Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on March 2012
When the Tohoku earthquake struck, Takeshi Hosomi was in the studio recording with his band The Hiatus. “It was a hard experience because we had to face the real meaning of being a musician,” the singer says about halting work on their new album A World Of Pandemonium.
“All I could do was go up north and help as a volunteer,” continues the frontman for alt-rock juggernaut Ellegarden,who are currently taking a break from activity. Hosomi helped out in Ishinomaki, Kesennuma and other locations. “I always want to say to people, ‘Hey wake up, do you think it’s going to last forever?’ I thought 3/11 might provide that moment, but nobody wants to listen.”
Despite appearances, the album title doesn’t refer to the disaster. “This record is all about my perspective on the world,” explains Hosomi in English learned in a brief stint as a Silicon Valley software engineer. “To me chaos is kind of a good thing—it also means chance… opportunity.”
Hosomi still hopes 3/11 can provide the impetus for change. “Japanese society always wants stability, like the smooth surface of water, but perfect stability is to me almost like death,” he says. “For example, the education system doesn’t encourage people to be unique. It’s good to be different from everybody else—but if you go that direction the teacher or boss won’t like you. This seems wrong to me.”
Hosomi should know. The soft-spoken frontman for two of Japan’s most successful bands dropped out of high school. His goal wasn’t to become a rock star, but to race motorcycles. “My life became twisted, but in a good way,” he laughs.
Leaving high school, Hosomi worked in a factory to pay for his motorcycle, and then ended up piling up debts playing pachinko before turning to the computer industry as a source of cash. “It was good money, but I felt like doing music,” says Hosomi, who had long played music as a hobby.
“Then I had a chance to get a production deal. My intention was not to be a professional musician—I just wanted to have fun—it was a lot more fun than wearing a tie.”
Not only did Hosomi get a production deal, he ended up leading one of Japan’s most successful rock acts of the ’00s. Between 1998 and 2008 alt-rockers Ellegarden played Fuji Rock, backed the Foo Fighters, and had a number one album in the form of 2006’s Eleven Firecrackers.
But then it was time to, um, go out with a bang. “Everyone wants to think that the name The Hiatus [not to be confused with Iranian-English producer “Hiatus”] comes from Ellegarden’s taking a hiatus,” Hosomi comments. “But I just took that word from the drawer. It captured my imagination.”
The Hiatus is something of an all-star outfit, bringing together Hosomi with fellow rock royalty bassist Koji Ueno formerly of leather-clad garage group Thee Michelle Gun Elephant and drummer Takashi Kashikura of math-rock outfit Toe.
Filling out the lineup with keyboardist Hirohisa Horie and guitarist “masasucks,” the group takes Hosomi’s vocals in an artier, more progressive direction. The first song of the album “Deerhounds” opens with acoustic guitars before building to a head on the strengths of Kashikura’s protean drumming.
Hosomi sings, “My empty soul is screaming out/Just starting out in the world of pandemonium,” in the fluent—if sometimes inscrutable English—that offered the title for the album.
“I don’t know where my lyrics come from—they just seem to be there,” he says. “But it’s not like I write my songs alone and then bring them to the studio. It’s a group effort. In Ellegarden I was writing all the songs, but now just the melodies.”
The Hiatus recently finished an extensive nation- wide tour that wrapped up at Tokyo’s Studio Coast. Next month they tour overseas for the first time to Seoul, Korea, where they’ll headline the V-Hall. The gigs should make for plenty of pandemonium—but of the good kind.
Takeshi Hosomi performs solo at Studio Coast on Mar 18 (listing).
