Discussions about MemoryStorm

HJ:When did MemoryStorm form?

Kaori: Around 2005 or 2006, I think the summer of 2005 but I’m not exactly sure.

HJ:Before MemoryStorm both of you pursued solo careers. How did you end up meeting each other?

Jeff: We became a group back when Kaori had this event called “Midnight Theme” that was held twice every month at this spot called “The Room” in Shibuya. He was one of the organizers and he invited me to do a live performance with him at the event. At first we had a few sessions at his house and then we decided give it a try in public. After we finalized the first song we created, he burned me a copy and on the CD wrote “Kioku No Arashi” as the title of the track. After some time passed I was like “Let’s use this as our name!”

From that point on we joined forces and continued to make new tracks and perform them at Midnight Theme.

Kaori: At first we just wanted to perform at shows and after those three songs our ambitions led us to an album.

Live at UNIT

HJ: I have been told that this album took a long time to release. What was the hold up?

Kaori: Well first off, figuring out what we wanted to create was incredibly difficult and time consuming.

Jeff: I think that at first we weren’t thinking about what kind of sound to make, rather we just gathered random sounds and put them together and it just kinda worked. We went by feeling and after a while we wanted to use concepts or a theme for what we wanted to do. The first three songs we made are not on the album, so for all songs after that we tried to implement concepts, feeling, sound, etc. From that point on, it started to take more time to complete a track. The length of time it took to make songs gradually became longer and longer. There were also times when we couldn’t agree on the type of song to make so we had to find a common ground. There was actually one song that we didn’t go through with that we worked on for a month.

Kaori: Yeah, almost every song on the album also took at least a month to finish. The longest was maybe 3 months. Sometimes we take a breather and come back to it.

HJ: You agreed on lots, but what were you stubborn about?

Jeff: I think Kaori has a particular style for his drums and he kind of took the responsibility for providing the drums and in the beginning. As a producer, he has a specific sound that he wants to have. Where as me, coming from a battle DJ perspective, I just use whatever rhythm or melody that I’m looking for. But he’s more knowledgable with chords and scales. He’s pretty selective about the sounds he wants and I had to learn about key structures to make parts fit more with the music. We normally don’t disagree on the sounds we use unless they don’t have the right key or, they don’t fit in the chord structure. He likes fat drums and low and deep basslines. I do too. But we don’t really disagree about the eventual outcome.

HJ: What is your perceived direction that you see yourselves going in?

Kaori: Of course we have a type of sound that we envision, but it never quite turns out the way we expect it. It’s pretty interesting! But basically hip hop, break beats basically beat music. That’s what we like, so that’s what we do. No reason to the madness. When the two of us are on stage it’s more like a band playing a live show. The music that comes out is based on our combination or syncopation.

Jeff: As a group, of course we want to make music that is different than most and get people to say that it’s dope. On the technical side we are always trying to do something different. Just to keep ourselves interested in it, because it gets boring when you’re doing the same thing all the time. We are doing songs that we write or memorize and in that sense it’s a set song. But whenever we practice we do a lot of variations because we already know the structure and we play around with it. I think that is the next step. We may make new songs in the future. When everyone gets to know the songs on this album we will probably performing them less rigidly. With that we can extend the boundaries of what hip hop artists do as musicians and try to take it more seriously from a technical side. But making the music is all about having fun. We’re not trying to be too scientific about it.

HJ: You just played at UNIT the other day. How did that go?

Kaori: At that time, we were told to play around 25 minutes, which was ridiculously short. However in that short time period, we focused on our set and were deep in the groove. We also improvised a lot within our set. After we performed out first song, the crowd got closer, and the vibrations came up through our fingers.

Jeff: We have a song called “Sunset Cliffs”, the second song on our new album. It hasn’t happened up until now, but I felt something in my chest when we performed that night. That song has a really warm and uplifting feeling. I think it came from the crowd and I totally felt it. I was trying to keep it from affecting me too much so I could concentrate, but at the same time I was trying to enjoy it. That hadn’t happened up until now, and it became a really memorable night.

HJ: This will be our last question. What is your favorite song on the new album?

Jeff and Kaori: “Sunset Cliffs”!! “Sunset cliffs” is one of those songs where both of us are in the foreground and that song has the most emotion coming out of it. The patterns we do mix so well. The energy that comes out is just amazing.