INDEX
“The Night of the Beginning” ends with A New Day Begins.
The artwork is also very impressive, isn’t it?
Ezaki: We asked Yugo Sato, a brilliant creator of the same generation, to do the art direction. He uses a technique called “photogramming,” in which objects are placed directly on photographic paper and exposed to light without the use of a camera. (Laughs.) I also like photography, and I do a lot of things with cameras as a hobby, but it is an art form that deals with light. It is an art form that deals with light, and I thought it would be perfect for the concept of this album. I was also pleased to see that it is a technique pioneered by Man Ray and Moholy-Nagy.
The sphere floating vaguely in the air is in sync with the title of the song, “A round moon in today’s sky”, isn’t it?
Ezaki: Actually, we had several ideas for the jacket photo, but this one was the most pop and easy to understand. As you say, it looks like the moon floating in the night sky, or like …… gradually climbing up, or like the sun going down. I like the fact that it can be interpreted in various ways depending on how you look at it.
The lyrics of the last song, “Asahi no Nukumori,” written by Kenji Kihara, are also impressive. ＜I like how the line “Repeat this time, repeat this time, repeat this feeling, feel every day without changing” changes to “Look back at this time, look back at this feeling, a new day begins” at the end of the song. Every day that repeats itself is also a “new day” for this moment.
Ezaki: Indeed, that is quite an exquisite balance. The song is a repetitive accompaniment, so it has a looped sense of everyday life. Anyway, I asked Mr. Kihara to depict only everyday scenes. I think he did a good job of expressing the happiness and subtleties of emotion that are found in everyday life, without making the message too big.
I think that the “New Day” can also be taken as the beginning of a new day in After Corona, in the sense that it is a metaphor for the Corona disaster I mentioned earlier. When I think about it that way, the title “The Night of the Beginning” is also very meaningful.
Ezaki: It certainly feels like a song of hope. I wrote it with the image of a song that is played during the end roll of a movie, but it is also interesting in the sense that it can be seen as the opening of a sequel. I’m going to use it from now on.
