Daisuke Asakura

His childhood consisted of piano lessons and the expectations to follow the family trade of plumbing.
Asakura began his career with landing a job at Yamaha right after high school. While under Yamaha, Asakura worked on the EOS synthesizer; he was also featured in the home-instructional video for the machine. His talent was discovered by Tetsuya Komuro of TM Network and Daisuke was pulled from Yamaha to work under Komuro as his protégé. Daisuke played Bass Synthesizer during TM Network’s 1990-91 Rhythm Red tour. Then Asakura met Hiroyuki Takami in 1990 following Rhythm Red and eventually in 1992 broke away from TM Network and formed access (or AXS) with Takami on vocals and lyric.
The break-up left Asakura to pursue new ideas that included producing and composing songs for new artists; one of the most successful acts he created was with J-pop idol Takanori Nishikawa under the title of T.M.Revolution. In mid-1996 Asakura started a three-man unit titled Iceman which brought Kenichi Ito(guitar) and Michihiro Kuroda(vocal) to the spotlight. After several years Iceman ended activity due to conflict between Michihiro Kuroda and Asakura, however. During and after his years with Iceman Asakura built his wealth and reputation as a composer taking after his idol and teacher, Tetsuya Komuro. He produced singles and albums for jpop vocalists. Examples of Asakura’s past projects includes vocalists such as Sakanoue Yosuke, Kinya Kotani, Daichi Kuroda, Akiko Hinagata, Yuki Kimura, FayRay, Takashi Fujii and groups such as, Onapetz, Pool Bit Boys, Lazy Knack, Run&Gun and The Seeker. He also composed a few songs for visual kei J-rock band, Shazna. Most of the above listed, as well as a group of school boys under the name D.A.N.K., were included in a project called Cherry Garden.
In 2001, he produced his first solo album in seven years as well as working with Iceman guitarist Kenichi Ito in Mad Soldiers; a sort of comedic spin-off from Iceman in which both men’s ‘sinister’ alter egos ‘Scorpion’ [Asakura] and ‘Snake’ [Ito] produced music for Kotani Kinya and performed officially unrecorded cover versions of famous songs such as ‘Lemon Tea’ by Sheena & The Rokkets and ‘Hungry Like the Wolf’ by Duran Duran. In 2002 he reunited with Hiroyuki Takami and reformed access. With the reuniting of Daisuke’s favoured vocalist, Takami, T.M.Revolution was dropped from Asakura’s projects.
Asakura also went off on a solo project in 2004 titled “Quantum Mechanics Rainbow”. In which he released multiple CDs for a year, and each CD title name had to do with a color and math property.
In 2006–2007, Asakura produced two singles for new jpop idol Kimeru, hit the road with TM Network for 2007’s TMN TRIBUTE tour and created new songs for the popular dance-step game, Dance Dance Revolution’s newest version.
In November 2007, access released a memory/ discography book, alongside access plushies, to commemorate their 15 years together.
In 2008, he has revealed a new musical project, entitled “DA METAVERSE ~100 songs for 1000 DAYS,” where he will release 100 new songs over 1000 days exclusively through iTunes. The project was launched on June 25, 2008.
Official Website: http://www.danet.ne.jp/
Darwin: http://www.darwin.co.jp/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/daisukeasakura
Sony Music: http://www.sonymusic.co.jp/Music/Arch/AR/DaisukeAsakura/

Daisuke Asakura