While Soft Ballet weren't necessarily chart toppers, they had a strong cult following and were considered pioneers of modern electronic music in Japan in the 1990s.
[1][2] Soft Ballet was formed in 1987 as a side-project when Ken Morioka and Ryoichi Endo (who had already been working together in a band called Volaju) joined with Maki Fujii.
Their combination of light synthpop with hard European-style EBM attracted great attention for being a unique presence on the then-current Japanese music scene.
The album proved to be a success and the band toured extensively for it, leading to a concert being filmed professionally and released to home video early the next year.
In this time Ken and Maki assisted famed video game composer Yuzo Koshiro with his soundtrack for The Scheme.
This mini-album was intended as a showcase for each individual member, with Ken, Maki, and Ryoichi each composing and performing a song separately from the rest of the band.
[3] The three each came at it from completely different styles- Ken made a relaxing pop number, Maki made a hardcore industrial song, and Ryoichi (with Maki handling the arrangement) put together a slow, ponderous ballad- effectively showing the three completely different sides that the band mixes together to form a typical Soft Ballet song.
The album took a hard anti-war stance (most explicitly against the Gulf War) and displayed this aggression by embracing the band's industrial and EBM influence more than any of their past work.
愛と平和 was Soft Ballet's first album to reach the Oricon Top 10,[4] and this new level of success brought them to the attention of a bigger record company, Victor Entertainment.
This was among the first times that a Japanese band had participated in such an international remix exchange, and these albums became the first Soft Ballet material that was circulated in the West.
Soft Ballet moved over to Victor Entertainment by 1992, signing to a newly created sublabel called XEO Invitation.
Soft Ballet released their first singles on XEO in 1993, "Engaging Universe" followed by "White Shaman", which proved to be some of their biggest hits and earning them guest performances on multiple TV shows.
However the material from these new sessions featured much collaboration, as well as members changing roles (Ryoichi composing music and Ken and Maki writing lyrics).
Despite this new team dynamic, conflicts within the band-members continued and the group announced that they'd split up after the release of their new album and a final concert series.
In addition to a solo career, he composed the soundtrack for the popular anime series Kaikan Phrase, began doing session and production work for artists such as Demon Kogure, Feel, Hikaru Kotobuki and Losalios, and engaged in one-off collaborations such as forming the group Suicide with Issay of Der Zibet for a Japan tribute album.
The resulting album, Symbiont (released on EastWest Japan), showcased an updated sound, taking advantage of the leaps in digital music technology that had occurred since they last worked together.
In addition to a series of compilation albums issued around the time of the break-up, Soft Ballet began offering work through Sony Music Direct.
On the side, Morioka returned to session work, writing and/or touring with Mell, Tomoyasu Hotei, Kaya, Buck-Tick, and more.
He contributed to soundtracks, including the game Dream Club Zero, the movie "記憶の音楽Gb", and "Ghost In The Shell Tribute Album Ver 2.0.0".
In 2013, Ken took part in two supergroups; the first was KA.F.KA led by Masami Tsuchiya,[15][16] the second was a backing band for a posthumous performance by hide.