Ever young
Published: ASIA
JAPAN: After 20 years of recorded and live performances, Mr Children remain one of Japan’s biggest bands, as they proved with a concert tour of Japan’s sports domes.
Given the 20-year career and string of 15 albums and 33 attendant singles that have made Mr Children one of Japan’s most popular bands, the almost instant sell-out of their latest tour should come as little or no surprise. In addition to chart dominating record releases, their music has been used for film soundtracks, television drama and TV commercials, while the band and members have been active in various areas outside of music, including lead singer Kazutoshi Sakurai’s part in founding AP Bank, a non-profit lending group that finances environmentally friendly projects.
That the latest tour took in all five major domed sports stadia in Japan, involving 11 concerts in five cities, and came hot on the heels of a tour of a tour of mid- to large-sized arenas that took place between February and August 2009, simply consolidates their ‘supergroup’ status. Between them, the two tours account for an audience of around 800,000 fans. Surprising, then, Mr Children have just one live album to their name – the 1/42 double that was released as a limited edition of 500,000 pressings in September 1999, and which sold out within seven weeks of its release. Its title was derived from the number of places the band played on that year’s concert tour…
The recent concerts follow the release of the Supermarket Fantasy studio album in December 2008, proving that Mr Children – or Misuchiru, if you are a fan – have lost none of their appeal, either as songwriters or performers. Between the tours, a new song called ‘fanfare’ was chosen as the main theme song for the anime film One Piece: Strong World, which is based on Japanese manga artist Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece series and was released in early December as a mobile phone ringtone. Mr. Children had also recorded another new song, ‘365 nichi’, that was used in a series of commercials. The two new tracks have been dubbed New Sound, and showcase the band’s latest musical style – there was plenty to keep Mr Children’s live audience interested.
The Dome Tour 2009, as it was dubbed, began at the Yahoo! Japan Dome in Fukuoka, before moving on to the Sapporo Dome in Hokkaido, Kyocera Dome in Osaka and Nagoya Dome in Aichi, before arriving at the Tokyo Dome for three nights. The final night was added to allow the performance to be broadcast live by TV station Wowow, the first private satellite broadcasting and pay TV station to begin operating in Japan.
While the loudspeaker systems used for the gigs was handled by rental company SC-Alliance/Arte-Co, the sound design fell to Akira Shimura of Star-Tech Inc, which supplied the other technical systems that were used, who worked with system designer and Sim engineer, Joji Fukumoto from Arte-Co. ‘I have been in charge of the sound systems for concert tours at domes for many years,’ Mr Shimura says. ‘I have tried various systems and have finally reached this system configuration…’
The set-up in question relies on a selection of Meyer Sound line array boxes and Meyer Sound Galileo signal processing, with a Yamaha PM1D digital mixing console at front-of-house for mixing engineer Tatsuya Mashiko of Star-Tech. ‘You can see that we have four of delay speaker towers of Milo and Mica loudspeakers,’ Mr Shimura begins. ‘At first, we were planning to have only two of them, but our lighting designer requested having two more towers for extra lighting, and we were able to have the luxury of four.’
The full complement of line array elements counts 48 M3D active, full-range (35Hz to 18kHz) boxes, along with the 24 Mica and eight Milo boxes used for the delays. An array of 30 700-HP subwoofers across the stage front extends the system’s reach down to around 28Hz, while 18 MSL-3 and four MSL-4s full range speakers provide front fill.
Given the immense size of the dome venues, the loudspeaker system is further supplemented by six Meyer Sound SB-3F sound field synthesis loudspeakers, high-powered, long-throw systems capable of projecting mid-high frequency sound over distances of up to 1km. ‘We have just started using the SB-3Fs for this tour, and they are very powerful and effective for the third-floor seats of the domes,’ Mr Shimura explains.
At the FOH desk, there is an Audio & Design SyncroGenius HD master clock generator to hold the various audio and video systems in sync, and two Meyer Sound Galileo 616 AES and two Galileo 616 units for loudspeaker management. ‘We use digital consoles, Galileo AESs and digital multi-core cables, which have substantially improved the sound quality,’ says Mr Shimura. ‘The atmospheric correction function of Galileo is very useful and helpful, since there is 10° difference in temperature of the domes during the course of a concert.’
Up on stage, singer and guitarist Kazutoshi Sakurai uses a Shure UR2/KSM9 hand-held wireless mic system (with two spares in reserve), while guitarist Kenichi Tahara, bass player Keisuke Nakagawa and the band’s backing vocalists use Shure Beta57As.
Pre-prepared musical sequences and the click tracks that help keep the drummer and band in time are played out from a Pro Tools system, using four stereo pairs of the main mix. The Premier drum kit of Hideya Suzuki, meanwhile, uses a pair of Shure SM57 on top and bottom of the snare drum, with a Sennheiser MD441 dynamic a little further distant, and Shure SM91 and an Audio-Technica ATM25 on the kick drum. The toms use four ATM23 dynamics, while the hi-hat takes another SM57, the ride cymbal an AKG C460 condenser and overheads two Gefell UM70 condensers.
The Fender Bassman used by Keisuke Nakagawa is miked with a CAD e100, and the various guitar cabinets use Sennheiser Evolution e-906 dynamics. Line-level signals from the stage – such as the Yamaha CP80 electric grand piano, Fender Rhodes, Yamaha Motif, Motif rack, Roland JV, Korg Triton and Hammond XK organ as well as the DI from the bass guitar – are split for FOH and monitor mixing using SSL Xlogic Xrack Mic Amp and Channel EQ modules as a vocal pre-amplification system, and an XTA DS-800 mic-line distribution system.
The monitor mixing console is a Soundcraft Vi6, which runs alongside a Yamaha M7CL for sub-stage mixing. On the stage itself, there are EAW MW12 wedges with JBL VRX928 line array boxes and VRX918 subwoofers for the drum fill, as well as Meyer Sound MSL-4 and UM-1 loudspeakers on the stage runway. For in-ear monitoring, Mr Children use Sennheiser SR3056-U transmitters with EK3052-U receivers for frontman Kazutoshi Sakurai and bass guitarist Keisuke Nakagawa, as well as backing vocals.
The concerts also feature large images displayed using Element Labs’ Stealth screen, a modular video display system that has found widespread use in concert stage sets since its release four years ago. It all adds up to a spectacular show, which can be seen in the concert DVD of the 2009 performance given by Mr Children at the Nippon Budokan from the tour earlier in the year. Entitled Mr Children Tour 2009 ～Shumatsu no Confidence Songs～ it may have to keep the band’s fans happy until they hot the road again.
Published in PAA March-April 2010