Additional Information
Released digitally a few weeks ago, We Are The Times, the eighth album from Buffalo Daughter, has just landed in vinyl and CD versions in the record shops. It must be said that the Japanese trio took its time with We Are The Times. Since the release of Konjac-tion in 2014, Buffalo Daughter have been rather discreet, prioritizing concerts and tours over studio sessions.
We Are The Times brings back the Tokyo band as we’ve always known them since Captain Vapour Athletes, their first full-length album on the now-defunct Beastie Boys label Grand Royal in 1996: eclectic, adventurous, flirting with electronica, new wave, avant-garde pop, leftfield hip-hop and post-rock with a strong experimental bent. Still composed of suGar Yoshinaga on guitar, Yumiko Ohno on bass and MoOoG Yamamoto on machines and turntables, Buffalo Daughter draws up, over nine tracks, a dark assessment of the world and humanity on We Are The Times.
Born from an improvisation session with Masaya Nakahara, as part of a tribute to Takahiro Muramatsu (Smurf Otokogumi), the album was conceived over several years, evolving and changing with the moods of the band members. Although We Are The Times was created during a tumultuous time, when the trio found themselves, like everyone else, facing the Covid-19 pandemic, it suggests that there is still hope, that music does indeed soften the blow. With this new effort, Buffalo Daughter sought to create an energetic, upbeat and anxiety-inducing project to combat the turmoil.
Reached at her home in Tokyo, suGar Yoshinaga spoke to us in broken English about the genesis of this long-form album, about Kid Koala, featured on one of the album’s tracks, about the Shibuya-kei movement and the power of music, among other things; an interview punctuated by the singing and calls to play of her parrot Popcorn.
PAN M 360: We Are The Times is the title of your new album. What’s its meaning?
suGar Yoshinaga: We sing it in the song “Times”, the second track on the album. The song is about the current world we live in. There are so many different opinions battling each other. There is red and blue. Blue people have their opinions and red people have a different one. These opinions are completely different and quite often, these people are debating. There are some conflicts happening all over the world. Right wing versus left wing… they are debating but there is no common ground. This polarization became worse, or more obvious, during the pandemic and maybe even the Trump years.
PAN M 360: Is it a Covid album? Was it influenced and created during the pandemic?
suGar Yoshinaga: We started to work on the album in 2017. We made most of the album before the pandemic. But we gathered all the pieces during Covid. So obviously, we were greatly influenced by Covid, but most of the tracks were made before. So it is a mix of before and during the pandemic.
PAN M 360: The lyrics were written before as well?
suGar Yoshinaga: Two songs were written during the pandemic, “Music” and “Times”. The first two songs on the album.
PAN M 360: The song “Music” starts with the words “music is the vitamin”. Did music save you or keep you sane during these hard times ?
suGar Yoshinaga: Oh yes, definitely! During Covid, we had to stay home forever, we couldn’t do shows and tour anymore. Everything changed in one day. Like everybody else, we are worried by the future and what is happening right now. It is the last song we wrote for this album. There are so many things we are worried about, like global warming and all that stuff. Looking at the whole album after it was done, we thought it was very dark, like there is no way out. Then we said to ourselves, will it be a good album with so many dark songs?. Then we wrote the last song, “Music”. Looking back at our lifestyle—the Buffalo Daughter lifestyle, I mean—music is our way to communicate to the world and between each other in the band. Music is our biggest relief and biggest passion. So that’s why we say that music is the vitamin. It saved me during the pandemic.
PAN M 360: You mentioned global warming earlier. You have a song on the album, “Global Warming Kills Us All”, that you wrote four years ago during an extremely warm summer. Kid Koala is featured on that song. How did you hook up with him ?
suGar Yoshinaga: We’ve known Kid Koala since the late ’90s when we toured together with the Money Mark band through Europe and the USA. I think we went to Montreal too. By the way, I really love Montreal, it’s one of my favourite cities in the world… So Kid Koala came to Japan just before the pandemic for his Nufonia Must Fall show. We went to see it and we were so moved and impressed by what he has done with his music and characters, this muppet show live with the music… So when we started thinking about a video for “Global Warming Kills Us All”, we instantly thought of him. Because global warming is killing us all. That’s a strong statement and it’s a very, very serious issue. But we didn’t want the video to be dark and depressing because we don’t want to give up our hope. We wanted to express the feeling that we are really in danger, everybody on Earth, humans and animals, this global warming might kill us all in the near future. So we thought that his personality, just like his characters that he draws or his muppets that are so cute, might make people take it more seriously, that they would react more to seeing these innocent and cute little characters than to seeing sinister images.
PAN M 360: What was his contribution to the song?
suGar Yoshinaga: We tried to show how critical the situation is and that we need to do something, even if it’s small things like avoiding plastic and stuff like that. So we chose to sing using a vocoder, to give us a kind of a robot voice. Because it gives an impression that we are more in [imitates a robot voice] danger—and even that the robots are in danger!
PAN M 360: The title “Don’t Punk Out” is intriguing. Can you tell us more about it?
suGar Yoshinaga: It’s a song about a person like me, or the other band members, struggling in this world, in these times. We are all getting older. When we started the band, we were so young, but after 25 years, we are not so young anymore! In fact, we are going to become old and bitter! (laughs) So the feeling we have now is totally different from when we were in our early twenties. We had our worries, our struggles when we were 20, 40 and now. Life can seem long, but it can also seem very short. But despite the passage of time, we will always have battles to fight. We still have to get through it all. So don’t punk out! Do what you have to or what you want to. That’s kind of what we’re trying to say in this song.
PAN M 360: What other subjects do you touch on in the album?
suGar Yoshinaga: I think the whole album is about struggling. Struggling in life, with global warming and all the stuff we are facing. We all have personal struggles too. And especially during this pandemic period. We wanted to express those struggles and what we can do about it or to get through it. And for us, the best way to get through it is through music. Music is our vitamin, we take it every day, it excites us and makes us feel good.
PAN M 360: Besides Kid Koala, there are also other guests on the album…
suGar Yoshinaga: Yes, there are a few, including Atsushi Matsushita, the drummer who plays on “Don’t Punk Out”. He played with John Zorn and many others, he is probably the best session drummer in Japan. There is also Ricardo Dias Gomes, who sings and speaks on the song “Jazz”, he is Brazilian and lives in Portugal. He came to Tokyo two years ago for sessions with a famous American singer whose name I forget. He played at the Blue Note jazz club in Tokyo and Yumiko knew the drummer of this American singer’s band, so we went there. Ricardo was the bass player that night. Since we liked Ricardo Gomes’ albums a lot, we asked him if he wanted to sing on one of our songs. He happened to like what we did with Takako Minekawa [the Roomic Cube album] in the ’90s.
PAN M 360: Your previous album was released in 2014, what has happened in the last seven years?
suGar Yoshinaga: (laughs) Yeah, seven years seem like a long time… We didn’t really idle, we did a lot of touring throughout Europe and the US for three years and then, in 2017, we thought it might be time to make a new album, so we started working on it. But we also had other things to do, for example Yumiko was touring with Cornelius, so it was not easy to be in the studio together. So we agreed to meet at least once a month all together in the studio, it was a promise we made. We did sessions with different musicians like Masaya Nakahara, who plays modular synth, he is credited on the album too. Anyway, it was a very long process; one day a month is not much. That said, we always did as much as we could during these sessions. We documented these early sessions with a few videos on Youtube and a few songs on Soundcloud.
PAN M 360: So after a long silence of seven years, you resurfaced in 2021 with two releases, the digital EP Continuous Stories of Miss Cro-magnon (20 Years Later), available on Bandcamp, and this new album! Were you running after lost time?
suGar Yoshinaga: (laughs) You could say that. Regarding the EP on Bandcamp, we had a concert last July in Tokyo and we wanted to mark the event with something special. We hadn’t played for a long time and we could only do one show. We thought that a t-shirt would be ordinary, so we thought of an EP with three songs. We released it on July 8. I don’t know if you know this, but July 7 is the Festival of Stars in Japan, the Tanabata. So on this date, the seventh day of the seventh month, the myth says that a man and a goddess meet on the Milky Way. It’s very romantic and we think about the stars, the space and the universe during this day. So we wanted to make an EP that would touch this theme. We did the three songs and mixed the album in two weeks.
PAN M 360: One of the songs, “Son of Altair”, was already released before, right?
suGar Yoshinaga: Yes, we re-recorded it. The others (“Cosmic Dance”, “Interstellar Journey”) are new compositions though. Actually, the third song of the EP, “Interstellar Journey”, shares the same source as “Serendipity (Tsubu)” on our new album. “Serendipity” is an alternative version, let’s say.
PAN M 360: Buffalo Daughter has often been associated with the Shibuya-kei movement, but I have read here and there that you don’t feel so close to the other artists in this movement.
suGar Yoshinaga: We think that musically, we are quite different from other artists in this movement such as Pizzicato 5, Cornelius, Flipper’s Guitar and all the others. Our music doesn’t sound like theirs, but they are all very good friends! There’s something trendy about this movement, something a little bit stylish, while we’re more of this indie band that tours in a van, you see? We feel different. And that stuff is a little bit out of fashion, it was popular years ago. But there are quite a few bands that are inspired by the Shibuya-kei sound and are starting to be known in Japan.
PAN M 360: You also play with another band, Metalchicks. Can you tell us a little bit about this project?
suGar Yoshinaga: Metalchicks is me on guitar or bass and Yuka (Yoshimura) on drums. The idea was to make something really hard, like metal. That’s something I can’t do with Buffalo Daughter, and that’s why I started this band.
PAN M 360: Is this your answer to Babymetal?
suGar Yoshinaga: (laughs) Actually, they came long after Metalchicks! But I like Babymetal, I think they are quite original.
PAN M 360: I’ve been hearing a bird chirping since the beginning of the interview. Do you have a parrot at home?
suGar Yoshinaga: Yes, she calls me to go and play with her. Her name is Popcorn, do you want to see her?
PAN M 360: Uh… yeah, why not, I’ve had several birds previously…
What follows is a lively discussion about parrots and other small, talking, winged creatures. But as PAN M 360 is not an ornithological site, we’ll stop here…
Photo credit: Enno Kapitz, digitally modified by Kosuke Kawamura
