Daisuke Hinata is a Japanese music producer, composer, keyboardist, synthesizer programmer, recording engineer, studio designer, and recording artist. He started Variable Speed Audio, Inc., a music production company now in its 25th year in the music business, and built two recording studios: one in Santa Monica and another in Van Nuys. In 1995, he established the record company Hyper Group, Inc., with three music labels along with a music publishing company and a management division. Shortly after, Daisuke opened Hyperdisc, a locally treasured record shop and café in Santa Monica that featured live music nightly and helped launch the careers of many successful artists.

Daisuke’s musical career and works span oceans and continents, cultures and genres. From traditional academia to electronica, his compositions have sold millions and have garnered a Grammy nomination. Raised through adolescence in Japan, Daisuke always intended to make music his life’s work. Frustrated at the lack of his country’s musical opportunities, he left Japan at 17 to begin a world-wide search for his musical fortune. He moved to London, working in a motorcycle warehouse by day and soaking up the spectrum of folk, blues, glam and rock music of the pubs and clubs by night. From there, he made his way to the States where he enrolled at the prestigious Berklee school of Music in Boston and studied jazz with classmates like Branford Marsalis, Don Garrison and Kenny Kirkland, exploring the cutting edge with a major in electronic music. Later he relocated to Los Angeles and submerged himself in the New Wave pop movement, working as a session musician and writing songs. Rated amongst the top artist/producers to come out of Japan, in 1987, Daisuke was nominated for a Grammy as an artist/composer with the band Interiors on the Windham Hill label. His biggest commercial successes came as the producer of three albums with three chart-topping topping singles for the Japanese superstar, Tetsuya Komuro. His resume also includes the scores to numerous commercials for Honda, Toyota, Hitachi, Kirin and General Foods.

In 1996, at the helm of the chart-topping group CAGNET, Daisuke’s talents came into public consciousness on the soundtracks of the Japanese soap operas, “Long Vacation” and “Love Generation” which both reached Gold and Platinum sales in Japan, Hong Kong and Southeast Asia. Daisuke took his love for music one step further in 1998 by turning his attention to world music label, Global Disc Records which is distributed across the United States and Canada. He released five Cuban albums, including Rhythm & Smoke, and received the Crossroad Music Industry Resource Award for Best Contemporary World Music Album. In 1999, he hosted MTV’s Road Rules for the episodes taped in Cuba and Japan. Since 2013, Daisuke’s band Encounter has played at various live venues around Tokyo, and received tremendous praise and reviews at Alfa Music Live at the Bunkamura Orchard Hall in 2015. In 2016 he worked once again with Tetsuya Komuro and played with the Chemical Brothers at the Yokohama Arena. Daisuke’s music freely cross-pollinates jazz, rock, folk, rap, dance, rhythm & blues and more.

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