Sheena Ringo in Sound & Recording

I have been an enormous fan of Sheena Ringo’s work ever since her first single in (gulp) 1998. She’s in the category of performer where even a level-headed accounting of her career achievements start to sound like fannish overstatement. She’s long-since attained legendary status in Japan, of course, but for my money she has to be in the conversation for the greatest recording artist of the 21st century, period. That’s neither here nor there, I guess, but you’ll have to forgive a fanboy his preambles.

The cover story for the September 2024 issue of Sound & Recording magazine was Sheena Ringo’s latest studio album, Hōjōya (Carnival).^[1] Its time on newsstands happened to coincide with my last visit to Japan, so naturally I bought a copy the instant I saw it. In the intervening two years, the issue has been on my desk, waiting for me to take the time to read it—and finally, I have.

The entire interview translated to English would run to over 7000 words, which would be a lot of work, and I’d feel a little weird about reproducing it in its entirety anyway. But that means I can limit myself to the highlights and still deliver some substance.

First, from the feature’s interview with Ms. Sheena herself, by Yusuke Imai.

For the guest vocalists’ recording sessions, you directed them yourself, correct?

Sheena: Yes. Though I wasn’t exactly talkative about it.

On “Hobo Mizu no Awa (Cheers Beer),” for example, you and Momo trade lines in remarkable sync. Did your direction include back-and-forth about phrasing and delivery?

Sheena: The guide vocal on the demo I handed over already expressed the vocal style and articulation, so she must have read from it exactly what I was hoping for. Just what you’d expect from her.

So you recorded both vocal parts on the guide yourself to convey the nuances.

Sheena: To communicate the way the lyrics sit in the melody and everything else, I absolutely have to hand over a guide vocal... I recorded those at home using AVID Pro Tools and an AKG C12VR.

Incidentally, this issue carries a feature on handheld mics. You’ve long used the AKG Elle C live — is that still the case?

Sheena: The Elle C went out of production, so now thanks to the kind cooperation of the people at Harman International, I use a custom model based on the C636.

Another topic of this album is the participation of virtuosos on all sorts of instruments. Among them, Keisuke Torigoe and Ishiwaka-san apparently became key figures for the album. First, tell us how the two of them look to you as players.

Sheena: When I first met Torigoe-kun it was with a band doing Argentine material (“Karisome Otome (TAMEIKESANNOH ver.)”—ed.), so at first that was the image I had of him. But as he played all sorts of sounds at our concerts over the years, I realized the spirit he carries could never be contained within just Latin or jazz. There were moments that made me feel, “if anything, this person might be a punk.” I came to seek out Torigoe-kun’s innate elegance and that streetwise dialect he has acquired over the years, and as a result all sorts of songs came into being. I don’t know how Torigoe-kun himself would put it, but I feel a real kinship with his spirit. For someone like me, hardcore jazz and hardcore punk^[2] aren’t so far apart. The impatience lying deep at the bottom of both of them is closely related, I feel. I suspected he might feel the same way.

On communicating with Shun Ishiwaka, who played drums on the album:

Ishiwaka-san told us that he “sensed your particular care in things like the fills, and developed his parts while receiving ideas from you.”

Sheena: Whether it’s a chordal instrument or percussion, people often say a good phrase is one you can hum. Not everything needs to follow that rule, but for the song’s aizuchi^[3], for its agreed-upon conventions, I wanted elements with that kind of tunefulness here and there. It’s terribly embarrassing to bring up, since he and I are on completely different levels, but my own band life outside the piano actually began on drums. Partly because of that, yes, I frequently made requests like “I’d like an accent on beat so-and-so.”

On her jazz roots:

Torigoe-san said of Hōjōya (Carnival), “broadly speaking, you could probably call it a jazz album.” Is jazz something special for you as well?

Sheena: Long before I started writing pop songs, I was steeped in classical and jazz — first through the grandiose audio equipment at home. And then, perhaps it’s something particular to an elementary school in Shizuoka, with all its instrument factories: every first-grader would breezily take on Broadway numbers at the school’s annual instrumental concert. It was the kind of ensemble where the themes sung by the brass section in a real big band were carried by the largest bloc of students on melodica. There was a piano audition for it, and everyone with keyboard experience was compulsorily rounded up. But those students weren’t allowed to touch a keyboard, we were just made to tap on desks. We were made to tap out the assigned rhythm patterns bit by bit, and in no time I was picked — “yes, you” — and I ended up playing the piano parts for every class. I imagine they were checking purely for swing feel rather than technique. I’m sure there were students who could play better than I could. Over time, it dawned on me through such experiences that this bounce was like my own accent, my dialect. It’s not identical to Torigoe-kun’s or Ishiwaka-kun’s path, but I think I made my way into music along a similar route. Beginning with that memory of having “it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing” hammered into me in first grade, jazz too was, for me, part of a perfectly ordinary formative experience.

[...]

I’ve never entirely grasped what it is that makes something register as “jazzy.” Harmony is certainly part of it, but what most people listen to is the song — that is, the melody, the “memory” of it, no? So maybe what matters is where the vocal melody is written relative to the root. There are any number of songs built on the kind of cyclical progression you mention. But depending on where the melody sits against the root and how it moves, a song can fail to sound jazzy at all and settle into the impression of “typical recent J-pop.” Even without any overt gesture, perhaps the notes of the vocal melody themselves are what guarantee the “jazzy mood.” Take Muzai Moratorium (1999) or Shōso Strip (2000): in feel and texture those songs are loud, but that’s mere surface decoration, and through the skeleton of harmony and melody I don’t think I ever quite managed to hide my roots.

The feature also has an interview with Keisuke Torigoe, the album’s bass player, and Shun Ishiwaka, the drummer, both of whom are primarily known as accomplished jazz players.

Sheena-san has two sides, vocalist and producer. Tell us your impression of each.

Torigoe: As a vocalist, I’ve never forgotten the shock of her debut. The bass playing of (Seiji) Kameda-san, who handled the arrangements, was also astonishing, a style that hadn’t existed before. Her vocals were sensational from the very start, and that impression has continued to this day. As a producer, she is simply brilliant at drawing out what is good in a given person. The kind of outlandish playing or protruding edges that would get rejected on other sessions, she keeps every bit of it alive; she genuinely accepts each player’s individuality.

Ishiwaka-san, what’s your impression of Sheena-san?

Ishiwaka: What I felt firsthand touring together was her Super Saiyan-like power of concentration, and the sheer force of a voice that conducts the band’s performance. Every show, I came away galvanized. On the producer side, what comes to mind is the intro of “Chirinuruwo (Offering Sake),” track one of Hōjōya (Carnival). With a small chinese gong I had the instruction, “start slowly, then keep speeding up,” and honestly I played it without quite grasping what effect it would produce. But when I heard the finished track it was so cool — “oh, so that’s what it was!” I was struck by her power to see far down the road, and her gift for putting that vision into precise words when she places the order.

Obviously having an accomplished jazz musician validate my memory of “the shock of her debut” and then go on to praise Seiji Kameda (the bassist and arranger/producer who helped establish her idiosyncratic sound so early) made me feel extremely smart and perceptive, and who doesn’t love when that happens?

The feature is even nerdier than you’d necessarily extrapolate from these snippets. They get into the weeds of chord voicings, and there’s an entire third interview with Uni Inoue, the engineer who mixed the album, digging into things like the mic he uses for recording her vocals (the legendary Telefunken ELA M 251, incidentally) and the plugin he admits (with chagrin) to using in the final position of the master chain of every track.

In addition, there was this astonishing aside:

On the album version of “Kōzen no Himitsu (Open Secret),” Ishiwaka-san recorded a new drum track. He said the other tracks were the same as the single version of the record, so he said he was mystified: “the time and even the place of recording were different, how did Inoue-san reconcile it all?”

Inoue: I conformed the whole composition, timing and balance included, so that it’s as if the other players were performing along with Ishiwaka-san’s drums. And since we went to the trouble of redoing the drums, their level is a touch higher than on the single version.

Adjusting every track that way — it must have taken considerable time?

Inoue: It took a very long time. But to create the atmosphere of everyone having played together on a count-off, that was the only way.

Sheena Ringo and I are very close in age; she’s a bit less than two months younger than me. This interview presents a snapshot of a brilliant artist who through a combination of good fortune and professional canniness has managed to spend her career applying her gifts to their fullest possible expression. On top of the admiration and near-awe I feel for that accomplishment, I also feel a complicated, aspirational longing.

There’s a kind of genius, I think, to the early self-knowledge that leads someone to know exactly who they are by age 17 or 18 and to hurl themselves into the work of living that life. I find it impossible not to long for that clarity, and to envy it when I see it so clearly expressed.