Watching and listening to the two albums, I thought that each of the elements such as sound, graphics and lyrics are very simple but your works become interesting by putting them together with unique ideas. What is the most important thing for you when you design something?

For example, we live in a world that is 50 years ahead from the early R&R times, 30 years ahead from the Beatles, 25 years ahead from Hip Hop, 90 years ahead from Dada, 40 years ahead from Pop Art. Moreover, we can know them through records, video, documents or at museums to some degree. We know or experience things which J Whitney or J Lennon didn’t know. Even if our talent is inferior to their’s, we have a big advantage in terms of the amount of information we have access to. We can spend time and effort to realize what they didn’t or couldn’t achieve by sampling their skills, ideas and sense. That is, by omitting the time for learning traditional skills, we can jump to the next step. We like R&R because it’s a simple music, which can be made with only 3 codes and feelings. In the same way, not so much training is required to do bit map design.

Your lyris are all written in English. Do you try to be open to the world?

Our principle for the lyrics is to play with simple English, which is not like a native speaker. E-mail from France or Brazil is always written in English and we also reply in English even if the recipient is Korean or German because English is regarded as the common language. It enables us to communicate with each other beyond borders. The most interesting thing, however, is that the simple English spoken by non-native English speakers is becoming an official language. We thought Delaware could be enjoyed by people around the world by making the lyrics with simple English.

Could you tell me about the concept of Shift cover design for this issue?

We don’t usually set up the concept first so it is made up after finishing off the work. This cover concept, which can be seen or heard in several ways, depends on you. We don’t know whether it is noisy or quiet. The song is “designin’_in_+he_rain” from “dELAwArE_S+rikeS_bAcK”. It is composed by Yoshiki Watanabe, lyrics by Samata, arranged by Tajiri, vocal by Aya Honda, so all members of Delaware cooperated in this song and we all like it.

Apparently, you have renewed Delaware’s homepage which is famous for horizontal scrolloing. How was it changed?

We mainly changed the interface design and excluded or remixed old works a little. For example, texts in the pages were all graphics before but it’s just a decoration so we changed it into real text. It was a good idea when we thought about the function of the interface. Also, when you wanted to listen to our music, you needed to download it but you can listen to it on the website now by using shockwave.

Do you have something you want to try in 2004?

We are sometimes asked to do a speech at some international conference or workshop. However, we are not good at doing speeches and get uncomfortable and sweaty. We need to spend a lot of energy but it is not so interesting. Regardless, we are asked to do it. We are interested in going abroad. So, we are thinking of making up a new entertainment speech show close to our live performance. Of course, the speech is the main thing but music and graphics supports our speeches and deliver Delaware’s feeling to the audience which can’t be expressed by only language. By making it closer to a live performance, we would be more excited and wouldn’t have the uncomfortable sweat. We hope to have Delaware’s original speech show at Melborne in April.

Please leave a message to the reader.

This is the most difficult question and embarrassing. Our true intention is “Please buy our new albums!” but stated principle is “Please buy our new albums! Listen to and watch them and listen to them again, and you will be VERY happy!”