Biography
After graduating from Berklee College of Music, he moved to Kansas City to start a career as a solo jazz musician. He later relocated to Japan to work for Konami, where he became best known his work on Konami's Metal Gear Solid and Zone of the Enders video game series.
After working with Konami, Hibino started his own company, GEM Impact, which is a studio consisting of composers Takahiro Izutani, Yoshitaka Suzuki, Takahide Ayuzawa, and Norihiko Hibino himself. Additional staff includes DJ Uraken who acts mainly as a producer. The studio often enlists the talents of Uetake MacARTHUR for their graphical needs.
An additional part of GEM Impact is GEM Factory, an in-house record label which has put out the debut album of The Outer Rim and the Ninja Blade soundtrack.
Through GEM Impact, Hibino and his team have been able to work on games, anime, websites, and other projects that require music. While their involvement with Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots was not publicized by Konami, Hibino divulged in an interview with Original Sound Version that GEM Impact in fact provided approximately 90 minutes of music for the game's cinematic sequences. On September 2, 2008, Hibino and GEM Impact were announced to be the composers for the action title Ninja Blade on the Xbox 360 developed by FromSoftware. Hibino noted that he was responsible for the title's main theme and ending theme with the rest of the team helped with the rest of the score.
In 2009, GEM Impact's in-house label, GEM Factory released the 2-disc Ninja Blade soundtrack, and Hibino went on to found Hibino Sound Therapy Lab, a venture that explores the therapeutic applications of music. His first project under this company was Prescription for Sleep, an iPhone and iPod touch application that attempts to lure users to sleep with 20 minutes of soothing, live-recorded music. The application has topped the Japanese iTunes Store Health and Fitness section since it's March release.
Hibino also teamed up with a Chinese producer to create Gentle Love, a light smooth jazz arrangement album of pop hits from China, Japan, and the US. Other activities included a panel at GDC 2009 about the game music business in Japan, two performance at the 2009 GANG Awards, performances of "Snake Eater" at Video Games Live in Singapore and Brazil, and a live performance of Gentle Love. It has also been announced that GEM Impact will be contributing to the score for the highly anticipated Bayonetta, due out at the end of the year from SEGA. He was also awarded the Berklee "Distinguished Alumni" award for his entrepreneurial spirit and use of music in unconventional ways to reach a new audience.
His song "Snake Eater", from Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater is on Karaoke Revolution Volume 3 featuring Cynthia Harrel.
Read more about this topic: Norihiko Hibino
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