Following upon the nation-wide announcement on the 11th, Chihara Minori’s official press conference was held on the 16th at Bunkahousou Media Plus building. Unlike most press conferences where attendance is limited to big media outlets, the organisers opened the gates and allowed a limited number of fans to attend. Approximately 110 lucky fans where drawn from more than 1000 applications, which is an amazing number considering that the conference was held during a working weekday, undoubtedly a testimony to the growing number of followers of minorhythm. On top of which, out of the 110 attendees, a number of them were handpicked as “user reporters” – bloggers whom are officially recognised by the organisers to give a coverage of the conference on their blogs and news sites. I was amongst one of those to be selected as a “user reporter”.
Beginning at 3pm sharp, after a brief intro speech, the announcement video similar to the one broadcasted on the 11th (also can be found on the Lantis HP here) was shown first. However what’s different here was that the PV of the new song “Shijin no Tabi” was the full version. “Shijin no Tabi” (詩人の旅) was an instant winner for me – the trance music with Minorin’s strong clean vocals, couple with the images of the vast grass field conveyed the uplifting emotions of the song. Choosing this song as the title song of her new album was no doubt to emphasis the new milestone – and a new beginning – in Minorin’s music career.
After the video, the key people of the day were introduced – Minorin’s producer Saito Sigeru, Minorin herself, and designer producer Kojima Fuyuki.
Talk began right on the topic of the upcoming album. Minorin talked about her feelings towards her re-launched music career starting with singles “Junpaku Sanctuary” and “Kimi ga Kureta Anohi”, and finally an unexpected full album after 2 full years from her previous personal work “Heroine”. She also touched upon some of the more difficult times with her manager due to being the only seiyuu artist belonging to Avex Planning & Development.
Producer Saito Sigeru then talked about how he decided on the direction of this album and Minorin’s music style in general. He highlighted that this was something he came to after discussing with Minorin’s manager just before the creation of Nagato Yuki’s character song last April. He was fond of the result of the character songs and thus wants to continue with this style.
Topic of conversation then moved onto the title of the album “Contact” and Minorin herself explained the choice. It was chosen for apparent reasons – in that it represents the beginning of various meeting points by her with new music, new composers and artists, and people listening to this album, and that she wishes that it will let the listeners be able to make contact with her music.
Following this they moved on to the design concept of the album. Design producer Kojima Fuyuki announced that the symbolic colour of this album is silver. He went on the explain that while some colours have very obvious meanings and emotions associated with them – for example red is passionate, blue is calm and peaceful – silver, on the other hand, can take on different colours when it is mixed, thus it can make a representation of heart’s emotion. For an album which is supposed to make the listener make contact with Minorin’s music, and thus her heart’s emotions, he had chosen silver as the key colour. He also showed some key images.
Afterwards the focus went to the title song of the album “Shijin no Tabi” (Journey of the Poet). Here, Minorin brought up the analogy between life as a journey, traveling to a new place is analogous to finding new and exciting experiences in life, and the uplifting, forward moving nature of this song will hopefully capture this feeling.
Moving away from the album, the topic then went onto the birthday tour “i melody”. The concert name was named by Minorin herself – the “i” in the title has a duality in meaning; as the first person pronoun and “love” (ai, pronounced i in Japanese). Producer Saito then pointed out that there will be, for the first time for Minorin, a live band for this concert. He also address the concern about the small venue, as this was for the benefit of forming the necessary bonds between the singer and the band members paving way for future performances, as well as wanting an intimate feeling between Minorin and her fans.
The discussion about the birthday live had paved way to what’s to come, and that’s when the follow-up surprise announcement was made – the 2008 concert tour in Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka. A small shout of fanboyous joy erupted from the what was up until this point a very professionally behaved crowd, no doubt this was the piece of information that everyone was delighted to hear. Details of the concert has yet to be finalised so information is light at the moment.
Finally moving onto the last sub topic of the announcement – the music clip DVD is currently scheduled for a December release. It shall contain 3 PVs – Kimi ga Kureta Anohi, Shijin no Tabi, and Junpaku Sanctuary. The PV for Junpaku Sanctuary has yet to be filmed, and despite the existing 30 second CM clip for the song, it is said that the PV will be different to the CM clip.
It was then time for the Q&A session. One of the question brought up was in regards to the glow stick colour to use during concerts. It’s an important question to the Japanese fans as they love to have a standardised colour to use during the concerts to show their support of the artist. As Minorin herself puts it, the choice boils down to either white or blue – white being the symbol colour for Junpaku Sanctuary, while blue is both Nagato Yuki’s colour as well her lucky colour. Both Saito and Kojima seems to have a preference towards blue, and thus it looks like blue it’s going to be. Next up, a person asked about whether the upcoming album will feature any songs written by Minorin herself. Saito then explained that although Minorin had expressed a strong desire to write songs, this album however will not feature any work from her just yet. Finishing off, the final question was addressed to both producers in asking them what do they think is the attraction point of Minorin. They both seem to agree upon that Minorin is a very hard working and serious individual, and always manages to out perform their expectation and giving in return a lot more than want they wanted in the first place.
Lastly, after the 3 of them exited, the stage was then cleared and Minorin returned again to give a live performance of “Shijin no Tabi”. Despite proclaiming her nervousness before the performance, as the music began playing Minorin quickly shifted into gear and gave a spectacular show with ease.
This wraps up the press conference in its entirety. To say that I’m excited with all that was announced about the things that we can expect to come from Minorin would be a severe understatement – even my initial doubt to the scale of the birthday live had been totally answered in the form of a tour in February next year. Judging from the quality of “Shijin no Tabi”, we can expect great things to come from Minorin in the upcoming months – and it’s never been better time to be a follower of minorhythm.
(Disclaimer: Pictures in this post is used with authorisation from the owner, please do not redistribute)
