In the two new albums, you invited many artists to join you. Could you tell us the story behind the making of these albums? Then, could you introduce each album in detail?

First, I introduce “AmeN”. All the sounds in this album are from the sound source for mobile phones. Even the drums. We regard mobile phones as a new casual instrument or output rather than a phone. “AmeN” is VERY inspired by the calling melody which appeared in Japanese culture in early times so the number of the sounds are extremely limited compared to the normal music overflowing in the world. By reducing the number of sounds, certain ideas and good music are required because you can’t cover it with decorations. It’s naked!, I’m not talking about the Beatles…. though. We think this is a VERY important thing. The reason why the music expression appears to be classical or esthetic and looks different from Delaware’s past works is not only by the small number of sounds, but also by a new member, Yoshiki Watanabe who made most of the songs for this album. He gave a new nuance and virtue to Delaware.

On the other hand, “dELAwArE_S+rikeS_bAcK” featuring “+eX+_&_+He_SpeecHeS”, a Doo_Wop group from Silicon Valley, consists of songs which includes a vocal track. This is an opposite to “AmeN” which has only instrumental tunes. The songs in “dELAwArE_S+rikeS_bAcK” can be divided into three types; the song only with +eX+_&_+He_SpeecHeS’s voice, the song with Delaware’s instrumental play and +eX+_&_+He_SpeecHeS’s vocal and the song with +eX+_&_+He_SpeecHeS’s instrumental play and Delaware’s vocal.

+eX+_&_+He_SpeecHeS’s voice reminds me of HAL9000. Why did you decide to feature them?

When I was thinking “Who is the most wicked vocalist?”, I came up with a scientist, Stephen Hawking’s computer voice. It was about two years ago. Several months later, a member of Delaware, Tajiri found +eX+_&_+He_SpeecHeS. We were VERY fascinated with their voice. Our impression of their voice is that it sounds as if it is denying feeling or emotion completely, but it’s comical and heartwarming. HAL is their idol and they started singing to be able to be like HAL. Their voice is even nostalgic for us, who live in a world surrounded by electronics. For that reason, “dELAwArE_S+rikeS_bAcK” and “AmeN” can be viewed as the folk or acoustic music of the 21st century. You can listen to the songs a little from here.

What kind of works are included in the two extra CDs?

In “dELAwArE_S+rikeS_bAcK”, we created “h/m/s_in_+he_rain” with Ages 5 & Up and “walk_on_+he_hill” in “AmeN” with Tota Hasegawa (Tomato). The former is clockwork motion graphics in which the motion ticks away the seconds. The other one is an interactive amusing work in which music changes, reacting to the hill’s angle which is altered by a user.

Unfortunately, it is VERY difficult for us as musicians or graphic artists to make ends meet with the income derived from these album sales. However, there is a possibility that these two albums might create an opportunity from which somebody gets interested in us and offers some work for us. The two albums show the idea behind Delaware and what we can do. We wish to make a living by creating more of the work seen on these two albums. This is our plan. In that way, we can say these albums are also our sales tools. It’s the Delaware/2004 all season collection!!

CD jackets are not your well-known style dot pictures only. Why did you change the style this time?

We wanted to have jackets and booklets design blend nonsense and refinement randomly, and hope that you can enjoy the music more by looking at them. More specifically, we try to make the jacket and booklets a design that won’t easily lose their freshness. We do this by placing lyrics or prose with fun, using white background boldly and making full use of small tricks like random underlining. To make it a reality, Koh Chihara was invited. We chose him not only because of his design but also because he likes music VERY much. We are not interested in a designer who doesn’t have a sense of music.

Koh Chihara says, “Through discussions with Delaware, we decided to make a booklet design like ‘dub’. Delaware made a basic graphic layout then, for the CD jacket, I took the picture of Delaware’s graphics and mixed with the graphic data. Also in the booklet, I used the same method as for the CD jacket keeping Delaware’s original “dub” style design. Moreover, I thought about what kind of CD design would be suitable in a time where CD-Rs or inkjet printers have become affordable for a lot of people, and what can become a “family design” without losing its professional look. From these concepts I chose bleached mat papers like inkjet paper and I tried to make a design that blends nonsense and refinement randomly.”