those character costumes (laughs), and we put the choreography video online ahead of the release so that they could at least dance along to the chorus.
Nakata: It should go without saying that something like that would be questionable if anyone but MEG did it (laughs). I think it’s incredible that she’s in such a position where she can even get away with doing something like that. It goes to show how much people anticipate whatever she does.
MEG: Those costumes were modeled after my own cat (laughs).

―― Aaah, no wonder I thought they were so well done (laughs). The roundness of the back of their heads especially is just like a cat!
MEG: I was really particular about that. That shape.
Nakata: It’s really cute.

―― Maybe there’ll be people who are encouraged to go to a club because of that.
MEG: Nakata-kun is flexible enough not to say no to that kind of audience, so working with him is fun and interesting.
Nakata: The basic idea is that anything goes as long as it’s interesting. These days, there really isn’t anything dictating how clubs should or shouldn’t be.
MEG: When I go to Nakata-kun’s parties, the aura of the attendees themselves is different from other events, and it feels like the people there are all finely attuned to fashion. They don’t believe that fashion has to be a certain way, and their stance is just about taking in whatever they personally like instead, so they’re interested in anything fresh and new.
Nakata: When you get a bunch of people together who choose based on their own tastes, it’s interesting how things arbitrarily grow out of that culture.

―― If you keep on in this style, I wonder how things will be in the future. Or is that your ideal?
Nakata: I don’t have any control over that (everyone laughs). I think in every generation, there have been collectives that didn’t originate from a music scene. So even if I keep going after this, I think whatever I’m doing then will just happen to be that particular sound, and it’ll keep shifting like that naturally.
MEG: I always want to keep evolving, so it’s better when things aren’t so strictly regimented anyway.
Nakata: I think we both want to be able to stay true to whatever vibe we’re into right now. I don’t think there’s any such thing as “capsule-ness” anyway (everyone laughs). I feel most at ease when people are like, “What is this guy trying to do?”
MEG: I don’t like it either when the novelty of whatever I’m working on wears off. I want people to expect that whatever I do, I won’t miss the mark. We’re flexible that way in our own right, but so are the kids coming to see us. It’s only natural that things will evolve wherever people like that come together. I don’t actually understand how to differentiate genres of music so well anyway (laughs). Instead, if I make music with Nakata-kun, for example, I perceive it more in terms of sensibility than genre, like I can be totally sure that it’ll turn out fun.
Nakata: Music nerds often see electro in particular as just an offshoot of techno. Then it turns into something like those people wearing T-shirts with computer graphics on them (everyone laughs). It’s actually completely different from that. I always want to eliminate that misconception. These days, when you discover one thing you like, you start to understand all kinds of other stuff related to it. Somehow or other, you start to group them, and I find that really interesting. Like “This is completely different from the songs I normally listen to, but I’ll just listen to this” or “I like MEG’s songs, but everything else is punk.”