NECKY

NECKY

A composer, guitarist, rapper, bilingual translator/interpreter, and most importantly, an avid music fan. His life began in Japan but his formative years were spent living around the world. The only constant in his life was MTV. While living in Pakistan, NECKY struggled to fit in, and it wasn't until his uncle gave him an old acoustic guitar that he discovered his passion for creating music. He spent hours perfecting his favorite songs. While in Australia, he entered a program where students were encouraged to form bands, perform gigs at lunch, and even record their own demo CDs. Though NECKY enjoyed playing for a crowd, it was song production and recording that truly appealed to him. Upon his return to Japan at eighteen, he tried to form a band at university, but couldn't find what he was looking for there. From his short lived band career, NECKY made a number of friends in the Japanese music community. Given his bilingual talents, he was often sought after for help with English lyrics, work as an MC, and as a voice actor. Though he supported many in the creation of their art, NECKY's own wasn't progressing as he'd hoped. Then he met DJ SEVEN, who was also struggling. The two inspired one another and created a hybrid style of organic guitar with digital synthesizer and sampled beats. For every event that DJ SEVEN appeared at, he dropped a new track that NECKY helped to produce. In 2011, NECKY met Nana, an aspiring bilingual singer from New York. At that time, NECKY and DJ SEVEN were working on a new track, and asked her to collaborate on it - which eventually led to the production of several others. Their work gained an audience outside of Japan, including DJ AMAYA, known in the Anime Expo community for his remixes of Japanese idol tracks. NECKY and DJ Amaya connected, and soon Necky, DJ SEVEN, and Nana appeared on AX DIGITAL DANCE RADIO. After graduation, both NECKY and DJ SEVEN went on a production hiatus, and after some time, Necky began having jam sessions with a former bandmate and friend. These turned into demo recordings for their band Royal Castage, named after the former bandmate's apartment. After producing tracks on SoundCloud, NECKY's career took a fateful turn at a gathering of musicians. He met producer Carlos K, who offered NECKY a guitar track on a demo of his. This was later picked up by the duo Mihimaru GT in their single "Promise", which was used for the Japanese drama series, Power Game. Carlos and NECKY continued their collaboration with work on song competitions, and soon NECKY brought Nana in as well. The new trio co-produced the single track "Summer Time!!!" for the Japanese R&B singer AZU. This song was later used in advertising campaigns for a leisure complex and aquarium. They also produced the track "Anata Ga Ireba OK!" (あなたがいればOK!) for Serena, a vocalist with Sony Music. This track was the ending theme for the anime Space Brothers. In 2013, NECKY was asked by the organizers of AX Dance, a dance event associated with Anime Expo, to perform in LA. He and Nana performed for an audience of about 3000 attendees. Post Anime Expo, NECKY wasn't sure which direction to take with his work - then a friend contacted with an agent position at a foreign musician agency in Tokyo. This led to him working as a production assistant for Final Fantasy XV, and as a lyricist on Sonic Forces. In 2018, NECKY reconnected with a long time friend from France. Mitsugi had a background in Visual Kei, but their musical repertoire was quite similar, and they formed the production unit nMy. In this project they featured a new collaborator on each song they produced. They were featured in Journal du Japon, a famous Japanese culture blog in France. OrelusOne, a French composer and friend of nMy, proposed a collaborative project on HitRecord, for in-game music on Ubisoft's upcoming title, Beyond Good and Evil 2. The goal was to come up with eclectic, multicultural songs, to which NECKY suggested using four different languages in one song. The finished demo attracted a lot of attention among the HitRecord community as well as the BGE2 production team, and a small clip of a song was used for Ubisoft x HitRecord cross promotion. The song, "Hybrid for Life", is scheduled to be included in the game. In early 2020, pre-pandemic, NECKY met Seann Bowe, a producer from the US who was visiting Tokyo at the time. They decided to do a collaboration together, and the track "Heavenly" by Seann Bowe, is now available on Spotify. At the moment, NECKY is using his downtime to create and to meet other inspiring people.