Biography
MASSA TAKEMOTO : Track Composer
Massa is a driven track designer and musician with extensive involvement in both commercial and artistic projects. With more than 20 years of experience in audio production, he has worked on an international level for distinguished clients such as Microsoft Japan and Social Media Week, producing work like sound breaks for advertisements, themes for art exhibitions, movie soundtracks and music albums.
As a musician, Massa has played at major West Coast venues such as Whisky a Go Go, Coconut Teaser, Belly Up Tavern, etc. Additionally, he went on tour from Southern California to Utah as a member of the band "May Pole," which was nominated for "Best Out-of-Region Band" at the Orange County Music Awards in 2002. He has also performed at music festivals and on Japanese television (including Japan MTV) as a support member for bands and solo artists. In 2009, Massa was invited to the project "ULTRA SLACKER" by Tomotaka Imamichi, in which he recorded 2 full-length albums and toured Japan.
Massa’s love of music started when his father bought him a record player for his 3rd birthday. He started taking private piano lessons at the age of 5 and achieved proficiency in music theory by the age of 15. By that time, he had been exposed to wide variety of music and started writing his own.
While his core musical influence is classical, Massa has played with blues bands, funk bands, and rock bands, all of which require good improvisational skills. Through this experience, Massa learned how and when to “break the rules,” as well as how to keep a crowd entertained.
After "May Pole" signed to studio880 of San Francisco, Massa put aside the live rock scene to pursue a path in digital composition. Despite the challenges of learning on his own, Massa managed to self-release couple of conceptual albums in 2007 (desert island mix) and again in 2011 (Echolocation’s EP, Beauty in an Empty Glass). He was eventually picked up by the German record label Peacelounge, who later released Echolocation’s first full length album, Platinum Wunderland, in 2012. From there, his work began to gain recognition and eventually came to be featured on commercial compilation albums alongside artists such as Norah Jones, Jay Alansky, Chris Coco, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Levitation, Jean Honeymoon and others.
Around the same time that Peacelounge picked Massa up, he was approached by independent film director Ippei Nishihara to compose music and manage sound production for the feature-length film A Taste of Kiss, which premiered at the Japan Film Fest Hamburg in Germany. Massa is currently writing the soundtrack for Nishihara's second feature-length film (yet to be released).
Massa’s seventh solo project, The Moments Captured, was released in 2017 through Peacelounge and subsequently reviewed in April 2018 by Tobias Fischer in Germany's largest print zine for recording and music, Beat. His latest work, The Blue Album, was released in August of 2022.