Veteran British Musician Inspired By Tezuka Manga

[Mulboyne]

[YT]4jjUaMKjZgQ[/YT]

ThisIsNottingham: Interview with Steve Hillage

Can you explain the concept behind the new System 7 album, "Phoenix?"

It's a special project for us. A few years ago, we met the daughter of one of the founding fathers of Japanese manga, which is a style of cartoon drawing that is related to the Japanese style of animated films. This gentleman, who's now deceased, was called Tezuka Osamu. He wrote many popular mangas, which have been very big hits in Japan and elsewhere. He also wrote some quite serious stuff, including a whole series of books called Phoenix, which is basically about the myth of the phoenix, but done in a sort of Asiatic way. Rumiko Tezuka, his daughter, is a fan of System 7. She came to see us, and said that she thought our music was perfect to go with these phoenix stories. She lent us some translations, and we were just blown away by these stories, and the designs, and the pictures, and all the various concepts involved. So we decided we'd like to base a whole System 7 album around it.

Japanese bass player Mito from the band Clammbon appears as a guest on the album.