is a Japanese

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Defi ...

rock Rock most often refers to: * Rock (geology), a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals or mineraloids * Rock music, a genre of popular music Rock or Rocks may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * Rock, Caerphilly, a location in Wales ...

and EBM musician who performs under the moniker ''Agraph''. He is a member of Japanese rock band

Lama Lama (; "chief") is a title for a teacher of the Dharma in Tibetan Buddhism. The name is similar to the Sanskrit term ''guru'', meaning "heavy one", endowed with qualities the student will eventually embody. The Tibetan word "lama" means "hi ...

. Together with Lama, he released two full-length studio records: ''New!'' in 2011 and ''Modanica'' a year later. Both albums charted on the

Japanese Albums Chart , established in 1999, is the holding company at the head of a Japanese corporate group that supplies statistics and information on music and the music industry in Japan and Western music. It started as, which was founded by Sōkō Koike in ...

. As an EBM musician, he released three albums, all of which peaked in the Japanese Albums Chart. He wrote and composed

soundtrack A soundtrack is recorded music accompanying and synchronised to the images of a motion picture, drama, book, television program, radio program, or video game; a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrack o ...

s for several

anime is Traditional animation, hand-drawn and computer animation, computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside of Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, in Japan and in Japane ...

television series and

movies A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere ...

, such as '' A Silent Voice'', ''

Space Dandy , is a 2014 Japanese comic science fiction anime television series produced by Bones. The series follows the misadventures of Dandy, an alien hunter who is "a dandy guy in space", in search for undiscovered and rare aliens with his robot assi ...

'', ''

Devilman Crybaby ''Devilman Crybaby'' is a 2018 Japanese original net animation (ONA) series based on Go Nagai's manga series ''Devilman''. The web anime is directed by Masaaki Yuasa, produced by Aniplex and Dynamic Planning, animated by Science SARU, and rel ...

'', ''

Boogiepop and Others is a Japanese light novel written by Kouhei Kadono and illustrated by Kouji Ogata. The first in the ''Boogiepop'' series, it was released in 1998 by MediaWorks and won the fourth Dengeki Game Novel Contest. A manga adaptation by Kouji O ...

'', ''

Ping Pong Table tennis, also known as ping-pong and whiff-whaff, is a sport in which two or four players hit a lightweight ball, also known as the ping-pong ball, back and forth across a table using small solid rackets. It takes place on a hard table div ...

'', ''Liz and the Blue Bird'' and ''

Chainsaw Man is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Tatsuki Fujimoto. Its first part was serialized in Shueisha's ''shōnen'' manga magazine ''Weekly Shōnen Jump'' from December 2018 to December 2020; its second part began serializati ...

''.

Biography

As a child, Ushio learned playing

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...

. He studied

arts The arts are a very wide range of human practices of creative expression, storytelling and cultural participation. They encompass multiple diverse and plural modes of thinking, doing and being, in an extremely broad range of media. Both hi ...

and

music Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspect ...

university A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, t ...

. At the same time, he learned the usage of the audio editor software

Pro Tools Pro Tools is a digital audio workstation (DAW) developed and released by Avid Technology (formerly Digidesign) for Microsoft Windows and macOS. It is used for music creation and production, sound for picture (sound design, audio post-productio ...

. At the age of 20, Ushio got his first contact with electronic music, such as

techno Techno is a genre of electronic dance music (EDM) which is generally produced for use in a continuous DJ set, with tempo often varying between 120 and 150 beats per minute (bpm). The central rhythm is typically in common time (4/4) and often ch ...

. He started his solo career in 2007 under the moniker ''Agraph'' and began creating electronic music. His debut album ''A Day, Phases'', which was produced by

Takkyu Ishino , better known by his stage name , is a Japanese DJ, record producer, and singer from Shizuoka (city), Shizuoka, Shizuoka Prefecture. He is a member of Denki Groove. Discography Studio albums * ''Dove Loves Dub'' (1995) * ''Berlin Trax'' (1998) ...

, was released in December 2008. Two years later, his second album ''Equal'' was released, which ranked in the

s. In 2011, Ushio and some former musicians of bands like

Supercar A supercar – also called exotic car – is a loosely defined description of street-legal, high-performance sports cars. Since the 2010s, the term hypercar has come into use for the highest performing supercars. Supercars commonly serve as t ...

and

Number Girl was a rock band formed in Fukuoka, Japan in August, 1995 by guitarist and vocalist Shutoku Mukai. They first disbanded in 2002 following bassist Kentaro Nakao's departure from the band. Number Girl played fast, guitar-driven rock similar to th ...

formed a rock band called

. The band released two albums, which both ranked on the official Albums Charts of Japan. Due to his involvement in Lama, Ushio's third album named ''The Shader'' was released in 2016, six years after his second album. Ushio works as composer of film music as well, with a particular focus on animated projects. Among his film and television credits are music composition for ''

'' (2014), '' A Silent Voice'' (2016), ''

Liz and the Blue Bird is a 2018 Japanese animated drama film directed by Naoko Yamada and written by Reiko Yoshida, based on the ''Sound! Euphonium'' novel series written by Ayano Takeda and its eponymous anime television series adaptation by Yamada and Tatsuya Ishiha ...

'' (2018), and ''

'' (2019). He is a frequent collaborator of directors

Masaaki Yuasa is a Japanese director, screenwriter, and animator affiliated with Science SARU, a Japanese animation studio which he co-founded with producer Eunyoung Choi in 2013. Yuasa previously served as president of Science SARU, but stepped down from th ...

and

Naoko Yamada is a Japanese animator, television and film director. Working at Kyoto Animation, she directed the anime series ''K-On!'' (2009-2010) and ''Tamako Market'' (2013), and the anime films '' A Silent Voice'' (2016) and ''Liz and the Blue Bird'' (2018 ...

, as well as the animation studio

Science Saru Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...

, for which he has composed the scores of '' Ping Pong the Animation'' (2014), ''

'' (2018), '' Japan Sinks: 2020'' (2020), and ''

The Heike Story is a Japanese original net animation series adapted from Hideo Furukawa's 2016 translation into modern Japanese of ''The Tale of the Heike'', a 13th-century historical epic depicting the rise and fall of the Taira clan. The series was produce ...

'' (2021). In December 2021, Ushio has been confirmed to be the composer for

MAPPA is a Japanese animation studio headquartered in Suginami, Tokyo. Founded in 2011 by Madhouse co-founder and producer Masao Maruyama, it has produced anime works including ''Terror in Resonance'', ''Yuri!!! on Ice'', ''In This Corner of the Wo ...

's anime adaptation of Tatsuki Fujimoto's manga series ''

'', which premiered on October 12, 2022 on

TV Tokyo JOTX-DTV (channel 7), branded as and known colloquially as , is a television station headquartered in the Sumitomo Fudosan Roppongi Grand Tower in Roppongi, Minato, Tokyo, Japan, owned and operated by the subsidiary of listed certified b ...

and other networks. He also arranged music for the Distant Future chapter of the ''

Live a Live ''Live A Live'' is a 1994 role-playing video game developed and published by Square for the Super Famicom. A remake for Nintendo Switch was released in July 2022, published by Square Enix in Japan and Nintendo worldwide. The game follows seven d ...

'' remake, originally composed by

Yoko Shimomura is a Japanese composer and pianist primarily known for her work in video games. She graduated from the Osaka College of Music in 1988 and began working in the video game industry by joining Capcom the same year. She wrote music for several game ...

, which released on July 22, 2022.

Discography

Solo

LAMA

Works

References

External links

Official website
(Japanese)
Kensuke Ushio
at the

Internet Movie Database IMDb (an abbreviation of Internet Movie Database) is an online database of information related to films, television series, home videos, video games, and streaming content online – including cast, production crew and personal biographies, ...

Kensuke Ushio
in the VGMdb
Kensuke Ushio
on

Discogs Discogs (short for discographies) is a database of information about audio recordings, including commercial releases, promotional releases, and bootleg or off-label releases. While the site was originally created with a goal of becoming the la ...

Kensuke Ushio
at

Anime News Network Anime News Network (ANN) is a news website that reports on the status of anime, manga, video games, Japanese popular music and other related cultures within North America, Australia, Southeast Asia and Japan. The website offers reviews and oth ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ushio, Kensuke 1983 births 21st-century Japanese composers 21st-century Japanese male musicians Anime composers Japanese keyboardists Living people Musicians from Tokyo