Shoko Yamaoka

Shoko Yamaoka

Akira Yamaoka studied product design at the Tokyo Institute of art. After five years as a freelance writer, she entered Konami. Since then, I have been working in Konami. He was one of the late members of the rectangular wave club. Silent hill is the most famous work of Yamaoka. Since Silent Hill 3, he began to participate in the works as a music supervisor. Others offer music such as Beatmania IIDX, live football, real soul, etc. As a composer, Yamaoka Huang is most familiar with his complex thinking about musicality and human nature. Yamaoka released his first non OST original music album ifuturelist in January 2006.

career

In 1993, Yamaoka joined Konami for rocket Rider 2（ Sparkster:RocketKnightAdventures2 ）Work. In the next six years, besides the soundtrack, he also took the role of game design and promotion. In 1999, while Konami was looking for someone to compose for silent hill, Yamaoka offered himself. Because he thinks that he is the only one who has the ability to create for it.

In 2009, he said in an interview that his favorite game creator was Gangyi Xutian, and his favorite game was hero no longer.

On December 2, 2009, he announced that he would leave Konami, which has worked for 16 years, and go to Europe for a long holiday. Before that, he lived in Los Angeles for a long time.

On February 3, 2010, he joined grasshopper manufacturing game development studio. And the music for hero no longer 2. Now he's working with Xutian Gang to produce a new horror game "Curse of the shadow", which is a partnership with EA and is directed by the father of biochemical crisis.

In 2011, Yamaoka composed music for Microsoft's new shooting game "sine Mora" (no hesitation).

genre

Industrial noise, Satanism, death metal All the Gothic styles in modern western music, accompanied by the sudden Baroque piano, wander among the gloomy, repetitive and abrupt variation of the electronic chords of the Oriental ghosts, just like Poe and Pu Songling drinking afternoon tea. This is the music fantasy world created by Japanese soundtrack wizard Akira Yamaoka.

style of music

Yamaoka's music style is changeable. He cited the influence of Angelo Badalamenti, Metallica and the cutting edge of pop.

When asked whether his background in the design department had contributed to his achievements in music, he replied: "at that time, Mick Karn of Japan, Steve span of visage Orchestra and many other musicians combined the concepts of music and art with their own innovative styles. I'm really inspired by that. So whenever I try to integrate music into art, I start to compose

There are seven soundtracks in Silent Hill series, which make Yamaoka famous. The music is very gloomy, depressing, sad and dark. He is good at slowly injecting oppression into the imperceptible anxiety and finally accumulating strong fear. Its gloomy music style is unique for its ingenious integration of dark atmosphere, industrial noise, Satanism, death metal, Gothic style, Baroque piano, lyric rock, psychedelic electronic sound and other elements.

As for the style of curse shadow, he said that although the protagonist Garcia's appearance is punk, the game will not adopt his rock music style. Yamaoka's most memorable music is the mysterious style with environmental appeal. In this new work, the solemn and mysterious Sanskrit sound in Buddhism will be one of the elements of the style of this work.

Personal life

Yamaoka was responsible for the music of all the works in Silent Hill series. He did not participate in the production of Silent Hill: rainstorm until he left Konami. He was one of the late members of the Konami Kukeiha club. He says his favorite piece is the theme of Laura from Silent Hill 2. Yamaoka made friends with Mary Elizabeth McGlynn, who recorded Silent Hill 3 to Silent Hill: broken memory, and Joe romersa, who wrote and sang the lyrics. Yamaoka Yang, a famous chef at the emerald palace of the Kerry hotel in Tokyo, is his uncle.

Detailed introduction

It all comes from a stand-alone video game called silent hill. As a horror game, the plot and details of the game refer to a large number of modern thriller fantasy novels. In the game, all the streets of the virtual town "silent hill" are named by novelists such as Thomas Harris (silent lamb) and Richard Bachman (another pseudonym of Stephen King). Although the market is set in Europe with the background of Western characters and culture However, the whole production team is Japanese after all, and the game does not use the bloody elements of traditional western horror movies as a gimmick. The keynote of the game always follows the psychological horror route of "midnight bell" and "Curse". Therefore, the soundtrack will determine the success or failure of the whole work to a great extent.

Yamaoka Huang, born in 1968, was influenced by all kinds of quirks of modern western artists at that time and chose industrial design as his career. "I don't think there is any difference between music, painting and modeling," Yamaoka once said. "They can be the expression of the same artistic idea of the creator." Obviously, the twisted despair, confusion and depression in silent hill are biting his so-called "artistic idea" path. After six years of game design and promotion by Konami, a famous game company, he took over the full music work of Silent Hill series. Before that, Yamaoka's only music creation experience only came from the nameless band he formed in high school. As a result, this process of seeking self artistic expression complements the development of Silent Hill Series games.

For the soundtrack of the first generation of silent hill, Yamaoka focuses on the industrial noise with the strongest experimental quality, such as the collision of steel, the spark of welding, and the echo of children's babbling. This familiar strangeness creates a perfect nightmare for hearing. In the second generation, the main line design of psychological salvation makes Silent Hill reach the level of humanity that is hard to reach in such games. According to Yamaoka himself, such original and complex plot provides great inspiration for music. The music style changes more and more different. The excessive noise element is eliminated, and the sense of terror is replaced by calm gloom. The main melody is extraordinary graceful. The theme of the three generations is religious good and evil speculation, solemn and huge. By the fourth generation, Yamaoka had established his own music style: influenced by Metallica and other Western metal bands, his electronic sound effects always reflected the strange rust of the strange world with the irregular rhythm of cold metal; only in those movements involving the characters' inner escape and struggle, the melodic strings were interspersed with the fragments of the previously repeated syllables to make the mechanical noise disappear The created fear gradually evaporates into spiritual comfort, which can be well reflected in lullaby in Silent Hill 4: room.

In 2005, a series of death metal and electronic musicians from all over the world jointly produced a "broken notes melancholy", a CD collection of two discs in honor of Yamaoka. Stillhet, a Norwegian band, released its first solo album with the theme of "Silent Hill worldview". In addition to soundtrack for silent hill movies and prequel games, Yamaoka also released an electronic music album "ifuturelist". Some people say that he can't get out of the shadow of silent hill, and no one can break through it. But Yamaoka once said, "it is my voice and soul that bring silent hill to this world. This must be fate, because I am the only one in this world who can create everything that belongs to it."

Music may be just a form to Shoko Yamaoka. His artistic concept has created a fantasy world named Silent Hill for us.

works

Game Soundtrack

Akumaj oDraculaX:NocturneintheMoonlightOriginalGameSoundtrack

beatmaniaIIDX4thstyleOriginalSoundtracks

beatmaniaIIDX7thstyleOriginalSoundtracks

beatmaniaIIDX8thstyleOriginalSoundtracks

beatmaniaIIDX9thstyleOriginalSoundtracks

beatmaniaIIDX10thstyleOriginalSoundtracks

beatmaniaIIDX11thstyleOriginalSoundtracks

DanceDance

Chinese PinYin : Shan Gang Huang