Where Uchida Marei has reached with her 2nd album "Magic Hour" and where she is headed in the future.

Marie Uchida is releasing her first full album "Magic Hour" in three years since her first album "PENKI". More than half of the songs on the album are new, and the album is packed with her as she is now in 2018. Throughout the album, I felt her mature vocals and sound. There was a sense of her desire to make this an album that looks ahead to the future. We asked her to talk about what to listen to on "Magic Hour," focusing on the seven new songs.

It's a mature album that looks ahead to what I will be doing in the future.

─ ─ Congratulations on the completion of your second album "Magic Hour. When I listened to the album in its entirety, I thought it had a mature impression.

Uchida: You may be right, when we were just starting out with our first album "PENKI" (laughs), we were still exploring and making the album, and it felt like we were just putting paint on the white wall of the artist Uchida Marei. In the 2 years and 4 months since then, I have experienced many things, and I wanted to make this album based on those experiences and looking ahead to the future, so it feels even more mature. Comparing "PENKI" and "Magic Hour," I really felt the passage of time.

─ So "Magic Hour" contains your image of the future, doesn't it?

Uchida: I wanted to go one step further from the best we can do now. If you listen to the new songs on the album, "Agitato" and "Setsuna Ring a Bell," you can easily understand that I think I could sing a little bouncier than I do now. However, I dare to hold back and sing as if I were two or three years older than I am now. As we recorded more and more, I became more comfortable with this way of singing, and I think I grew up with it.

─ That is the reason for the mature look of the entire album, isn't it? The album contains existing songs from the four singles, and listening to them all at once, I felt that you have grown with each release.

Uchida: Even looking at the jacket photos of the singles, they look different from time to time, and your taste and preferences change as well. The oldest song, "Resonant Heart," is almost two years old, and when I listened again to the way I sang it then, I wondered if this song would also be on the same album as the newest song. At first I wondered what would happen? I wondered how it would turn out, but I was relieved to find that by scattering the seven new songs, I was able to successfully combine the single songs I had sung at different times into one album.

─ I think the order of the songs is good.

Uchida: ZAQ-chan wrote two new songs for us, "My Star is Here! and "Step to Next Star! which were written by ZAQ, at the beginning and the end of the album. Then I decided to put "+INTERSECT+" as the second song, and wondered how to arrange the remaining 10 songs. I think I was able to create a story with all 13 songs.

─ ─ What kind of story did you come up with?

Uchida: We released a mini-album "Drive-in Theater" last January, held a live concert at Yoyogi Gymnasium in February, released three singles, and so on, and the last song "Step to Next Star! I tried to express the flow of the year 2017 in the whole album.

When I listen to the whole album, I can imagine the flow of your music from "Drive-in Theater" to the present, can't I?

Uchida Yes, that's right. My Star is Here! is the beginning of the song, like turning the first page, and the story begins in earnest with "+INTERSECT+", followed by " adventure bleu" and "Resonant Heart". The dance numbers "Agitato" and "Romantic Dancer" are followed by "Setsuna Ring a Bell," which brings us to the slightly sad autumn. But when the album production starts, a new crush is born in "Symbolic View," and the warm feeling created by the support of so many people is in "magic hour. And with "c.o.s.m.o.s," a new me awakens and says I will go to the next place with my friends, which is "take you take me BANDWAGON" and "Step to Next Star! I am going to go to the next place with my friends.