Q: Can you tell us a bit about yourself and how your childhood impacted your musical direction?
A: Looking back, I have loved stories since I was a child. I was fascinated by everything—manga, anime, films, and novels.
Whenever I listened to a film soundtrack, I would create my own stories in my head. I especially loved reading lyric booklets while entering the world of a song, and eventually I began writing songs of my own.
Ever since then, I have written lyrics with one idea in mind: each song should feel like a short film.
Q: How are you planning on growing your fan base and sharing your music with the world? What message do you have for anyone who is about to discover ANNING’S DRAGON?
A: Every day, I continue submitting our music to all kinds of websites and media around the world.
I believe music is a communication device. It allows people who have never met to find and connect with one another through resonance.
If you respond to the frequency transmitted by our music, let us begin the communication.
Q: Who is the most inspiring artist for you right now? And where do you find inspiration for making music?
A: Choosing only one artist is very difficult. I have been influenced by rock, jazz, soul, funk, world music, and even classical music.
However, if I had to choose one, it would be the Brazilian artist Lenine. He is often categorized as an MPB artist, but one of his statements has always supported and inspired me:
“MPB no longer exists. What exists now is MPP—Planetary Popular Music.”
My inspiration often comes from things happening within five meters of my everyday life. It might be a landscape or a person I encounter while traveling, the emotional distance between people, or something happening inside a smartphone.
Q: Can you tell us about the story or message behind the song, “Decay for silence”?
A: I actually created it as a zombie movie.
The world will end unless the zombies are defeated. Up to that point, it is a conventional zombie story.
The difference is that the other side also believes that we are the zombies.
The song takes the divisions and conflicts occurring throughout the world and scales them down into a single human relationship.
It is about the kind of “good intention” that refuses to accept people with different opinions, rejects them, and tries to impose its own idea of justice. Before long, justice itself becomes a form of entertainment.
Q: How would you describe your sound in one word for potential listeners?
A: Mixture.
Not “mixture” as the name of a musical genre, but mixture in the original and literal meaning of the word.
Q: Did you face any challenges while writing or recording “Decay for silence”?
A: In the second half of the song, a small quarrel spreads like an infection through the internet.
Through escalation after escalation, it eventually develops into a nuclear attack. Even the people who were merely watching become aggressors through the act of remaining spectators, and the world spins completely out of control.
The greatest challenge was expressing each stage of that transformation through changes in the music itself.
Q: What is the message of your music? And what are your goals as an artist?
A: I believe we should respect another person’s right to be themselves.
Doing so is also connected to respecting our own right to be ourselves.
My goal is to continue expressing that idea through the stories carried by our songs.
Q: Who is your dream artist to collaborate with? Dead or alive?
A: I would probably be far too intimidated, but I would choose John Bonham of Led Zeppelin.
Among living musicians, I would choose David Garibaldi of Tower of Power.
However, my favorite band in the world is ANNING’S DRAGON.
Creating new music with my current bandmates is already the greatest collaboration I could ask for.
Q: What is your advice for people interested in pursuing music as a career or for those trying to enter the industry?
A: I am not really in a position to give advice.
Like everyone else, I am still a sailor traveling across the sea of music.
There are fishing boats, sightseeing boats, and warships. They have different sizes, different purposes, and different destinations. But we are all sailors on the same sea of music.
Sometimes the sea is stormy, and sometimes it is completely calm.
Even so, let us continue the voyage.
Q: If you could go back in time and give a younger you some words of wisdom, what would they be?
A: Music turned out to be a theme park so vast that even an entire lifetime is not enough to experience it all.
LISTEN TO THE BAND:
Follow ANNING’S DRAGON:
Spotify – YouTube – SoundCloud – Facebook – Instagram – Website