Akira Yamaoka! Have you heard of him? Maybe ‘Silent Hill’ makes any sense? Let’s keep reading about this awesome musician and productor, one of the oldest working in KONAMI not only making music, but also producing games and products we all enjoy.
Akira Yamaoka (山岡 晃) was born in February 6, 1968 in Niigata Japan. He first studied Product and Interior design at the Tokyo Art College but then, when he finished his studies, become an independent musician, until 1993, when he finally joined KONAMI. The first game he was part of the staff was ‘Sparkster‘ (A.K.A ‘Rocket Knight‘ in Japan), for SNES or Super Famicom in 1994, also with Kazuhiko Uehara, Masahiro Ikariko, M. Matsuhira and Michiru Yamane, also known for her works in ‘Suikoden’ and ‘Castlevania’ series. Since then, he featured in many other games, mostly composing music for them, until he arrived to the ‘Silent Hill‘ project, in 1999, becoming the Sound Director of the game after making the whole Soundtrack by himself, including the game OST and extra songs included in the OST like ‘Esperandote’, with Rika Muranaka (also known for her works at ‘Metal Gear Solid‘ and ‘Castlevania‘). Since then, his career ascended in KONAMI, composing and producing music for BEMANI Arcades and misc. games like ‘Contra: Shattered Soldier‘ (For PlayStation2, in colaboration with Sota Fujimori), ‘beatmania IIDX‘, ‘Gradius‘ and ‘Rumble Roses‘. He finnaly became Silent Hill producer in 2004, when he produced ‘Silent Hill 4: The Room’, last Silent Hill released.
In 2006, he released his first album ‘iFUTURELIST’, featuring many of his most popular songs like ‘RISLIM’ (beatmania IIDX 5th Style), ‘INJECTION OF LOVE’ (beatmania IIDX 11: IIDX RED) and new exclusive songs for the album, ‘iFUTURELIST’ and ‘Heavenly Sun’ for name the most popular ones since they were used for BEMANI games like ‘Dance Dance Revolution’ and ‘beatmaniaIIDX’ before. Is also well know he also releases exclusive music for ‘DTM Magazine’, having his own section called ‘AKIRA YAMAOKA PRESENTS BAR フューチャリスト’.
Some of his current and most well known projects are almost all related with ‘Silent Hill’ series: ‘Silent Hill: The Arcade’ (recently released in August) and ‘Silent Hill V’ for PS3/Xbox 360.
That is Akira Yamaoka on a nutshell, really. He’s musician career is so enormeous it’s kinda hard to resume everything in paragraphs. He’ve been in KONAMI for more than 10 straight years working on miscelaneous games and he hasn’t stopped yet. I can say I admire him and like everything he’ve done for KONAMI: all of his songs, productions, I’m even proud he was also part of Silent Hill Movie production staff, because thay means he worries a lot about everything he does and everything related with his works. For this and many many more things, I’m proud of being an Akira Yamaoka fan.
Sources
- Akira Yamaoka Wikipedia Article
- DTM Magazine
