Guiltless Scenery (罪のない景色)

Written in 1993 / Recorded in 1994

One day in spring or summer of 1993, I was standing in a train carriage packed with other commuters in the morning rush hour, looking outside of the window with reluctantly wearing suit on. The weather was fine and I saw someone walking a dog in a typical residential area along the railway track. At that moment, I simply envied that someone's freedom, which was visible for me but was out of reach. Within a few days or weeks, I wrote this dull and a bit pessimistic piece of music and wrote a lyric to go with it, reflecting the envy I felt on that day.

About a year later, the audio track of this video was recorded with my band called Culotte, where I played every instrument except for bass and drums. In the original recording, this piece was followed by extended jam part, which was based on the ending bit featured in my personal demo version recorded at the time of writing the song.

Unlike other videos from mine, I didn't dare to remove my voice parts for a couple of reasons; (1) I noticed that backing track without voice parts sounds a bit more clumsy, and (2) I remember the lyric of this song actually impressed a girl a bit younger than me, when I made her listen to this recording, back in those days. Therefore, it would make sense to write down the lyric with its English translation below:

(verse)
I happened to have dropped my time
into an endless repetition
As I noticed, the Sun's already set,
and tomorrow will taste the same

(chorus)
Guiltless scenery,
flat rituals

(bridge)
Having left in a
room too vast
Having lost life
at a tiny grain of sand

終わりのない繰り返しの中に            
ボクの時間を落としちゃった
気づけば既に今日も日が暮れた
明日も多分同じ味がする

罪のない景色
平らな儀式

あまりにも広すぎる
お部屋に取り残されて
ちっぽけな砂粒に
命を置き忘れて