Know Your MAG: DJ Yuu Miyake

MAGFest 13 starts in just two days, and thus it’s time to bring Know Your MAG to it’s apex with one of the special guests of the event as well as performing DJ, Yuu Miyake!

Yuu Miyake, born in 1973,  was interested in music at a young age. Listening to late-’70s anime themes and Yellow Magic Orchestra during his youth, he became acquainted with video games during a a childhood hospitalization and began visiting Japanese arcades shortly thereafter.  When Yellow Magic Orchestra released the first album ever heard of video game music, Miyake knew that his love of games and music were something he wanted to pursue seriously. (source: VGMOnline)

Miyake joined Namco in the mid-’90s, gaining his first musical credit on Tekken 3. After working with Namco director Keita Takahashi on the video project “Texas 2000”, Miyake impressed the man so much that Takahashi assigned him full control as sound director over the game soundtrack for the puzzle-action game, Katamari Damacy. This is where Miyake gained critical acclaim for the creativity and unique style he blended together when composing the majority of the soundtrack for Katamari Damacy along with his team. (Which also included fellow MAGFest 13 guest, Yoshihito Yano) The catchy and quirky tunes that comprised Katamari Damacy‘s soundtrack gained several awards, including IGN’s and Gamespot’s “Soundtrack of the Year” for 2004 as well as a nomination for “Outstanding Achievement in Original Musical Composition” at the 8th annual Interactive Achievement Awards in early 2005. This lead to Miyake composing for future games in the series, such as We Love Katamari released in 2005 and Me & My Katamari later that same year. Between these, he also worked on compositions  for Tekken 5 and Ridge Racer.

Yuu Miyake worked on several more games for Namco, including 3 more Katamari titles, until he left the company to go freelance in 2011. While traveling Japan to give lectures and working on personal projects, he also began performing live as “Acid Eutron” alongside Towa Tei, Shinichi Osawa, Takeshi Nakatsuka and Taiji Sato. He current DJ’s across Japan whilst working on freelance projects in association with Namco Bandai, as well as teaching.

You can check out the interview Jayson Napolitano had with Yuu Miyake in 2009 for more about his life and works. His DJ set will be Saturday night starting at 11:30pm, with autograph signing earlier that morning. Check out the full schedule of events for MAGFest 13 for more details, and see you at MAG!