Akira Yamaoka

From Silent Hill Wiki

Akira Yamaoka (山岡 晃 Yamaoka Akira, born February 6, 1968 in Niigata, Japan) is a musician and video game composer, having scored dozens of titles released by Konami. Yamaoka attended Tokyo Art College, where he studied product design and interior design. He joined Konami on September 21, 1993, after previously being a freelance music composer.

Biography

He is most well known for his work for the Silent Hill series of video games, for which he composed all the music and sound effects in the whole series (excluding Silent Hill: Play Novel for the Game Boy Advance and "Esperandote" in Silent Hill, composed by Rika Muranaka). Since Silent Hill 3, he is playing a more important role as the series' producer, also continuing with his music composition working.

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In daily life, complete silence in one's environment is unusual, wouldn't you say? And so in the same way, things like footsteps and people stirring are inlaid even in the game. One responds to sounds that are not related to the game and once one is pulled back to reality, one is immersed more deeply into the game world. These sorts of effects are what I'm aiming for. The probability of their occurrence is random, so the point at which these sounds are heard should differ depending on the player. Without the importance placed on atmosphere in Silent Hill, its production wouldn't be possible, right? - Akira Yamaoka on Silent Hill's sound effects

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Yamaoka's sound commonly contains strong melancholy undertones and generally identifies with the dark ambient, industrial, trip-hop and rock genres. Since Silent Hill 3, he also started working in collaboration with Mary Elizabeth McGlynn and Joe Romersa for vocal compositions.

Much of his work from previous titles has been compiled for the 2006 Silent Hill movie adaptation, directed by Christophe Gans.

His music from Silent Hill 2 was performed live in 2005 at the third Symphonic Game Music Concert in Leipzig, Germany. Yamaoka also performed music from Silent Hill at the world-premiere of PLAY! A Video Game Symphony on May 27, 2006 in Chicago, Illinois, and accompanied the orchestra with an electric seven-string guitar. He also composed songs for KONAMI's Bemani series, which has also featured tracks from Silent Hill.

His first original album, iFUTURELIST, was released in January 2006. He also wrote the theme of 101%, the main show of the French TV channel Nolife.

Personal life

Before working as a video game composer, Yamaoka initially sought a career as a designer, but instead became a musician after studying product design at Tokyo Art College.

In 1993 he joined Konami to work on the game Sparkster: Rocket Knight Adventures 2. When Konami began searching for a musician to compose Silent Hill's score, Yamaoka volunteered because he thought he was the only one capable of making the soundtrack.

Influences

Yamaoka cites among his influences Angelo Badalamenti (best known known for his soundtrack work with David Lynch), Metallica, and Depeche Mode.

When asked if his studies at Tokyo Art College had helped him in his musical career, he replied:

“

At that time, Mick Karn of Japan, Steve Strange of Visage, and a lot of other musicians combined the notions of Art and Music with their own new style. I got really influenced by that. Therefore, every time I write songs, I try to combine Art and Music.

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This page uses content from Wikipedia. The original article was at Akira Yamaoka. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with Silent Hill Wiki, the text of Wikipedia is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.