Interview] Beyond the Music of "YuruCan△. Eri Sasaki releases her 2nd album "Colon

Singer-songwriter Eri Sasaki has made a name for herself among anime fans by performing the ending theme for the TV anime "Yuru Can△. Her second album "Colon" with 15 songs, including the ending themes of "Yuru Can△" and "Yuru Can△ SEASON 2," will be released soon.
In the "Yuru Can△" song, she sang with a fresh voice on an acoustic guitar, but in the album, she expanded her creative boundaries and delivered songs with a variety of tones. The Blu-ray also includes a live performance by a band. This album is a multifaceted experience of Eri Sasaki's charms.

Singing as Eri Sasaki has become more fun!

─ Your previous album "Period" was released in August 2017, so this is your first album in about 4 years.

Sasaki: I don't feel that there has been a gap in time at all, I just spent my time doing the work that was right in front of me. I was providing songs for other artists, directing music for the musical "Legend of the Milky Way," and doing solo projects as a hobby, among other things.

─ ─ What is the position of your solo activities under your own name for you?

Sasaki: At first, I felt like I was writing and singing tie-up songs that were given to me as work, but with the songs on this album, I have changed my mindset to one of freely playing around with the songs, expressing my artistic side. I am happy that I have been able to be involved in some way in the production of the songs as well as the vocals for other songs. Singing as Eri Sasaki has become much more enjoyable than before.

─ Has there been any change in the way you are involved with anime tie-up songs?

Sasaki: I have been more proactive in proposing songs of my own composition. I think I have become more proactive in proposing my own compositions. The same thing happened with "YuruCan△." In the first series, I submitted a song that was based on the concept of camping, and it was called "YuruCan△. I submitted "Fuyubiyori" as a song for the first series, saying, "If the concept of the work is camping, how about this kind of song? I was the one who went for it (laughs).


─ Your second album "Colon" contains 15 songs, including two ending themes for the "Yuru Camp △" series. Twelve of the songs were written and composed by Mr. Sasaki himself. In addition, Hiro Nakamura was involved in 11 of the songs as a co-producer, which gave the album a sense of unity.

Sasaki: The authors are almost all the same, so in that sense it may be a cohesive album, but as for the type of music, I think it is quite disparate.

─ ─ What is the meaning of the album title "Colon"?

Sasaki: It simply means that the first album was "Period" with one dot, and the next one was "Colon" (*editor's note: the symbol for "colon" is ":"), so there are two (laughs).

─ I see (laughs). The title of the album doesn't have to mean much, but the content is what counts.

Sasaki That's right (laughs).

───"Colon" contains all the title songs and coupling songs from the singles after the first album, plus the new songs from the album. In other words, it is an album that contains all of Ms. Sasaki's musical activities since the summer of 2017. First of all, I would like to ask you about the single songs. The sixth song on the album is "Harukanaru Tabi," the ending theme for the TV anime "BAKUMATSU. You wrote the lyrics, composed the music, and arranged the music for this song, didn't you?

Sasaki: "Harukanaru Tabi" is the oldest song on the album, written about 10 years ago.　It was shortly after I graduated from college, I was just starting out as a writer, and the idea came to me in the car while I was working part-time, so I paused the song and sang it into my phone and blew it in. I had submitted the song to other competitions at the time, but it also fit the concept of "BAKUMATSU," so I modified the original lyrics to fit "BAKUMATSU" and it was done. The melody and arrangement are almost exactly the same as the original.


─ How did you decide on the tie-up for "BAKUMATSU"?

Sasaki: Just like with "Yuru Can△," we proposed "How about this song? We came up with two songs, and one of them was "Harukanaru Tabi" (Harukanaru Journey). The other song was "Part of Me" (lyrics and music by Eri Sasaki, arrangement by Hiro Nakamura), which was adopted as the special ending theme for "BAKUMATSU" episode 6.

─ ─ "Part of Me" is a coupling song of "Harukanaru Tabi" and is the 9th song on this album. Was this song written with "BAKUMATSU" in mind from the beginning?

Sasaki: Yes, I did. I wrote it based on the image of the main character, Takasugi Shinsaku, who is chasing after his teacher, Yoshida Shoin, and his feelings for the people he cares about.

─ Two more coupling songs, "Fireworks" and "TIME AFTER TIME," are included on the album before and after "Part of Me," so that you can listen to the songs from the single "Harukanaru Tabi" in succession.

Sasaki: All of these songs were written with a Japanese taste in mind, so I thought it would be better to have them side by side. Fireworks" (lyrics and music by Eri Sasaki, arrangement by Hiro Nakamura) was written with the image of a Kyoto-born musician going to New York, and "Time After Time" (lyrics by Eri Sasaki, music by Eri Sasaki and Hiro Nakamura, arrangement by Hiro Nakamura) was written with an old-fashioned feel in the lyrics while playing with words. I wrote this song while playing with words.

─ ─ "Fireworks" is a jazzy song, and I was fascinated by its cool and mature sound.

Sasaki: I wrote the lyrics and music with just piano and singing, and asked Mr. Nakamura to arrange it with the image of a Kyoto-born musician going to New York as I mentioned earlier. Kyoto is a sacred place for jazz in Japan. There are many jazz players and they play at live houses. I added the image of a Japanese version of Sting's "Englishman in New York," and this is what I ended up with.