About Masashi Hamauzu (浜渦 正志)

Masashi Hamauzu (濱渦正志), born September 20, 1971 in Munich, Germany, is a video game music composer who has worked for Square Enix for nearly a decade. Hamauzu's works are often reminiscent of Chopin, Ravel, and Debussy compositions. They frequently incorporate deliberate dissonance to provide an artistic and mood-setting effect. After pattern and harmony have set in, the elegance of the dissonance becomes apparent; the listener's perception of dissonance evolves into a perception of consonance integral to the music. Hamauzu composes music in a wide variety of styles, often employing multiple styles throughout a soundtrack. His compositions break barriers between musical genres, mixing classical marches, tango music, electronic ambience, instrumental solos, and jazz. Hamauzu's start with Square Enix came by creating a small handful of tracks (along with other composers) for Front Mission: Gun Hazard (1996) and Tobal No. 1 (1996). Later collaborations include Final Fantasy X (2001) (with Nobuo Uematsu [植松伸夫] and Junya Nakano [仲野順也]) and Musashi: Samurai Legend (2005) (with Junya Nakano, and Takayuki Iwai & Yuki Iwai [岩井由紀] of Wavelink Zeal). His solo works include Chocobo's Mysterious Dungeon (1997), SaGa Frontier 2 (1999), UNLIMITED: SaGa (2002), and Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII (2006). Hamauzu provided the entire score of Final Fantasy XIII in 2009, and returned for its sequel, XIII-2 in 2011. Hamauzu has also produced arranged albums for a few of his works, including Chocobo's Mysterious Dungeon ~Coi Vanni Gialli~ and Piano Pieces "SF2" Rhapsody on a Theme of SaGa Frontier 2. He also prepared the piano arrangements for Final Fantasy X Piano Collections and Yasunori Mitsuda (光田康典)'s Sailing to the World Piano Score. From SaGa Frontier 2 onward, Hamauzu has primarily worked closely with synthesizer operator Ryo Yamazaki (山崎良). In addition to his solo and video game compositions, he is also co-leader of the band IMERUAT with vocalist Mina Sakai.