A white world created only with her voice ── Aoi Yuuki's 3rd petit album "Tokowaka no kuni

Starting with her first mini-album "Petipa" in 2012, voice actress Aoi Yuki has been building a unique musical world. Her long-awaited new album will finally be released. It is her third petit album "Tokowaka no kuni. The album is a work that uses only her own voice, without any instruments. Although it is a "small album," as the term implies, with a total of six songs, its content is truly dense. We spoke with the artist about the mysterious worldview that pervades the album and the elaborate recording process!

I am a white chimera in the jacket photo!

─ ─ I felt that your third petit album "Tokowaka no kuni" is a work that only Aoi Yuki, an artist who goes her own way, could produce.

Yuuki: Making music with just my voice is something I've always wanted to do. Even though I am an artist, I am a voice actor by profession, so I wanted to create something that maximized the expression of my voice. Besides, it seems that the most audible sound to the human ear is the human voice. So I thought, "Why not use the voice as a musical instrument? I thought.

─ ─ Even so, it's amazing that you used only your voice for all the songs.

Yuuki: When I told the composer, "I want to make a song with only voices," he would give me different interpretations, and the amount of voice layering would vary. I thought it would be interesting to expand the worldview of the composers' personalities, so this petit album allowed me to work with more people than a single. I thought about increasing the number of songs, but since the voice is a very powerful thing, I was concerned that a large number of songs might tire out the listeners.

─ So you settled on six songs.

If you have a 5.1ch playback environment, please listen to the 5.1ch sound included in the limited first edition DVD. You can feel the thickness of my multiple voices layered on top of each other, as if I am really singing up close. I also had the chance to listen to it in the studio, and to put it simply, it was just amazing (laughs).

─ ─ I recommend the 5.1 channel sound source. But I think you can get the full power of the sound even if you listen to it on CD.

Yuuki: Actually, the CD sound source was re-recorded with dummy head microphones from the 5.1 channel playback, in order to create a 5.1 channel atmosphere where the sound wraps around and whispers in close proximity. The human voice contains a lot of information, so even though the story is not particularly moving or sad, for some reason it made me cry. I was overwhelmed, or I could see the scenery, and I think this is an amazing album.

─ Now that you mention "story," is there a consistent story throughout the six songs?

Yuuki: There is a girl and a white chimera in every song; the first single "Bijumenia" was about a girl who collects white things, and "Tokowaka no kuni" is about that girl entering another world and meeting a white chimera. Actually, I am the white chimera in the jacket photo.

─ What kind of being is the white chimera?

Yuuki: Originally a prince of some country, he is gradually becoming a chimera. As he lost his human emotions, he became more like an animal. But to the girl in "Bijoumenia," he is the only person she can talk to, and to the chimera, he is in love with her because she is the one who loves him the most. They are a couple.

─ ─ In the jacket photo, the color of your hair is different between the first pressing and the standard edition, isn't it? The regular edition has the usual black hair, but the first limited edition has a white wig.

Yuuki: The white wig is more chimerical. It was in this state that I met the girl from "Bijoumenia." The story of the whole album is that the girl can't think of anything but white things as beautiful, and in her quest for only white things, she enters this world and meets a prince who has become a white chimera in a white forest. But rather than following the events along a time line from the first song, I feel that each song is an expression of the parts that make up the world view.

─ ─ Could you tell us the meaning of the title "Tokowaka no kuni"?

Yuuki: Quite simply, I named it just because it has a cute sound. When I was looking for a good word to describe the world of fairies, I came across the word "Tir na Nog" (the land of fairies in Celtic mythology). The Japanese translation of the word was "Tokowaka no Kuni," and I liked the sound of it. I liked the sound of it and said, "I want to use that!