What is 3776's Link Mix? (1)

3776's Link Mode is a form of musical performance in which Ide Chiyono (井出ちよの) and Hirose Aina (広瀬愛菜) sing different but correspondent songs simultaneously. The Mode was started in 2017 and developed until Hirose left the group in 2018. Ishida Akira (石田彰), producer and composer, calls the group in the period '3776 Season #4.' Their performance was designed to make polyphonic music happen, rather than to do harmonic one by the two singers. Although the Link Mode is suspended as of February 2021, the producer says 'the concept is maintained.'

3776 (pronounced mi-na-na-ro) is an idol group based in Fujinomiya, Japan, a historic gateway city for climbers to Mount Fuji. It was one of few communities that responded Ishida, who had sent all mayors across Japan an e-mail to push himself as a local idol producer. With the backing of the municipal authorities just for a year, he launched Team MII (team em two) in 2012 on the condition that the group's activities should be non-profit only. When the public support was ended, some of the members wished to continue singing their songs on stage, and Ishida reorganized them into 3776 (Season #1). While most residents in Fujinomiya were delighted that Mount Fuji was inscribed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, 3776 sang an awkward reserve player in school was My World Heritage (私の世界遺産). 3776 Season #2 was featured with theatrical expressions as seen in Overture (序曲). As Ishida wrote more unconventional songs, more members left him. Finally, he decided to make 3776 Season #3 a one-person group whose sole member was Ide Chiyono. 3776 Season #3 was radical, serious, and humorous. Songs in Love Letter (ラブレター, 2014) and If You Should Have A Reason Not To Listen To 3776 (3776 を聴かない理由があるとすれば, 2015) often carried double entendres, referring to daily things while hinting dreadful experiences that people in Japan had shared on March 11, 2011: a great earthquake followed by tsunamis and a nuclear disaster. 3-11, a song included in If You Should, portrayed a world that seemed to have been ruined by an eruption of Mount Fuji. If you listen to the album, you will be guided from a foot to the top of the mountain to see it explodes.

And then, 3776 Season #4. Hirose Aina was 'linked' to 3776 (you could understand she had joined, Ide said) in 2017. She had been a local singer based in Yamanashi Prefecture, where the northern half of Mount Fuji belongs. Its southern half is part of Shizuoka Prefecture where the city of Fujinomiya is located. Ishida made two different songs, both titled It's Mine! (私のものです！), to have Ide and Hirose sing each at the same time in different directions. They sounded like they were competing for the mountain, but why in separate directions? 3776 usually performs outdoors. At the South Fuji Local Wholesale Market where the group gave monthly regular gigs those years, the two singers sang with two walls of a corner of a storehouse behind their backs. In other words, on the L-shaped corner, Ide stood on the vertical line to sing leftward, while Hirose did on the horizontal, 20 meters away from the angle, to face downward. Where should the audience have listened to their songs? Some stayed in front of Ide, some before Hirose, some found a place where they could hear the two singers, and others frequently walked around the corner. The pair of It's Mine! was confusing because a few parts were harmonized. The producer composed three other pairs, Keep Your Sleep For A While (もうちょっとおやすみ), A Song Of Peaches And Young Sardines (桃としらすの歌) and I Can't See (見えない). Apparently, he did not have an intention to treat the audience with a beauty of harmony, as the pair of I Can't See were almost independent of each other. If we say the angle at the Market mentioned above was 90 degrees, ones at other places were sometimes 120, and even 180 degrees, and distances between Ide and Hirose were from 20 to more than 100 meters. Ishida named the performance 3776's Link Mode. You can listen to each song of the four pairs, apart, in the CDs titled Open Experiments (公開実験).

3776 Season #4 went further than something we can listen to on CDs. Ishida conceived an idea of quasi-Link Mode. When one of the members gave an in-store gig, the producer played the counterpart's songs with his laptop. Their songs were heard simultaneously from two separated positions. It was as if you were a fish swimming in an aquarium, feeling temperature differences, seeing reflections of views -- sounds.

Then Ishida supplied two pairs of songs to the Link Mode:

1. (Hirose) Myths Of Mount Fuji, The First Movement, Creation Of Heaven And Earth (富士山神話第一楽章「天地創造」)
1. (Ide) The Formation Of Mount Fuji, A Chronological Description (富士山の成り立ち概要)

2. (Hirose) Myths Of Mount Fuji, The Second Movement, Izanagi (富士山神話第二楽章「イザナギ」)
2. (Ide) See-And-Goers (観覧逃げ)

While Hirose's songs were based on an ancient Japanese myth, Ide's referred to today's scenes. According to the myth, there were no lands in the sea but layers like jellyfish drifted, before two deities, male and female, stirred them with a spear and made them into a small island. Hirose's Creation Of Heaven And Earth was ceremonious, solemn, and reticent. On the other hand, Ide spoke fast, not sang, describing how Mount Fuji had been formed in a million years of its history from a geological point of view. Hirose's Second Movement was based on a legend of Izanagi, a male deity, running away from the land of the dead. When Izanami, Izanagi's wife, gave birth to a deity of fire, she died from burn and was buried in a mountain. Her husband missed her and went underground to bring her back. When he recognized her in the Land of Darkness, she agreed to return with him and asked him not to look at her until they got to the ground. But the husband was impatient and lit a fire to find that her corpse had been flyblown. He was frightened and ran away from her. She got angry and sent several witches to hold him back. He threw peaches at them on the slope to the ground, Japanese ancient books say. Peaches! They are famous products of Yamanashi. The legend is suitable for Hirose to sing, as she represented the prefecture in 3776 Season #4. On the contrary, Ide's song of the pair was about an audience of 3776 itself. Their gigs are usually held outdoors without any admission fees. You can buy CDs, vinyls, T-shirts, and other items from them, and if you already have them all, you can have a picture (a cheki) taken with Ide, or you can even donate to them, but a certain part of the audience just see them and go. The word of 観覧逃げ (see-and-goer) is not listed in any Japanese dictionaries because it was coined by Ide herself. In the song, she appealed to the audience not to see and go. What a nice correspondence between Izanagi and the unpaying audience!

3776 Season #4 was ended at this point although Ishida had suggested a plan to present the following part of the myth in the Link Mode. The author of this blog does not know why he wanted two singers to sing different songs in different directions at the same time. Only I know a few things. Once Ishida said to us that, if 3776 were a group of four members, he would like each of them to sing in triple meter (3), septuple (7), septuple (7) and sextuple (6) respectively at the same time. In a gig at Shinjuku Loft, Tokyo, in August 2016, while Ide was performing on the main stage, he had three former members of 3776 appear as fake Ide Chiyonos on a small stage in the bar, which is apart from the main hall but accessible through a heavy soundproof door. He even got on the stage himself, dancing to Ide's songs projected on the screen. He seems to like it that way.

As 3776 was a one-person group again, he renamed it 3776 Season #3 Neo, and devoted himself to complete works for the album of Saijiki (歳時記 or Calendar, 2019). The subjects of the album were traditions and folklores that are seen around Mount Fuji. The nonstop album includes more than a song for every month of a year, and a song for January is composed in monometer in F, one for February in duple meter in F sharp, and so on to one for December in duodecuple meter in E. In a song for June, a Japanese traditional song Come On Fireflies (ほたる来い) is synchronized with a piece of melody from Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, as well as Rabbit, Rabbit (うさぎうさぎ) is paralleled along Debussy's Clair De Lune.

In January 2019, Hirose Aina, who had left 3776, was invited as a guest singer to the group's monthly regular gig at the South Fuji Local Wholesale Market. After the two singers' shows were over, Ishida proposed he would try a complete quasi-Link Mode (完全疑似 LINK モード) of 3776 Season #4, which meant the producer would play both of the two singers' songs from his laptop. 'They have not listened to the Link Mode yet,' he said. I, the author of this blog, felt as if two dogs were running over to me simultaneously from different directions, two after others, a white and a brown, a big and a small, a cheerful and a noble, all playful.

Then 3776 announced that they would hold a one-night stand of Link Mix on February 29, 2020, with 963, O'CHAWANZ, XOXO EXTREME, Her Service and Receive (彼女のサーブ & レシーブ) and Hirose Aina. A Link Mix of twelve people on stage!

(to be continued)