Table of Contents
Feel free to keep reading or click to your favorite sections of the article~👇
- Intro: What’s ‘Onsei’ mean?
- Mr. Forte’s comments on 「音生・onsei」
- Final impressions
- Check out the album ♫
Intro: What’s ‘Onsei’ mean?
On January 30th, J-rock band Mr. ふぉるて (Mr. Forte) released the youthful, wholesome eleven-track album ‘音生・Onsei’.
Considering the uniqueness of the kanji combination, I Google-searched for any possible cultural references, but discovered that it’s actually a possible kanji for the name ‘Otoha’.
However, when we break down that ‘音・おと/oto’ means ‘sound’ and ‘生・せい/sei’ means ‘life’, the meaning behind the album title Onsei might be: sounds of life. This is well-experessed in the repeating themes throughout the album of loving yourself and overcoming hardships.
Onsei feels like a friend who’ll sit with you through both your positive and negative experiences. Particularly when I’m depressed, it can be hard to stomach uplifting songs, but the sincerity of the album leaves me feeling relieved and understood. What I deeply appreciate about the delivery of each song is that they acknowledge your feelings while not keeping you stuck in them.
Mr. Forte’s comments on 「音生・onsei」
Pic from Apple Music
Before listening to Onsei, you can also read or listen to Mr. ふぉるて’s brief breakdown on Youtube shorts. Since this is a candid discussion between the band members, the dialogue may seem redundant or surface-level. However, we do get glimpses into the song-writing process, any difficulties that arose, or interesting trivia about what inspired certain lyrics.
Paired with my lack of Japanese and the iffy audio, I had to guess or omit dialogue based on what I could understand. I apologize for any mistranslations.
Follow the links to watch the song breakdown videos, yourselves~ ♫
1. 涙の行き方 (なみだのいきかた・The way the tears fall) Commentary
「Tsukasa: Our thing is starting songs with the vocals, huh?
Ryohei: Well yeah, it’s cool…but simple.
Hanon: It has a kind of jungle beat.
Tsukasa: And the guitar phrase is cool, too. (they say something like ‘guitar graze’ or ‘guitar craze’. I tried to see if it was some musical term they were referring to, but I couldn’t figure it out. So ‘guitar phrase’ was the closest thing I could justify translating to.)
Itsuki: It’s tight. (they use the term ’渋い/shibui’, which means ‘astringent’. It often translates to ‘cool’, but I think it can also be translated into California slang as ‘tight’. It has that kind of nuance. )
Ryohei: Yeah, it’s tight. It’s kind of like classic rock–like Jeff Beck.
Tsukasa: Isn’t it our first time doing a song like this?
Hanon: I don’t think we’ve done anything like this before.」
2. I Love me Commentary
「Tsukasa: This is another song that starts with the vocals and…like you can recognize it from the end of the first song.
Ryohei: Yeah, the groove is different
Tsukasa: We’ve been playing this song for a long time at shows, though.
Ryohei: The drum is so cool, too
Hanon: Yeah it’s fun to play
Ryohei: Yeah, it seems like it」
3. マールム -malum- Commentary
「Tsukasa: this intro is really nice.
Ryohei: Yeah, with all the small chiming sounds. (he says ‘twinkling’.)
Tsukasa:It also has a strong ‘band’ feel.
Hanon: But the drum vibrato was hard. But it’s cool to listen to it all put together
Ryohei:Yeah, and the rhythm is really unique
Hanon: Yeah, it’s pretty different at this part
Tsukasa: The reverb is pretty cool, huh? 」
4. 明晰夢 (めいせきゆめ・lucid dream) Commentary
「Tsukasa: Ryohei and I worked together on this. He did the composition and I did the lyrics
Ryohei: Yeah, it’s a really new feel to our other stuff
Tsukasa: It’s almost like a pop song
Ryohei: Yeah…well it’s fairly different to ‘Malum’ and other songs.
Tsukasa: Yeah
Ryohei: Now that I think about it…we have a lot of the songs that start with the vocals, huh?
Tsukasa: Yeah, I get really nervous during concerts. Seriously. Haha~ 」
5. 無重力(むじゅうりょく・zero gravity) Commentary
「( the piano starts)
Hanon: Ah, it’s already the best
Tsukasa: I remember when we started the concert with this piano melody. Like really remember it, as if it’s our song.
Ryohei: This is probably the last song I’ll have recorded playing piano, since Mr. Yamamoto plays for us, now. This is probably the last song, huh?
All: Yeah, that’s true.
Tsukasa: But the piano is really great, right? It’s gentle and gives the song weight. It’s wonderful. 」
6. 18度目の春が過ぎて (18どめのはるがすぎて・After the 18th Spring) Commentary
「Hanon: The beginning is cool, huh?
Ryohei: Yeah, it’s so cool. I want to hurry up and play this at a concert
Tsukasa: But this song probably has the darkest lyrics on the album
Ryohei: Yeah. This song has been around for some time, right?
Tsukasa: Yeah. I wrote the B-melody when I was nineteen, but I changed the lyrics after turning twenty」
7. こがれ (Fallen) Commentary
「Tsukasa: The lyrics to this were based off of ‘Tomorrow’ from Annie. Like the image of that red-headed girl…the view of the world in those lyrics is so beautiful.
Ryohei: I know I keep saying this, but I REALLY like the lyrics to this album.
Tsukasa: I remember that we kinda threw this song together in a hurry though.
(guitar riff starts)
Tsuaksa: And the guitar is really nice.」
8. 克己心 (こっきしん・Self-discipline) Commentary
「Ryohei: There aren’t a lot of songs with this kind rhythm, huh?
Tsukasa: Yeah, everyone thought about the rhythm together in the studio.
Ryohei: I reeeeeeally like this rhythm~
Hanon: Yeah, just as it slows down, it’s like ‘bam’. I love it.」
9. 日常の少し先へ (にちじょうのすこしさきへ) Commentary
★Google translates this as “A little beyond everyday”, but I’m wondering if the nuance is closer to ‘a day at a time’? 先へ/saki e’ means ‘go ahead’, ‘少し/sukoshi’ is ‘a little bit’…and ‘日常/nichijou’ is everyday….but that just seems so direct. Then again, this is a song…so that could be the intended translation.
「Hanon: This was a really hard time!
Ryohei: Yeah. I arranged this while I was in a hotel in Kagoshima. I’d wake up in the morning and look at the ocean, so the smell of the ocean always comes to mind when I hear this.
Itsuki: Me too, I arranged the bass parts while I was in Hokkaido.」
10. Chaplin Commentary
「Hanon: All of songs are great and have great lyrics, and I can really relate to them. But this one probably hits me the hardest.
Tsukasa: I wrote this at 3am. Like…this is about Charlie Chaplin, who made silent movies, right? I wanted to make a song about him because I really into him at the time. 」
11. 音生 (おんせい・Onsei) Commentary
「Ryohei: I really want you to listen to this through earphones.
Tsukasa: So..when you’re invited out or coming back from somewhere, you sometimes catch wind of conversations and stuff, right? In this song, it’s kind of like you’re eavesdropping on our everyday conversationー though I dunno what we’re talking about, as we might be talking about something dirty. Haha~ But the music and the conversations is a beautiful combination 」
★I didn’t confirm this, but knowing that Ryohei does remixes during Mr. Forte’s segment on the radio show, The King’s Place, I’m guessing that Ryohei made this song.
Final impressions
Onsei mixes Mr. Forte’s 2017 emo-band roots ( ‘Malum’ and ‘18度目の春が過ぎて’ ) with a fresh rock sound ( ‘I Love me’ and ’克己心’) to serve as a good introduction to the band.
While the album itself isn’t that different from their previous albums, Love this Moment (2022) and sweet life (2021), there’s something about Onsei that got me to listen to every song several times through and feel good by the end of it. It’s just a lot brighter with a heartwarming quality that makes it easy to listen to regardless of where your mental space is.
Glancing through the Youtube comments, there are several other people who say that this album consists only of good songs. As soon as I got finished listening to the album, I sent a link to my friend saying the same thing.
There’s just something different about Onsei, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this was the album that shot Mr. Forte into fame.
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