Mari Hamada was one of the first female singers in Japan to devote herself to the harder side of Rock music. This year, she celebrates the fortieth anniversary of her debut album ‘Lunatic Doll’. One of the ways she does that is with the international release – her first in about thirty years – of her excellent new album ‘Soar’. Mari tells us about her rich career and what drives her creatively.

Through the years, a new Mari Hamada album was released about every two years. However, the five-year break between ‘Soar’ and its predecessor ‘Gracia’ is the longest she ever had between two albums. “The amount of effort and the degree of difficulty required to complete an album increases with each production”, the singer admits. “My life might be a journey to keep searching for that source of motivation. I have always had the feeling that singing is my destiny. To fulfil that destiny, I have to search for something that motivates me. Depending on the era, it could be sympathy, joy, anger, frustration and so on.

As the difficulty of producing each album increases, it is natural for me to take longer to finish it. Due to the covid pandemic, there was of course a change in the production process, but I think it worked out positively in the end. Communicating directly with the musicians and engineers by sending files to each other made it possible for me to concentrate on each task. At the same time, I could carefully examine everything at my own pace. Because of this, I was able to do all my work with the proper amount of care.”

Motif

On ‘Soar’, tracks like ‘The Fall’ sound surprisingly modern. And yet, she doesn’t deliberately try to keep up with the times. “I don’t have much awareness of trends”, she says resolutely. “I am conscious that my work is a development of my own musical history and sensibilities, not a trend created by others. However, in the process of making an album, I think I am influenced more by the social context. My musicians and collaborators are more likely to have their awareness of trends reflected in my work.”

This is relevant, as Mari is usually the sole writer or a co-writer on her songs. “I will take the initiative”, she explains. “It has been that way since my debut album, but the range and the depth of my collaborations have been expanded over time. When co-writing this album, I tried to find a shining motif in the songs as they are presented and based on that, I fleshed out the structures and the arrangements of the songs.

Of course, there have been times in the past when it was the other way around. I’ll often write the melody when we go back and forth, but there have been times when I was in charge of writing the chorus and there were songs where my focus was organizing the melody and the arrangement. The balance in co-writing will vary based on the state of completion of the song when it is first presented.”

Unfamiliar

“These days are such a departure from the era when there were limited means of recording ideas. The evolution of DAW’s and VST’s have made it much easier to turn the ideas in my head into concrete sounds. I’m also able to make more time for it. In the past, I was making an album per year while also touring, so I didn’t have much time for songwriting.

Good chord progressions are common and options are limited to a certain extent, but I see it as my task to draw some originality from it. Whenever possible, I also have a strong desire to consider chord progressions and melodic structures that are unfamiliar.

In producing new songs with so many musicians, my experience in actually recording my works has increased as well. Because of this, there is a sense of continuous creative expansion from this source of ideas. That source has become a solid foundation to work from, so I never really run out of ideas. The only restrictions are time and energy. Those are the two biggest challenges as a creator.”

Responsibility

Moreover, Mari has not just been writing, but also producing her own albums. “Over the past forty years, I have felt deeply that the person who ultimately bears the responsibility for my work is me”, she explains. “In co-producing with others, respect for the other party is essential. And sometimes, it is necessary to make compromises in order to move forward. The biggest advantage of producing everything myself is the elimination of wasted time. The less time I have in a production, the more responsibility I have. So I just have to take on that responsibility from the beginning.

The downside is also time. If I make all choices by myself, that also means that all the responsibilities of the entire production fall on me. I often feel that no matter how much time I have, it is never enough and that is painful. Time moves very quickly in the music industry and fans are always eagerly awaiting new releases and tours. That can be a real problem for me right now.”

Individual

The musicians Mari works with on her albums have been a combination of experienced Japanese and American musicians for many years. “Japanese people like to say within a common understanding with those around them”, she explains. “They despise anything that is above average. For Americans, it is natural to be different and they are strongly aware that they are individuals that should be respected. That comes out in the music. When it’s good, I don’t hesitate to try out the best ideas, which often works well in rock music.

However, once they lose their motivation, they can quickly give up. The Japanese rarely go above and beyond, but they are tenacious and they always finish with an above average result. Therefore, when it comes to tours that require a sense of solidarity and perseverance as a band, I focus on working with Japanese musicians. In a creative domain, I decide who to work with based on the time constraints of the job, but I often choose to record in the United States. In a nutshell anyway; of course, every individual is different and regardless of nationality, they do the best they can.”

Enthusiasm

“When I work with American musicians, I usually go to L.A. to meet them personally and record with them in the studio. Of course, I also do the direction and we also have Bill Drescher, an engineer who has been working with us for many years. Most of the musicians I work with, I’ve been working with for more than thirty years, so I am well-versed in their strengths and skills.

When I’m working on a demo in Japan, I’m already roughly imagining who I’m going to ask. It’s not limited to those musicians, but once I work with someone, so I choose the person who feels like the best choice for the song.

That isn’t necessarily a matter of their musical skills. I value meeting and continuing to meet people who can recognize something good in someone else. The hearts of the people who approach my work with enthusiasm are great assets. I value that. I put an emphasis on their nature as people.”

Athlete

When Mari’s career started, female rock singers were quite uncommon in Japan. “I never really had a role model”, she nods. “The Japanese entertainment industry in particular operates with a unique set of values. I think it is no exaggeration to say that there was no one who understood me. Therefore, I naturally turned my attention to international artists. The style closest to me was that of Pat Benatar, Heart, Linda Ronstadt and classic rock in general, but I was particularly inspired by singers like Ronnie James Dio and Klaus Meine.”

Nowadays, Mari has been singing for over forty years and her vocal cords don’t seem to have sacrificed any power at all. “When I was young, I had a very busy schedule of live performances and singing in the media circuit”, she explains. “These days, I’m trying to take on a schedule that isn’t quite as reckless, but that’s also what people around me don’t quite understand. My singing style requires a physical condition that is pretty close to that of an athlete. I don’t know if you can call it development, but I have been digging deeper and polishing my voice and my singing.”

After singing hard rock and heavy metal for a few years, Mari mainly used her voice for pop rock and melodic hard rock. Recently, she carved a great niche for herself in symphonic metal and bombastic ballads: “I don’t feel like I’ve experimented with genres”, she says. “My music at any given time reflects my emotions in the most accurate way possible. To be self-analytical: I think the reason for the shift to the more powerful sound in recent years is this swirling anger that I have suppressed for a long time. I feel making music is the release of the ego and the sublimation of the self.”

Borderless

In the early nineties, attempts were made to present Mari’s music to an international audience. ‘Introducing… Mari Hamada’ (1993) even contained English-language versions of her older material. Unfortunately, her international career never really materialized. ‘Soar’ is her first album since that period that has been released internationally. “I think that the walls between domestic and overseas markets have come down and that means we are in an era that is more borderless”, she says. “In the past, when we were releasing albums overseas, there were always a lot of obstacles. But now we live in an era in which information flows more freely and it doesn’t require quite as much special effort.”

Her lyrics are still largely in Japanese. “I like to construct sentences using my native language and Japanese writing is my forte”, Mari explains. “However, when constructing chord progressions and rhythms, there are some things that are difficult to express within the rhythm of the Japanese language. In such cases, I use English. Japanese simply isn’t suited to rhythmic syncopation as well.

I really want to know what kind of impressions people from various regions and countries will have when they listen to my music. I make music without thinking of genres and countries, but over the course of my forty years as an artist, I have absorbed all kinds of sensibilities and projected them into my music. That’s why I think it sounds like a mixture of all genres. I think it’s positioned at the origin of current trends in Japanese anime songs, but I also think it has a profoundness similar to European symphonic metal. I’m looking forward to your impressions!”

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