UA, Beyond Passion.

The day has finally arrived when you can enjoy a festival without worrying about distance, voice, or anything else. Fuji Rock Festival '23 (Fuji Rock), a summer tradition for music lovers, is just around the corner. Keen, one of the official supporters of the festival, has started to promote such one of the biggest music festivals in Japan. On May 1, a live event was held at WWW X in Shibuya, inviting UA, a diva of music. HOUYHNHNM's interview team visited UA backstage right after the live performance, and brazenly conducted an interview with UA. We asked UA to talk about the live performance, how he has been dealing with music recently, and even about Fuji Rock. He was full of quotations and power words, and I felt excited to go to Fuji Rock already after talking with him. Please enjoy the photos along with the extensive live photos!

Photo_Fumihiko Ikemoto
Text_Keisuke Kimura
Edit_Yosuke Ishii

Fuji Rock for Keane and UA.

Festival TV on KEENSTREAM" is a YouTube program started in the hope that the music and outdoor activities that Keen loves can be enjoyed as much as ever. Since its launch in April 2020, in the midst of Corona, the program has welcomed over 150 artists for talks and live performances, showing the real faces of artists that are usually unseen.

In mid-May, a public recording of "Festival TV Live!", a special program to promote Fuji Rock, was held at WWW X in Shibuya, with a premium live performance by UA, who is also scheduled to perform at Fuji Rock, limited to 400 people.

But let's take a moment to review the relationship between Keane and Fuji Rock.

FUJI ROCK '23 x KEEN NEWPORT RETRO ¥15,400
The fourth collaboration between Fuji Rock and "Keen" shoes will go on sale in July. This year's edition is again based on the amphibious "Newport," and was designed by THC's Motomichi Sekimura.

The two companies began working together as far back as 2015. Initially, they only opened a booth at the event, but they found mutual sympathy in each other's efforts, and from the following year, 2016, they became official supporters and opened a booth every year. The following year, in 2016, they became official supporters of the event, opening a booth every year, and later began announcing collaborations featuring the Fuji Rock logo, establishing Keane's position at Fuji Rock.

UA's relationship with Fuji Rock is even longer: her first stage appearance was on the Green Stage in 1999. . She was the first Japanese female artist to perform at the festival. Since that time, UA has performed a total of 10 times, with this year marking her 11th appearance.

These three parties will be sending a preview of the day's events on July 1 and 8.KEEN Official YouTube ChannelIt will be published in .

Here, we interviewed UA backstage after the concert, asking about the changes since the 25th anniversary and about Fuji Rock.