lead=yes (stylized as kensuke ushio) is a Japanese composer, Rock music and EBM musician. He also releases work under the moniker Agraph.
He is a member of Japanese rock band Lama. Together with Lama, he released two full-length studio records: New! in 2011 and Modanica a year later. Both albums charted on the Oricon Albums Chart.
As an EBM musician, he released three albums, all of which peaked in the Japanese Albums Chart. He wrote and composed for several anime television series and Film, such as A Silent Voice, Chainsaw Man, Devilman Crybaby, Liz and the Blue Bird and Dandadan.
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 Space Dandy (2014), A Silent Voice (2016), Liz and the Blue Bird (2018), and Boogiepop and Others (2019). He is a frequent collaborator of directors Masaaki Yuasa and Naoko Yamada, as well as the animation studio Science Saru, for which he has composed the scores of Ping Pong the Animation (2014), Devilman Crybaby (2018), (2020), and The Heike Story (2021). For The Heike Story, Ushio combined ambient with traditional Japanese instruments that aren't featured in the western musical scale, with an emphasis on the biwa per the director's request. In December 2021, Ushio was confirmed as the composer for MAPPA's anime adaptation of Tatsuki Fujimoto manga series Chainsaw Man, which premiered on October 12, 2022, on TV Tokyo and other networks. Ushio considered the soundtrack to be a challenge, having never written a score for a series based on a popular shonen manga at the time. He also collaborated with Sony Computer Science Laboratories to create a custom program as he sought to combine drum patterns with chainsaw samples. Ushio arranged music for the Distant Future chapter of the Live a Live remake, originally composed by Yoko Shimomura, marking his first work on a video game. The game released on July 22, 2022.
Ping Pong the Animation |
Devilman Crybaby |
Liz and the Blue Bird |
The Heike Story |
The Dangers in My Heart |
Heavenly Delusion |
Dandadan |
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