Stiffy for Akira Yamoaka
Sam Hart
2008-02-21 20:54:42Anyone who's been watching my last.fm entries for the last little while will likely see that I've been listening to a lot of music by Akira Yamoaka. Well, if you were to track Yamoakasan's entries on my most listened to artists chart over the last 6 months you would have noticed that he went from somewhere in the teens up to number two (as of this writing), and is currently threatening to overtake Daft Punk as the single artist I listen to the most. Needless to say, I think I'm hooked.
So who is Akira Yamoaka, what kind of music does he make, and why am I so keen to his music? Read on for more...
Akira Yamoaka is best known as a video game music composer who has scored many Konami games. However, don't let his impressive role in video games fool you; He is one hell of an amazing modern musician in his own right.
Yamoakasan lent his talents to the Silent Hill games. For those who don't know, the Silent Hill games are widely regarded as some of the best survival horror games around. The games cleverly mix psychological horror with disturbing ambiance to paint riveting and tragic stories. The games often have very intelligently conceived and clever plots surrounding characters with hidden secrets that they are either repressing (such as James murder of his wife in Silent Hill 2) or otherwise unaware of (such as Heather's connection to a Silent Hill cult in Silent Hill 3). Yamoakasan crafted some memorable and fitting music for these games that, when taken out of the context of the Silent Hill world, hold up on their own merits.
Here, have a listen to some of them for yourself:
Please Love Me... Once More - Silent Hill 3
I Want Love - Silent Hill 2
Dance with Night Wind - Silent Hill 3
Walk on Vanity Ruins - Silent Hill 3
His work has such a passionate fan base that you can find covers of it all over, including the following very well done cover of Promise from Silent Hill 2:
Anyway, I really dig his work, and I've been eating it up. Anyone looking for something interesting with moody and dark tones should definitely check him out.