SakkaOnna has made a translation of the Darker than Black interview at @nifty, first part and the second part here.

——Start of translation——–

@nifty (anime company) interviews Yoko Kanno about her work on the “DARKER THAN BLACK – The Black Contractor” OST – July 2007

The soundtrack album for “DARKER THAN BLACK – The Black Contractor” will be released on July 25^th. Its title: “DARKER THAN BLACK – The Black Contractor – Gekiban”

“Gekiban” is a slightly old-fashioned term for the background music in dramas or movies. Quite a fitting title for the soundtrack, as the music to “DARKER THAN BLACK” was tailored to be reminiscent of the P.I. and detective dramas of the “good old days”.

The composer, Yoko Kanno, is currently throwing herself into the production of music for the last half of the show. Here at Anime@nifty, we talked with her directly about the show’s protagonist, Hei (“Black”), and the rest of its fascinating characters, about the depth of the story’s world, and what sort of music she’s colored it all with.

• On keeping the music from old detective shows in mind

Q1: Kanno-san, what was your impression on seeing “DARKER THAN BLACK – The Black Contractor”?

A1: I thought it was a work with a definite smell to it. The smell of the gutters, back alleys reeking of poverty, the stench of blood, the stink of cat pee, etc. Also the good smells of food. I’d imagined this world as being rather inorganic at first, but when I saw the finished images for it, I got the exact opposite impression.

Q2: Please tell us what the concept behind this whole soundtrack was.

A2: Director (Tensai) Okamura wanted the soundtrack for a detective show from the 70s or 80s, so I kept that pretty firmly in mind as I worked.

Q3: Did you yourself like old detective shows, Kanno-san?

A3: I’ve seen hardly any TV shows from that era, so I don’t know much about them. I wrote these remembering how my parents occasionally used to watch the foreign show “Colombo”, and thinking “Well, it should probably sound something like this…” (Laughs). I also tried to model it after the music in old suspense movies like “North by Northwest”, but I didn’t like watching movies all that much either, so it’s tough to explain in words exactly what concept I did use. If you asked about specific melodies and themes, I’d know the answers right away, but…

Q4: I see. But the music fits perfectly into the “DARKER THAN BLACK – The Black Contractor” story, and I think it appeals to fans of shows and movies from that era as well. When you were actually writing the music, was there anything you were particularly careful about?

A4: I’m getting a bit technical here, but it’s really a question of how to recreate the quality of those old soundtracks in our current environment. I chose the performers and the studio and the mixes specifically so that they’d have that “old music” sound to them.

Q5: I thought that the “old” sound actually made the soundtrack much cooler. And you had some fun in there, too, didn’t you. For example, on the ninth track, “Guy”, the intro sounded quite a lot like the opening theme to “Howl at the Sun!”…

A5: Yes, yes, you’re right (Laughs). There’s a character, Kurosawa Guy, who models himself after those old detective dramas, and I thought, wouldn’t it be fun if, the instant he showed up, they played that kind of thing? (Laughs) I actually asked a performer who played on drama soundtracks back then to play the sax for this song, so it really does have the feel of that era to it. The reason it has that crying sound to it is because all the sax players back then played Enka (*Japanese folk music, roughly equivalent to country music here).

• I think Hei (“Black”) is a person with a starving heart

Q6: What kind of a sound did you use for Hei, the protagonist?

A6: I don’t know everything about the character’s background, but the way I interpret it, he eats so very much because his heart is “starving”. Whether that’s actually part of his contract or whether he’s got some other secret, I don’t know… But cramming something into your mouth is a sign that you feel empty somehow; I felt that he was a character who understood “loneliness” and “sadness”, so his music came to have that sort of atmosphere about it, too.

Q7: Are there any similarities between the themes based on Hei?

A7: Acoustic guitar is fundamental to Hei’s songs. To me, the sound that you get when you strum the thin strings of a guitar feels like the sound it would make if you touched tense nerves, so I thought it would be perfect for expressing Hei’s heart.

Q8: In contrast, the action songs have a very 70s and 80s “stick-to-itiveness” feel to them; were you purposefully trying for that?

A8: This is also sort of technical, but I actually tried for a “wavering”, maybe even slightly inaccurate sound. Usually, you’d record over and over until you got a good take, but I didn’t sweat accuracy so much this time, giving the “fresh” feel top priority. I think the songs acquired a very human feel because of that. The soundtracks to old TV shows probably didn’t have much of a budget, and they didn’t have the sophisticated editing equipment we have now, so it’s likely that most songs were recorded in a single take. As I worked, I didn’t let myself forget how they made music back then.

Q9: Was the eighteenth track, “Water Forest”, written specifically to be used in the preview segments?

A9: I wrote that one picturing Hei walking through the city at dusk, and I hadn’t really planned on it being run behind the previews. The one who thought of using it there was the sound director, Wakabayashi (Kazuhiro)-san. (The piece) has a really mellow reverberation to it; I think it was a good choice.

Q10: Was there anything about your discussions with sound director Wakabayashi that left an impression on you?

A10: Apparently he’d pictured Hei’s music as being a bit colder, and he told me “Write sort of inorganic-sounding songs, more sound effects than music”. But, um, I didn’t do what he said (laughs), so apparently they had a hard time fitting music to Hei.

Q11: Why didn’t you write Hei’s music to sound more inorganic?

A11: If I’d written the music to simply be “cool” to match his appearance, or to fit with his being a contractor, an emotionless killer, I guess it would have suited Hei all right, but I felt like, if I did it that way, we’d lose sight of his real appeal.

Q12: Hei’s character is extremely popular with female fans; what do you think of his appeal as a man?

A12: His appeal as a man? (Laughs) He’s in lots of scenes with women, and I can understand why he might make the fans go “Kyaaa!”, but I wouldn’t want to date him (Laughs).

• I love Mao

Q13: I think I’ll ask about the vocal tracks next. Track Eight (“No Ones Home”) and Track Ten (“ScatCat”) are both sung by Yamane Mai, who previously worked with you on “Cowboy Bebop”. First, I hear that “No Ones Home” was written with a theme of “manly resignation” in mind…?

A13: They used that one quite suddenly in the last scene of the second episode, which startled me, but I think that song was incredibly well suited to that scene. Also, Wakabayashi-san was kind enough to use it in a very straightforward way. That clean, graceful ending gave off the same feeling you got in the days when TV shows had more depth to them. You know how a lot of today’s dramas tend to be rather indecisive, or end when there’s a bit more left to say? But that episode ended very concisely, like “And there you have it, ‘The End’!” (Laughs) I thought the unpretentious dramatic direction there was very good.

Q14: And the other track, “ScatCat”?

A14: Instead of singing lyrics on this one, I had Yamane-san sing scat. As you can tell from the title, I wrote this thinking of Mao (the cat) prowling around on his lonesome.

Q15: What’s your impression of the character Mao?
A15: I love him. He looks just like an ordinary cat, but he speaks in this man’s voice that sounds like he sees through everybody and everything, and I just can’t get enough of it (Laughs). I start wanting to pick him up by the scruff of the neck (Laughs).

Q16: Two of the tracks on the album, “Deadly Work” and “Undecided*”, have a male vocal. Could you tell us about those? (* This is “Blend In”; apparently they just hadn’t gotten the name yet, since it’s listed the same way in the track list at the end of the article.)

A16: I got James-kun**, a young guy who’s the vocal for a Swedish band, to sing these. He’s young, and tall, and so cool you want to get mad at him for it (Laughs), but he’s got a good sense for old music, and a husky, sexy voice. Both of these songs were written with contact with the enemy, or the protagonists’ having come into contact with the enemy and being driven to the next stage in the story by that contact, in mind. (**James Wendt; he’s the same guy who sings for Yoko Kanno on the “Honey and Clover” drama soundtrack.)

Q17: Unlike the other songs, these have a contemporary rock sound to them; why did they come out that way?

A17: I didn’t want the soundtrack to be just a collection of slightly old-fashioned songs, so I thought I’d write slightly newer-sounding songs depending on my impressions of the character. As far as the enemies are concerned, I wrote the songs without knowing what they were thinking or what their motives were, so rather than giving the songs a specific meaning, I just aimed for a cold, scary and “cool” atmosphere. Anyway, every single character in here looks cool, you know. (Laughs)

• A soundtrack well-suited to the word “Gekiban”

Q18: Could you tell us what you’re doing now, Kanno-san?

A18: I’m working on the production of new songs for the future developments in “DARKER THAN BLACK – The Black Contractor”. When I’m reading the scripts, lots of places make me howl “Is THIS what’s gonna happen!?”, and whenever that happens, I start wanting to write a new song.

Q19: How do you think the music for “DARKER THAN BLACK – The Black Contractor” will change from here on out?

A19: We’re discovering more and more about the characters, and they’ll reveal things I don’t know at the climax, so of course the music will change to reflect those things. I’m really looking forward to discovering what sort of songs will come from what kind of developments as well.

Q20: In closing, the title for this soundtrack is “DARKER THAN BLACK – The Black Contractor - Gekiban”, which is really pretty nice; who came up with that?

A20: Fu fu fu (laughs), that was mine. Seriously, doesn’t it have that sort of feel to it? Not even the music so much as the atmosphere of the work and the font used in the title logo; those made me think that “gekiban” was a perfect fit for this. I guess I was just having fun (Laughs).

• Winding up the interview

“Contractors”: beings said to have no human emotions. However, the drama they weave is very human, and there’s warmth hidden somewhere deep inside it. There’s no doubt that this music “with a smell to it” which Kanno Yoko-san has created, combined with the depth of the images, has given “DARKER THAN BLACK – The Black Contractor” a unique hue all its own.

The story is only in its middle stages. I can’t wait to find out what surprising developments await in the future, and what appealing music will score those scenes.

END INTERVIEW

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 17th, 2008 at 2:54 pm and is filed under Yoko Kanno News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.