First off, Mana, how did you find out about Schwarz Stein?

Mana: I'd wanted to do a gothic style event for a while and been looking for bands, but some time last summer I saw them mentioned a bit in a magazine. I liked them and had a demo tape sent! I felt there was something shining about them from just their picture. The actual music that was really good too, and so I went to see one of their lives! It was completely unexpected, and I went without telling anybody. If you're wondering why, I was planning on going home if it wasn't any good (laughs)

- And that means they were good then, right?

Mana: From the first song they were extremely impressive. It was a slow tempo melody on the song, but there was an amazingly nostalgic feel to it. Like an 80's pop song...like, for me, it felt like listening to Akina Nakamori's earlier stuff. I was listening to it thinking, "I can't believe there's still a sound like this now," and Kaya has a really good, romantic voice. I decided to try talking to them a bit, and after the live I paid an unexpected visit to the dressing room.
Kaya: I was suprised. All of the sudden he came and said he was gathering bands to do an event...
Hora: Back then we didn't talk about any definite plans. But that month he came to see us 2 more times, and after that we talked more about a lot of different things. Still though.
Mana: When I saw them the second time, I thought they really were great. I became convinced, and so then we could talk about more concrete plans. Like what kind of things they wanted to do from now on, since I'd gotten to test them out musically.

- If you said what was attractive about Schwarz Stein, what would it be?

Mana: First off, their songs are good! The songs I heard some time ago were easy to listen to, but there are hard, dark, and gothic style songs as well; there's a wide range. And in the songs there's a steady sound, rather than an empty one. I think the club feeling course they've taken by combining their two sounds is also interesting. If you look around the established vis kei scene, bands like this are pretty rare, and having just the vocal and keyboard standing on stage throws out a conspicuous color too.

- How did you two meet?

Kaya: At first we were in different bands, but I went to see his and thought, "That guy's cool..." And after the show I talked to him, and we were the same age and became friends, and while we were contacting one another we realized our ideas of what we wanted to do were pretty close. And then we thought, "Why don't we do it together?"

- And under what concept did you start your activity as Schwraz Stein?

Kaya: Our important point in terms of sound is that we use all digital, and no acoustic instruments.
Hora: First off, we thought doing all digital songs with this kind of appearance would be interesting.

- Certainly there's a gap between the sound and appearance then?

Hora: About that, we wondered if we couldn't alter the normal sense of value for things. Like, make people wonder about how we're an all digital unit, but we have this kind of appearance.

- It certainly is interesting.

Mana: It is interesting, and that and the songs were my judgement point. The songs ride on a digital sound, but they have a lot of expressive power, but they're also stable, charming, and erotic feeling. I think the sound and songs match really well! I thought it would be interesting to see what it progressed into in the future as well.

- Does that mean you liked digital music since you were young, Hora?

Hora: Yeah, since around middle school. After that I went with visual for a while, but then I turned back to digital, and in the end, that's what I ended up liking after all.

- There are a lot of different types of digital music, but...?

Hora: Like, for example, I like industrial too, but that's not what I'm going for. If you're thinking in terms of genre it's techno, but while I was writing it I realized there was a connection to the "near future" in my image as well.

- And Kaya, were you into digital too?

Kaya: I originally liked popular songs and classic more. Like him, I liked all sorts of different bands, but in the end I turned more towards pop...that and I like clubbing, but in terms of music, I really, really like the pounding sound of club music.

......more soon.

Hahaha I gave you eye pain~ XD