Kiyoshi Murai
Kiyoshi Murai
Artist Information
- Name: Kiyoshi Murai (村井潔)
- Birthdate: February 1st, 1965
- Birthplace: Kanagawa prefecture, Japan
- Likes: Curry, synths
- Favorite band: Yellow Magic Orchestra
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/mu_station
- Website: http://mu-station.chillout.jp/index.html
- Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/seiya-murai
Profile
One of pop'n music's most frequent composers, Kiyoshi Murai's history with Konami dates back to as early as the early 1990's, where he started off doing music for various Mega Drive games and music tracks for the then popular Tokimeki Memorial Vocal CDs, as well as the 1998 Red Company-developed RPG / dating simulation Mitsumete Knight. His first project for BEMANI was the 1999 pop'n stage ex, an updated release of pop'n stage with two new songs, one of them being his song WE TWO ARE ONE that was soon ported to pop'n music 4. Since pop'n music 4 he has appeared in every arcade entry. His style of music tends to drift more into a 1980's synth sound (as seen in his V.C.O. and ALT songs), though he's also dabbled occasionally in rock and orchestral sounding music as well.
Kiyoshi also served as head sound director of 4 and 5, as well as being the co-director of KEYBOARDMANIA 2ndMIX with Hiroki Koga and head sound director of KEYBOARDMANIA 3rdMIX, the final entry in the series. After pop'n music 5, fellow BEMANI composer Jun Wakita would handle the sound direction of pop'n music with pop'n music 6, though he continued to sound direct various pop'n music entries up to PARTY♪. Kiyoshi also contributed new songs to beatmania IIDX beginning with DistorteD for years, and was the sound producer of the ミライダガッキ FutureTomTom series.
Sometime around late 2017, Kiyoshi was transferred from Konami Amusement to the Konami Digital Entertainment department, but returned to Konami Amusement in early 2019.
Trivia
- Prior to his full name being revealed in 2019, Kiyoshi had stated in an interview with the Japanese website Gpara.com that his commonly used "Seiya" alias wasn't his real first name.
- Kiyoshi did the rearranged pop'n music title screen theme heard in pop'n music 4 and 5, as well as the new intro themes from pop'n music 9 through pop'n music 12 いろは.
- Kiyoshi is the first in-house BEMANI artist to use a VOCALOID in a song. He used Prima in 鉄甲乙女 -under the steel- in beatmania IIDX 16 EMPRESS.
- Kiyoshi's V.C.O. alias is an abbreviation for "Voltage Controlled Orchestra".
- This alias is most likely a reference to Murai's favorite band, Yellow Magic Orchestra, which is often abbreviated as YMO.
- KONAMI composers Michiru Yamane and Miki Higashino were Kiyoshi's seniors in the same department as him when he first joined KONAMI in the 1990's.
- The song comments for A SHOOTING STAR note how one of Kiyoshi's first sound specific jobs at KONAMI was making new sound effects for the PC Engine Super CD ports of some of KONAMI's games, like GRADIUS II.
- One of Kiyoshi's tracks from Mitsumete Knight was later remixed in pop'n music as THE MAN FROM FAR EAST.
- Likewise, an arrangement of his song 掌の革命 from Tokimeki Memorial Best Vocal Collection 2 has also made an appearance in pop'n music.
- According to the pop'n music 9 Q&A, Kiyoshi notes that the Kiyommy+Seiya alias was decided after he placed his name at the end of said alias. Originally it was intended to just be Kiyommy.
- He also mentions that his natural bear alias was named by Katsuhiko Suzuki after he said to Kiyoshi, "Is it a natural bear?" (ナチュラルベアでいいじゃん？).
- Kiyoshi produced music for KONAMI's arcade game Otoca♥d'or (オトカ♥ドール), which launched on March 14th, 2015, until July 2017. Its website can be found here.
- Kiyoshi appears on the 2020 Tsugumi Kataoka-produced album Casiotunes!: CUTE and POP MUSIC by CASIONTONE LOVERS under his mu-station alias. It marks his first appearance on a non-KONAMI album.
- According to Kiyoshi, he appeared on the album by request of Kataoka.
Aliases
- Seiya Murai (村井聖夜) / Seiya / seiya-murai
- Five Hammer
- FIVE STICKS
- Millenium Project
- moonlit
- mu-Ray
- Popper Head
- private states
- SOUNDROID
- Theme from"TOON MANIA"
- V.C.O.
- WORLD SEQUENCE / world sequence
- YASHI♪GANI
- エレハモニカ
- 黒踊社中
- まろりんズ
- Kiyommy+Seiya (with Kiyomi Kumano)
- natural bear (with Kiyomi Kumano)
- PARSEC / parsec (with misaki)
- T&S seq. factory / 板橋ギャング (with dj TAKA)
- 秋桜 (composer for)
- サドルシューズ (with Megumi Oka, GUHROOHY, and NO+CHIN)
- ネオロマンティックス (with Norikazu Miura)
- るるるSYSTEM (with Misaki Arima and e-co)
BEMANI Songs
Discography
Albums
- pop'n music Artist Collection natural bear & Kiyommy + Seiya (2002, with Kiyomi Kumano)
- cosmos (2007, with Sayaka Minami and Emi Toujou)
- plug+program (2008)
- 0/1 ANGEL (2011, with ALT)