Masaya Matsuura


Masaya Matsuura is a Japanese musician and video game designer based in Tokyo, Japan. He was born in Osaka on June 16, 1961, and majored in Industrial Society at Ritsumeikan University. He has worked extensively with music and images, and has been active with the J-Pop band Psy-S. Matsuura been credited with popularizing the modern rhythm-based music video game at his studio NanaOn-Sha.

Career

In April 1983, shortly after his graduation from Ritsumeikan University, Matsuura met singer Chaka and founded Psy-S. The band's first album, Different View, was released in 1985. The group's musical style is a mixture of experimental synthesizer, electric guitar, and vocals. Matsuura is the band's composer and arranger, and he performs using a Fairlight CMI synthesizer. He has also mastered the keyboard, guitar, and bass and he occasionally performs these instruments in stage as well.
In the late 80s, Psy-S enjoyed fair degree of popularity in Japan thanks to a number of hits. Certain of their songs have been used in such anime shows as City Hunter, and in films. In 1987, Masaya Matsuura oversaw musical composition for the anime adaptation of To-Y, Atsushi Kamijo's manga.
Technological development occurring during the 1990s generated increased interest in Matsuura in creating computer-based music and from this field Matsuura soon transitioned into interactive music and music video games. In 1993 Matsuura became the first Japanese musician to release a CD-ROM, The Seven Colors, for which he was awarded the "Multimedia Grand Prix". In June 1996, after having produced 10 albums with Psy-S, Matsura quit the band, and focused his attention on his multimedia projects.
Matsuura founded the Tokyo-based production company, NanaOn-Sha, and began development of video games. The first major project would be a unique game fusing hip-hop rhythms the visual talents of American animator, Rodney Greenblat. Released in December 1996 in Japan, PaRappa the Rapper is regarded as one of the first modern rhythm games. Matsuura's talent for combining music and video game play would again be demonstrated with his 1999 release of the generative music game Vib-Ribbon, and would cement his position as one of the founders of the music game genre.
In 2003, Matsuura together with NanaOn-Sha was responsible for the production of the audio portion of Sony's third generation robotic dog toy, AIBO. This included both music and sound effects.
In 2004, he was awarded the "First Penguin" award by the International Game Developers Association for his innovative contributions to the video game industry.

Music albums

Masaya Matsuura has released 10 music albums with Psy-S, 4 "best of" albums with Psy-S, and 2 solo albums. All albums were released under the Sony Music label.

With Psy-S