Levi: Maybe it's good to see some people are now open about their financial issue and others are responding positively. I personaly haven't thought this would be the way out though. If it were my band and I couldn't release a studio album then fine, I'd do live performances all the time. That eventually and hopefully would able the band to save something for recording. This is how I see it, if the painters could paint, they paint. If the bands could play their music, then play. Besides, if bands in the past could survive their early days by not doing this fund raising thing, I think we can do it better these days. Exhibition is not the only goal right?

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Jeff: I personally don't mind with bands asking fans to donate in order for them to record new album, being independent means you can't get the recording money from record labels.. But that's not something that I believe.. I would prefer to record my music in the 'poverty-spec environment' rather than having to beg anyone for funds.. This is because I don't want anyone to tell me what kind of music I should do, and if they already put money in it, creatively-speaking, I'm bound to please the donors on the music I make with their money.. That's why I never want this situation to happen, because my music has to be artistically free.. The approach of Kekal has always like this: Do your own thing and do it yourself.. So rather than forcing ourselves to enter the professional studio and pay big amount of money every time we make an album, we always do everything by ourselves and cut the cost.. I had to learn how to produce music, bought modest digital audio workstation for that, and I even took a recording arts training in 2006.. By doing that, we can avoid having to go to the professional studio and pay the engineer to produce and record the music.. That's the most ideal thing we can do as an independent band or musicians.. Technologies have improved so much now that I don't think we ever need to hire an expensive studio and sound engineer in order to get a decent sound.. All you need to do is having a space to record your music, a computer with decent audio interface & DAW recording software + effect plugins, and some knowledge of recording and mixing.. These recording software and plugins can be obtained for less than $1000 now and you can keep those for up to 10 years, even more.. But, of course, if you're bound to record the whole band completely live in the studio, you would need like 16 individual tracks getting in at the same time, a 24-channel mixing board & big rooms to fit everything, there's no alternative to do that at home.. That's the case when you may need money for professional studio to record your music but even in that case, you should be able to take all the recording files with you & edit, mix and master them at home.. That would save you many studio hours and thus the studio costs..

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Jeff: Your question is quite difficult for me to answer, because it really depends on the environment and also timing, those 2 factors have basically influenced me.. As you know, the music of Kekal is very diverse and multi-layered, it is not only limited to the style alone, but also mood, temperament and sometimes even depth as well.. It is the result of what I call it "limitless expression".. We express pretty much everything: our thoughts, feelings, sometimes opinions to our own life experiences, but not limited to that.. and these are definitely varied from song to song, album to album.. There's no specific formula or a certain way of doing it.. We always treat music as art, and for me personally, music composing is pretty much art by itself.. I enjoy the process of it as much as I enjoy the results.. I never see my music as a business or career, so there's nothing that holds me back from expressing myself fully.. No second thoughts at all, and I believe it's the same thing with Levi and Leo too.. Levi does the artwork for Kekal and has been for almost 10 years now, and drawing is his personal expression.. Right now it becomes an integral part of Kekal's output alongside the music..

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Jeff: Well, as your question may have already answered in earlier questions here about Vocaloid, so far I only found Megurine Luka's tone as the most suitable for the music Kekal.. The music of Kekal doesn't get shaped based on the character or tone of instruments (I always consider singing vocals as instruments too), but the other way around: the instruments have to fit the scope of music.. Same thing with guitars, I've never used down-tuned guitars or 7-strings because the music of Kekal only needs chords and riffs played mostly in higher notes for the guitar.. Doesn't really matter if lots of other metal bands use down-tuned guitars & play chugga chugga jugojugo djent djent, I don't really care.. Kekal is Kekal, and the band has its own sound & style.. So in the case of choosing the vocaloid character that fits with the music of Kekal, I only found Megurine Luka to be the most suitable.. Kekal isn't really a vocaloid-based band per se, we only use vocaloid because we wanted to have feminine vocal tones for some of the new songs, but because of the current situation and also the way the songs were written/produced - it was harder to get someone to sing, so vocaloid turned out to be the best solution in this case.. but of course, vocal character is important..

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