Turn off your smartphone when reading this zine.” Statement on the publication of the zine / STATEMENT

<.All interviews are written in Japanese. >

　Since the early days of our distro activity called 3LA, we have regularly conducted interviews with bands whose works we handle.In the early days of 3LA, I did not focus on the domestic scene, but only on foreign works. 
This was because I was a stray with no connection to the Japanese domestic scene. Even though I was dealing with foreign bands, there were many bands that had no information in Japan at the time, so I decided to conduct interviews with them and introduce what they were doing. The philosophy behind the establishment of the distro was to “share the joy of discovering unknown music,” and we not only sold sound recordings, but also wrote interviews and columns.

　After several interviews, I began to find the interviews I was seeing at the time in other media and elsewhere to be boring. 
Especially domestic bands.I started to feel a clear rebellion against such interviews. 
The moment you start reading an interview, the interviewer and the interviewee start talking about the previous album, as if they are friends, and you feel left out, don't you? I began to think that the interviewers were not interested in the band's expression, or maybe the questions they asked were like a bunch of tempos. However, the original interviews at the beginning of the distro had a considerable gap between my rebelliousness and translation skills, and it was impossible to ask them what I wanted to ask, or to further explore the answers they got back to their questions. However, this zine records that history as well. You will see that the quality of the interviews, which were amateurish in the early stages, has improved as the second half of the year progresses.

　Interviewing overseas bands has become a much easier and ridiculously fast process with the advent of DeepL, which has greatly improved the gap in translation skills that we previously felt. 
I can now ask the questions I want to ask and dig deeper into the answers I get back. interviews with foreign countries became rapidly easier from around 2018. 
This made me realize that I needed to refine the “quality” of the questions I was asking.I was someone who wanted to grin and enjoy looking at the website I had created. 
This zine is not only a record of 3LA's activities, but also a “work of art” that records the band's voice in real time in the changing times. 3LA is an internet structure that was constructed from the daily accumulation of images of what the band envisioned they would like to have, even when things didn't go exactly as they had hoped.

　　Around 2020, I started listening to POP LIFE: The Podcast, hosted by Soichiro Tanaka (aka Tanaso) on Spotify, and I began to think that I needed a broad and deep perspective to approach interviews. When SNOOZER was still going strong and I was still a teenager, my image of Tanaso was not a good one. The year 2020 was the year of re-evaluation of Thanaso. Of course, the music scene that 3LA was exposed to was different from that of the overground pop scene, but it was not completely disconnected from it. And I began to think that the 00s might have been the last time people were trying things out in their own thinking. Importantly, many of the bands that 3LA interviews are bands that are really continuing the “00s.　
　
　I began to think that I could do an infinite number of interviews in English, but I began to think that long interviews were not good enough when I thought about the output as an article. I also felt that it was not good if I and the band completely answered each other's questions in the interview. The song “Answer” by SWARRRM was just such a song. The Internet has further eroded reality, and people are only looking for answers. They search before they think. Someone's answer is on the Internet, and we have smartphones at our fingertips.

　Conducting an interview is not about matching the answers. It is the process that is the most interesting. And this zine embodies that process. I don't know if you will get it, but this is a final message from a madman who has been interviewing people for 15 years, to the future madman who is about to start something crazy. Turn off your smart phone when you read this zine.

Bands/Artists: 
1994!,Algernon Cadwallader,ALPINIST,Amber Daybreak,And Its Name Was Epyon,Anüstes (graphic artist),BASQUE,Bicycles for Afghanistan,boneflower,capelight,CERCE,Chivàla,City Of Caterpillar,Cory (Halo Of Flies),Downfall Of Gaia,downt,ENSLAVE,FANGE,FIXED,Gerda,GREENMACHiNE,Habak,Hexis,ILIAS,Killer Calculator,KLONNS,lang,MASSA NERA,MEO,Mildred,moreru,Natalie Evans,NØ MAN,Pale & 冬蟲夏草,Plebeian Grandstand,PSP Social,quiqui,RESPIRE,Robert (ADAGIO830),Ryan (Meatcube Label),Sans Visage,Satón,SeeK,sekien,snag,Snöras,SPOILMAN,Stubborn Father,SVDESTADA,SWARRRM,TENUE,Tim Rottorf (Phobiact Records),unfaded,Viva Belgrado,yarmulke,yuma kikui (photographer),Yvonxhe,帯化,明日の叙景