Masa

There are more than one artist under this name. 1) MASA (ささき まさよし, Sasaki Masayoshi, born February 19) is a Japanese music composer. During his first stint with Koei, he was put in charge of composing background music for some of their games. Being a skilled guitarist gave him the opportunity to help create rock-themed tracks for the Dynasty Warriors series. Like Masato Koike, he is also a sound director for the company. Whenever MASA composes music for a new Warriors sequel, he often tries to keep the direction of his compositions in mind and readily discusses the vision behind each theme with the game designer. He also takes the time to name each track in English with the aid of a dictionary. When MASA received criticism from overseas users regarding the anachronistic music style of Dynasty Warriors, he made an effort to incorporate Chinese instruments as well as collaborating with other composers to provide a more authentic feel to his compositions. 2) Masa is the stage name of a Japanese musician. While he is not so prominent in the Japanese music scene, he was member of GacktJOB, Gackt's band. He has also been in the disbanded Spiky and is currently the vocalist of Dizzy Drive. Masa was born on the 30th of September, the year is unknown. His full name is Masa Shinozaki. After graduating from the technical and vocational school (専門学校) he went to the U.S.A alone. The TOEFL was acquired after one year. Afterwards, he studied music at the University for three years. He learned the English language while living in New York for four years. A day after he graduated from the university, he returned home. He worked with Yusuke Asada as support and after that backed-up Gackt, joining his project as the electro-, drum-acoustic- and rhythm guitarist of GacktJOB, from which he first rose to fame in the Japanese music scene. However, Masa decided to leave GacktJOB to work on his own career with Spiky, to which he was vocalist and guitarist. During this time Spiky released 2 singles, 6 maxi singles, 1 album and 2 mini albums. However, the proctect Spiky came to a halt as Masa left to start his very own project, Dizzy Drive. The remaining members tried to recruit a new vocalist and the new formation was supposed to debut on the same day as Masa with DIZZY DRIVE, but it never happened; however, KG has not completely stopped the project so far, and has always hoped to revive it one day. Dizzy Drive was started shortly after Masa left Spiky in 2005. In the beginning of June 2006 Masa announced then, that with the agreement of all members, DIZZY DRIVE would start over with a new concept; since they couldn't identify with their old band name anymore, they also created a new name. The last concert under the name of DIZZY DRIVE was on the second of July. Masa also started to work as a guitarist again, first with the Session band JET STREAM ATTACK (covering BUCK-TICK) in June and then on the second Summer Festival, organized by Seventh Heaven with the Session band Sin After Sin (covering Luna Sea) in July; he also performed as a singer with Spiky again in August 2006 in two Lives, Acoustic and Electric, which seemed to have been the final end of that project. A break was announced until September 2006, after which he returned with his new project, マァマァサ・ムゥ, which consisted of the same members as DIZZY DRIVE but with the new concept and style. Instead of the more rockish attitude of DIZZY DRIVE, their shows are now quite theatrical and the music has a touch of eighties rock. 3) Goa / psychedelic trance act. Masayuki Kurihara. Masa started his musical career in the early 80's working with various musical genres such rock, punk, noise and industrial.In the early 90's he moved on to psychedelic trance as X-Tron. With Tokyo as his base he performed in Hamburg, Berlin, Paris, Greece, Australia and other places. He has two full-lenght albums: Just Inside (1996) and Why? (2006) Aliases: Masaray, Masayuki Kurihara, X-Tron Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.