NeoL

――What was your reason for your visit to Japan this time?


Saya : I was doing an Agnes b hologram for their Christmas collection. I was doing a little campaign show for them.


――When was the last time you came to Japan?


Saya : I was here for Fuji Rock in 2019. I went to see Daniel Caeser, and it was really rainy but beautiful. I haven’t been here since the pandemic.


――We heard you quite like Japanese artists such as Kaze Fuji and Millennium Parade.


Saya : Yes, they are amazing. Shingo Rina is my favourite, I love her, iconic. Mafu mafu,
Millennium Parade is great, Bump of Chicken. I’m into the eighties, like the classics.


――It’s interesting because we don’t see much similarity between Japanese Pop music and your music. Do you think you are influenced by their sounds?


Saya : My mom always plays Japanese music and she only watches Japanese TV. So when I was young it was all Japanese. I went to a Japanese school and I was influenced by J-pop. You know Japanese music is a fusion of metal, rock and funk influences. The whole thing as one is what I am influenced by. Not just one thing.
My dad also toured with an opera singer, Hiroko Motomiya, and she was touring around Japan.





――You grew up in a musicaly artistic family. You certainly have experienced a lot of music, art and culture. What do you think had the biggest influence on you?


Saya : My mom taught strict classical music, she was an RC and piano teacher with classroom structure. My dad was a jazz musician. I think the influence of extreme rules, and complete freedom, almost an anti was what influenced me the most. Having to follow something and drop everything and improvise is what I am influenced by. Coordinating the strictness of my mom and the looseness of my dad, the music came along with the classic and jazz. That was what influenced me more than anything. Being in Toronto, the household was complete opposites.


――Did your parents give you any advice as an artist?


Saya : My mom is quite rebellious and she has done everything herself. Both of my parents never had bosses. They don’t work for anyone and they have always been independent. I don’t think they ever gave me advice but it was more about watching, and never having to work for somebody, whatever they did they just did. My mom is always pushing me to be bigger in whatever it is. She reaches for mastery. The household is a lot about being a hundred or nothing, if you are not doing it fully, don’t do it at all. I think it’s less advice, they don’t do it cause they know I don’t listen anyways.


――You first learned to play the piano when you were two. Ever since you have been learning to play various different instruments. When did you start making your own music?


Saya : Immediately. As soon as I started, I started doing my own thing. It came hand in hand with learning the instruments. I think around five or six years old.

――How old were you when you started writing lyrics to songs? What sort of music did you make then?


Saya : Maybe thirteen or so. It came with poetry I feel. It was then I put it to music.
I wrote a a lot of acoustic stuff on piano or guitar. As soon as I got on a computer, around fourteen, was when I started to record on Garageband. I have been keeping this same format since then.


――Looking back, do you think the music was for yourself or an audience?


Saya : It was in my world. In my entire house, there were fourteen or twenty students making music. My mom had these recitals, and it was a way to perform and be in my world rather than strictly jazz or classical.


――Being surrounded by so many musical influences, what music had the biggest influence on your sound identity, as Saya Grey?


Saya : It’s hard to say, but probably when I was given Alice Coltrane, spiritual jazz. Nirvana, very punk, and Rage Against the Machine, those two are important to my music.


――These artists are older than you. Are there any artists that you are closer to in age?


Saya : Oh no, I am about a hundred years old. When I was ten people used to say I was fifty.


――You are musically mature then.


Saya : Like really mature. It’s really strange, all my friends are like sixty years older (laughs).I’m not even kidding.





――Your new album, “19 Masters”, is somewhat dark and it discuss emotions of pain. Is there anything you discovered about yourself through making this album?


Saya : I think the self-trust is what came for me because I ended up doing it all alone. It was interesting because everyone I wanted to work with didn’t let want to touch this. They felt that
what I was doing shouldn’t be influenced by anyone else. So I had to learn everything, like to engineer, learn how to be quick, learn how to mix and learn how to structure. I knew how to produce, but I didn’t know how to bring things to completion or record the first instrument till the end. So I had to learn it fast. That’s what I learnt from this. How much you can do, and this feeling that you can do something is untouchable. Even if it’s so far away from our capabilities, if you just start, you will be there. That was the biggest thing I took from this album. My capability and my capacity. I never thought that I was going to self-produce an album. I always thought I would work with someone. Most of my friends are amazing producers, but they were all telling me to do this by myself. Nobody can touch this and you can do this, and at first, I was like how? It can seem so daunting but it ended up being gratifying.


――We like the acoustic element in your music, with piano, guitar and strings. Those different elements are what links the genres together. It overall has a warm impact, and even the serious lyrics seem to feel tender. What were you conscious of when making the sound of this music?


Saya : I can honestly say that it was completely mindless. It was the only time that I wasn’t just in my head. Instead of having to say much, the textures of how you layer the guitar base or like taking the base and manipulating it to sound like a guitar. I didn’t need to say much because that’s what it was like to portray the emotion. It’s kind of nice that looking back, I didn’t think at all when I made that album. I think it was a stream of consciousness. It was quite cool because now I feel that I am more intentional about what I am doing because now there are Teams, I had no manager no one. It was very much “just go”.





――We can feel different cultures and sounds from this album. From Flamenco, Bossa Nova, Reggae, and Drumline from Neolinson. Were you conscious of it?


Saya : That’s where my playing background comes in. Just because of the artists I played with, and my dad played with, my brother as well. Being able to travel the world so young. I was able to go to Essence Festival and many other festivals in all these different places. That’s probably where all these genres came in. That’s where my playing background comes in. I’ve played many different kinds of music including pop, and straight pop. So that’s where I think I get it from.


――“TOO LOUD!” starts with a monologue. How did you come up with this idea using Japanese poetry?


Saya : I do these prayers every day with my friend Clare Uchima at her organization, Allanton Peace Sanctuary. Clare is amazing and she’s one of my best friends. She made this poem that was half prayer half poem. I thought that was important. Spirituality is a huge part of who I am. I wanted to include her because she is incredible as well. So when she came up with this half poem, the half prayer I felt that it was special to me so I put it on. She is the one who is reading the poem.

At the Allanton Peace Sanctuary, we do these prayers with one man from Japan, Masahisa Goi, every day. So we made a poem for the song.





――We heard you liked Utada Hikaru as well. Have you seen her performance at Coachella, with 88rising?


Saya : No, I didn’t. I stay offline so I don’t know what is going on in the world unless someone tells me. Do let me know if anything is coming up.


――This year there has been a lot of attention on female artists with an Asian background like Beabadobe and Japanese Breakfast. We felt that obviously, it was great that such Asian artists are being recognized, however, there is so much emphasis on this background that it enforces a stereotype of them. Do you feel the same way?


Saya : Oh yes, when I was touring. That was what the whole visual for “19 MASTERS” was about. The cover package is a dumpling wrapper package that we photographed. The package represents the times when I would be hired as a musician, a lot of it was because I was checking the boxes of being an Asian woman. There were times that I would get asked to dress up as an Anime character literally, for some British artist. A lot of my friends in the industry have very similar experiences when they want them to look like school girls. It is a very dark strange thing that still happens unless you speak up about it. It’s still new for people how Asian artists are being platformed. Coming from Canada and going around the States, it’s still a foreign culture. It’s still not exposed as much to Asian cultures over there. I think it is important for Asian artists to represent where they are from and get in touch with those roots as well.
The visual of the eaten package is very much about my experience of being.





photography Satomi Yamauchi(IG)
text Junnosuke Amai（TW）