Shingo Suzuki

Name, What do you do?
Shingo Suzuki, Sapporo, Hokkaido.

What do you do?
Music producer.

What’s the best gig you’ve ever been to?
Corinne Bailey Rae at Billboard Live Tokyo in 2019. I've loved her since her debut, but I missed seeing her performance when my band Ovall played at the FUJI ROCK FESTIVAL, due to the weather. Corinne was away from music for a while so that was like, I finally had the chance to see her. The show was even better than I had expected. Great vibe. It felt so natural that the audience and the artists became one. I like the venue in terms of its size while the band was consisted minimally, bass-less, just a keyboardist also doing bass with a guitarist and drummer while Corinne had played the acoustic guitar here and there. I just really liked the way it was organized. The volume of the sound was also just right too. The songs I wanted to hear were played in a natural way, and even though the arrangements of the early songs hadn't changed much, they had been reworked to sound for the particular band.

Which subcultures have influenced you?
TALKIN' LOUD label in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It influenced me, because a lot of my favourite artists were releasing material on it. For example, Omar, Galliano and Incognito. I thought it was amazing that indie labels were making music that was changing the times. I hope that origami PRODUCTIONS, which I belong to, can be in a similar position too. I feel a kinship with them.

Of all the venues you’ve played, which is your favourite?
“ASAGIRI JAM 2009”. Ovall, my band, played there before we actually formed as it, but MOONSHINE STAGE was a memorable stage with the fact that no one would have known about us, yet people liked it and cheered a lot. The weather luckily got sunny as we got on the stage too. The same organizer does “FUJI ROCK FESTIVAL” but we were delighted to perform there beforehand.

If you could be on the line up with any bands in history?
Alpha Mist. Not necessarily historically, but in terms of current artists. I like his music and I feel sympathy with him as a keyboard player, a jazz player and a producer. I'd like to write songs with him and leave something to this world.

If you could spend an hour with anyone from history?
John Lennon, especially post-Beatles era. I loved John Lennon's music when I was little. I would like to meet his son Sean Lennon, not as a musician but as a person because we are of the same generation and I have an image of him as a father. Over a beer in a café one afternoon.

Your greatest unsung hero or heroine in music?
Omar. He's already in the limelight and has had a long good career, but if you ask people in their teens and twenties in Japan if they know him, I doubt so. He's an amazing multi-instrumentalist and songwriter, and I've been influenced by his musical style, including the story of how he used to make demos on a single synthesizer, a Korg M1.