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SEKAI NO OWARI: Old Stomping Grounds, New Beginnings
To see more from SEKAI NO OWARI, check out @fukase_sekainoowari, @saori_sekainoowari, @nakajin_sno and @dj_love0823 on Instagram. For more music stories, head to @music.
It’s New Year’s Eve in Tokyo and SEKAI NO OWARI is onstage at club EARTH, holding drum mallets, ready to bust open a giant barrel of sake. The four-piece outfit may be one of the biggest acts in Japan, but its current location is very much a throwback to the days of smaller shows and smaller crowds.
Some context for the uninitiated: The members themselves actually own the venue they’re presently in. Located in a residential area out near Haneda Airport, it’s really the last place you’d find a club in this city. Not that that ever mattered to Nakajin (@nakajin_sno), Fukase (@fukase_sekainoowari), Saori (@saori_sekainoowari) and DJ LOVE (@dj_love0823 — he’s the guy in the freaky clown mask). All they wanted was a creative space where they could play music for a small group of friends and build the foundations of what would grow to be the successful electro-pop-rock concoction that is SEKAI NO OWARI. As lead singer Fukase says, this is “a band that started a live music bar before they even started a band, a band without a drummer or a bassist, a band that does things all out of order.”
Though they’ve been placed snuggly into the superfluous genre of J-pop, like many groups, SEKAI NO OWARI prefers not to be thrown into any particular box, and shows its diversity through songs like “Mr. Heartache,” a dreamy, jangly vocoder tune, and “ANTI-HERO,” which features elements of jazz, soul, rock and classical.
“Fukase, Saori and I make all the songs,” Nakajin, the band’s leader, tells @music. “There really isn’t a set process on how the songs are made and it varies song by song, but there is this shared feeling that can’t be described in words — a feeling that only childhood friends can understand.”
The group often cites those childhood roots as a building block. Adds Fukase, “There are no grudges in this crew and no one tries to stand out more than the others. All four of us are equal beings.” While the shared history can help ease growing pains, it doesn’t necessarily release the pressure, particularly for Nakajin. “It’s tough to make these guys happy,” he says. “I get nervous when I send them my edits. The challenging part about my job is bringing the songs to the level that meets my own satisfaction. I always push myself to do better than before, and it’s so hard to exceed myself.”
The admiration each member has for each other helps ease the burden. It also comes in handy when you’re on the road with the same people for most of the year. The bandmates spent the better part of 2015 playing their music all over the world, as they looked to expand their fanbase outside their native Japan. One of their main targets: America. That would explain the addition of English songs to their repertoire — though putting them out into the world was easier said than done.
“English pronunciation was the most difficult and most obvious challenge,” says Fukase. “We thought it’d be impossible.”
But it’s all about new beginnings, isn’t it? That’s one of the reasons the band is called SEKAI NO OWARI, which translates to “End of the World.” While that name may sound negative, it’s supposed to represent a clean slate — a time and place to start from scratch. As Fukase says about the band’s foray into other parts of the English-speaking world, “We’ve spent quite a long time ‘raising’ our English songs. I think it’s about time they leave their parents.”
—Instagram @music
by via Instagram Blog
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