, professionally known as Snail's House or Ujico*, is a Japanese

electronic Electronic may refer to: *Electronics, the science of how to control electric energy in semiconductors * ''Electronics'' (magazine), a defunct American trade journal *Electronic storage, the storage of data using an electronic device *Electronic c ...

musician. He currently resides in Saitama,

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

History

He started publishing music on

SoundCloud SoundCloud is a German audio streaming service owned and operated by SoundCloud Global Limited & Co. KG. The service enables its users to upload, promote, and share audio. Founded in 2007 by Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss, SoundCloud is ...

in 2012 under the name Ujico* (which he stated was a childhood nickname given to him by a friend). In 2013, Ujiie created his own

record label "Big Three" music labels A record label or record company is a brand or trademark of Sound recording and reproduction, music recordings and music videos, or the company that owns it. Sometimes, a record label is also a Music publisher, ...

, Youth Composer Association, a Tokyo-based label specifically geared towards young musicians. In 2014, after listening to performances by

Hiromi Uehara , often known mononymously as Hiromi, is a Grammy Award winning Japanese jazz composer and pianist. She is known for her virtuosic technique, energetic live performances and blending of musical genres such as stride, post-bop, progressive rock ...

and various

jazz fusion Jazz fusion (also known as jazz rock, jazz-rock fusion, or simply fusion) is a popular music genre that developed in the late 1960s when musicians combined jazz harmony and improvisation with rock music, funk, and rhythm and blues. Electric gui ...

music, Ujiie was inspired to start playing the

piano A piano is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when its keys are depressed, activating an Action (music), action mechanism where hammers strike String (music), strings. Modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys, tuned to a c ...

. From that point, his music career began to grow and he created a separate Snail's House outfit for his "kawaii" music, which officially began on August 30, 2014, with the release of "Nyan Nyan Angel!". His first two EPs as Snail's House, ''Kirara'' and ''Kawaii Collective'', were released in mid-2015, containing high-pitched vocal chops, vibrant

synthesizer A synthesizer (also synthesiser or synth) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis a ...

sounds, and happy-sounding

melodies A melody (), also tune, voice, or line, is a linear succession of musical tones that the listener perceives as a single entity. In its most literal sense, a melody is a combination of pitch and rhythm, while more figuratively, the term ca ...

. On October 10, 2017, the music video for the song "Pixel Galaxy" was released onto YouTube. It quickly began to go viral and it gave Ujiie a large boost in followers, though the song has significantly fewer plays on all

music streaming A music streaming service is a type of online streaming media service that focuses primarily on music, and sometimes other forms of digital audio content such as podcasts. These services are usually subscription-based services allowing users to s ...

services, the music video now has more than 100 million views on

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

. On October 9, 2018, Ujiie announced that a small game was being developed for his upcoming two-track album ''Snailchan Adventure''. The album was released on October 23 with an accompanying music video, and Ujiie published a preview of the unfinished game. As of May 1, 2019, the game has not been released, with development presumed to be ongoing.

Discography

References

1997 births Japanese electronic musicians Musicians from Tokyo Living people {{DEFAULTSORT:House, Snails