AKIRA YAMAOKA
AKIRA YAMAOKA is a composer.
Yamaoka's job on Silent Hill was never to write horror music. It was to make a town sound like it was rusting. He has scored almost every entry in Konami's series since the first game in 1999, produced several of them, and written music for three of the film adaptations.
The method is unusually identifiable. Sheet metal, industrial noise and tape hiss sit underneath the exploration sections, so the ambience is closer to a factory floor than to an orchestra, and then a track will simply resolve into a clean acoustic guitar figure or a vocal ballad. The whiplash between those two registers is the whole design: the melodies are what make the noise read as grief rather than as plain menace, and the Silent Hill 2 score is where that balance is exact.
Since 2010 he has been sound director at Grasshopper Manufacture, and since 2018 a director and sound designer at Supertrick Games, which is a significant move for a composer. He now builds the games, not only what they sound like.
Music (6)
Games (4)
Where to start with AKIRA YAMAOKA
SILENT HILL 2 ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACKS is the record to hear first, and it functions away from the game entirely; it is about as close as game music gets to an album you would put on deliberately. Play it before or after, not during, if you have any intention of sleeping.
From there, Silent Hill is the colder, harsher original score, more noise and less melody, and it shows where the style began. Silent Hill 3 is where the vocal tracks take over and the songwriting turns most aggressive. Silent Hill 4: The Room is the strangest of the set and the most divisive. Silent Hill: Origins and Silent Hill: Shattered Memories are the later work, attached to games of variable quality, with the music consistently better than what surrounds it.