By Terence Tan
Once again back at the Coliseum for another solo concert to promote their new album “Yellow”, SCANDAL, the all-female rock band from Japan is back again on our sunny shores after a widely successful first world tour last year.
Originating from Osaka and formed in August 2006, the band compromises of Haruna Ono, Mami Sasazaki, Tomomi Ogawa and Rina Suzuki. This rock quartet has been taking the world by storm, having produced music for various popular anime and films. We had a rare chance of meeting and interviewing these amazing ladies before kicking off their show on 4 June 2016.
1. What advice would you give to aspiring artists and musicians ?
“Being able to follow your passion is some that’s really exciting and fun to do but eventually you’ll run into difficulties and you will have troubles maintaining your dreams. The important thing is to keep believing in yourself and even if you run into difficulties, you’ll be able to overcome them with that belief.”
2. Whenever you have creative block or when your mind goes blank what do you do to overcome it?
“Whenever we run into a mental block or a creative block, the first thing we do is to stop, take a break. We don’t completely separate ourselves from that process of creating music, but it’s important to take a break, go for a walk, listen to other kinds of music, watch tv, basically take a break. Utilising the input from these external sources, we’re able to come back and finish the process.”
3. What’s your favourite thing to do whenever you stop by Singapore?
“We had a great time previously at the Night Safari, but we weren’t able to stay very long and weren’t able to see the animals sleeping. We’d like to have another chance to go there and spend a little bit more time going around.”
4. Could you tell us more about the new album “YELLOW”, and how is it different from the other albums?
“For the recording of “YELLOW”, we tried something different as compared to the rest of the previous albums. We brought in American and British influences to edit our sound so that it doesn’t sound like everything else that’s being produced in Japan. We tried different temperatures, making things quieter, trying to change the environment while recording to make it sound different from the previous albums.”
5. What’s the band’s musical inspiration?
“We get a lot of our inspiration from legendary rock artists like Green Day, The Foo Fighters, U2, Rolling Stones. We find a lot of our inspiration from the biggest acts of rock in history and would like to continue with a similar sound.”
- translations by Rochelle, SOZO.
