Bang (Haru Nemuri)
- Artist
- Haru Nemuri
- Single
- bang
- Released
- 2021.01.15
- Catalog Number
- TO3S-0016
- Price
- ¥250
- Tracklist
- bang
- Information
"bang" is the fifth digital single by Haru Nemuri. It was included on her second full album, Shunka Ryougen, as track #12.
With the release of the song, she also wrote a statement in English and Japanese that was posted on her official websites, titled "Statement for Riot."
I cried a little in the bath when Donald Trump won the US presidential election four years ago. The social persona of Donald Trump really understood the behavior to show his stuff completely in this society where the ideals of the capitalism and the individualism are unnerved and they has been bogged down, and he has succeeded in letting a lot of people be under the impression that it’s the strength and the identity of strong person to take both discriminatory and anti-foreign attitudes by repeating them. It was a great sadness for me that there’re many people who couldn’t help supporting such the sham strength.
This world i.e. we are divided deeper and deeper because a variety of human beings have used the ways like ones that Donald Trump has done many a time not only during his administration but in his life. We are all different in the point of what we feel and think, and we’re never enable to understand each other. And then, we have the only way to oppose this division getting deeper. It is to engage in dialogue anyway. We should upgrade our thought intermittently by talking each other to make this society by ourselves. In order to do that, we have to imagine others’ sadness, anger and pain existing certainly now, knowing the fact that we can’t understand completely each other.
That working of engaging in dialogue often impose a big burden on those who do it. There’re cases when it would get complicated depending on the sensitivity or background of them because there’re not certain answers and it would be done by those who have each sense of value and world view. And then they would have to make it back to where they could talk each other rightly each time. It means to present a temporary conclusion as a point of compromise because of nothing like a right answer, not mocking and despising each other and expressing the feelings and logic of themselves reasonably during it. Not few people would feel the process of doing it, which would require much energy, frustrating.
I also feel it very fatigued when working on that sincerely. And, I’ve felt that the immaturity of myself that I can’t stand my spirit getting worn down has lead the consequences that brandishing academic knowledge as the absolute justice often demoralize others’ will for our dialogue. For such me, making music is the timeless way of engaging in it by my spirit, not losing sight of the essence. And the reason why I think so is that the fundamental element of both engaging in dialogue and making music have a common one for me.
To put it briefly, it’s ‘prayer’. It’s not too much to say that there’re nothing but it. During our life, we might have painful experiences that we wouldn't be able to forget. Though in this world we are losing the subjects to which we should pray because something like the religion, race, gender and blood relation doesn’t decide our identity at all in the present times, I’m now finding hope in ‘prayer’ itself.
I do not pray for the help or the end of this planet. I know we can’t understand each other. I just know many a time it but I pray for living with any human beings and also any life on this planet. There’re never the subject accepting it as gods and someone. There’re just a prayer.
There’re human beings receiving discriminatory by social structures, those not having liberty that they should have, the world where intelligence doesn’t exist as kindness, abused children, people who can’t be allowed to cry for their hurts themselves. Each time I realize it, I’m born again. That is, each time I realize the hurts in this world, engage in dialogues to embrace them and sure the prayer existing here, I’m born again. And then, the world is born again as well. I don’t know whether the sound at that moment will ring in your life. But if you find and grab something in this music, you will listen to the sound ringing when you’re born again by yourself. It’s the precious moment that we’ll start talking each other in the field of music. The possibility of our future arising there is one of the ways opposing to our division. I live, believing it.
Song Information
- Lyrics
- Haru Nemuri
- Music
- Haru Nemuri
- Other Information
- Additional Guitar: John Philbrick
- Recorded by Yamamoto Hajime at HAPPYCAT RECORDINGS
- Mixed by Justin Gariano, Dusty Schaller at Treehaus Recording
- Mastered by Stephen Marsh at Marsh Mastering
Music Video
There were two videos released for "bang"--the first being the official video which was a joint project with a local video team from Los Angeles, California in the US, while Haru remained in Japan. She and her team remained in Japan to plan, edit, and direct the video, while the team in Los Angeles did the filming. In the video, Haru is projected on to buildings in the city, interspersed with shots of the city itself. The video was originally supposed to have been shot in-person during Haru's tour in the US, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the tour was cancelled and it was produced this way instead.
The second version of the video is a vertical video that consists only of the shots of Haru dancing and singing--the shots that were projected on to the buildings.
