Aries9:
About
Biography
Ari was originally born in Tokyo, Japan,
and lived in the area until he was 12 years
old. Piano was his first instrument, having
started taking lessons at the age 10. Then
his entire family moved to Sao Paulo, Brazil,
because of his father's career. It was there
that he encountered American and European
hard rock, which captivated his interest. Ari
counts Bon Jovi, Europe and later Skid Row
among his earliest influences.
When he was 16, he had a chance to spend 3
weeks in a summer Bible camp in Iowa. This
experience also had a strong impact on him,
as later he chose to go to college in the
area. He studied classical music composition
at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota,
while he played the guitar in cover bands.
This was the era when grunge broke into
mainstream radio, and he was influenced by
the popular rock acts that his band covered,
such as Nirvana, Pearl Jam, The Smashing
Pumpkins and Radiohead, among others.
After graduating and marrying a fellow St.
Olaf student, Ari moved to Austin, Texas with
his wife, in search of opportunities to
pursue his music. Immediately he joined a
local band, which broke up after one gig
after months of rehearsals and over a dozen
original songs. Disappointed by this
experience, Ari started performing as a solo
singer/songwriter in the area coffeehouses.
This attempt did grow into a 3-piece band
with a rhythm section, but once again the
band imploded after a failed attempt to bring
in a singer to sing songs Ari wrote.
Burned out, Ari put his own music on hold
and focused instead on activities that would
bring income, such as performing as a
hired-gun guitarist, transcribing, and
teaching how to record music with computers.
In 2000 he landed his first film-scoring
project, composing and producing music for an
independent short. A string of shorts and
documentaries followed over the next several
years. In 2003 he also started recording
demos for local singer/songwriters using his
laptop. These two activities culminated in
2005, when he scored his first feature-length
film and produced the first full-length
album. Though both projects were highly
successful, he was unable to build upon them
immediately, and was forced to take a job as
a full-time web designer. This employment and
the birth and growth of his daughter (born in
2003) led Ari to conclude that he was not
going to pursue projects where he was held
accountable by his clients for the time
being.
Having put his budding film scoring and
producing careers on hold, Ari unshelved his
original material and began recording them on
his own. A plan to release a 5-song EP
eventually turned into a 10-song full-length
album. He decided to release it under a
project name Aries9, rather than under his
own name, to give it a possibility of growing
into a band, following the footsteps of other
solo-turned-band acts such as Foo Fighters,
Gorillaz and Porcupine Tree. The project was
launched in fall of 2007 with the release of
its debut album, "Darkness Reveals the Beauty
of Truth." Later that year, he relocated to
Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota to start the
new phase of his life in a new city.