Jun Senoue (born August 2, 1970) is a Japanese composer and guitarist. He works as a music director for the Sonic the Hedgehog video game series made by Sega. He also co-founded the Japanese-American rock band Crush 40 with Johnny Gioeli in 2000. The band wrote songs for every major game in the Sonic series until 2010. After that, Senoue continued to help with the music for later Sonic games.

Biography

Senoue was born on August 2, 1970, in Matsushima, Miyagi, Japan. He began playing the piano when he was three years old. At age 12, he moved to Panama and started focusing on rock music after watching MTV. He taught himself to play the electric guitar at 15 and recorded his first original song by age 17. After graduating from Aoyama Gakuin University in 1993 with a degree in economics, Senoue sent demo tapes to Namco and Sega. Sega hired him, and his first project was arranging a medley of music for the game Dark Wizard for its credits section. In 1993, he created some short musical pieces and tracks for Sonic the Hedgehog 3, his first work on the Sonic series. Later in the 1990s, he worked on games in the Sega Worldwide Soccer series and other titles like the Sega Genesis version of Sonic 3D Blast. In 1998, Senoue became the lead composer and sound director for Sonic Adventure. The game’s success led to him being promoted as the series’ sound director.

In 1999, Senoue moved to San Francisco and worked on games like NASCAR Arcade, Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic Heroes, and Shadow the Hedgehog. In 2005, he released an EP with Japanese voice actress Junko Noda called Ready!. The project was named JxJ and was only sold in Japan. In 2007, Senoue arranged three new tracks for the Japanese release of OutRun 2 SP, including covers of existing songs and a new track titled Lift You Up!. He also arranged and performed Angel Island Zone from Sonic the Hedgehog 3 for Super Smash Bros. Brawl. In 2010, Senoue performed with former Magna-Fi guitarist C.J. Szuter in a band called Bubblicious Blvd.

In 2009, Senoue announced a compilation album called The Works, which included three Sonic-related songs and other less-known tracks from other games. The album was released on October 21, 2009. At a Sonic festival in December 2015, Senoue announced a sequel to The Works titled The Works II, which was released two months later.

Crush 40 is a hard rock band formed by Senoue in 2000 to perform on NASCAR Arcade. The band includes Senoue on guitars, Johnny Gioeli on vocals, Toru Kawamura on drums, and Takeshi Taneda on bass. Since its start, Crush 40 has created theme songs for the Sonic the Hedgehog series. In 2008, Crush 40 performed at the Tokyo Game Show, playing popular Sonic songs for the first time in front of a live audience. A YouTube video of the event was later shared by Gioeli and Senoue. In 2009, the band released a compilation album titled The Best of Crush 40: Super Sonic Songs, which included most of their Sonic songs, older tracks from NASCAR Arcade, and new songs. Crush 40 performed at the 2010 Summer of Sonic convention in London, their first event outside Japan. In 2012, the band played at two conventions: Summer of Sonic in Brighton and Sonic Boom at San Diego Comic-Con.

Crush 40 released their first live album in October 2012, titled Live!, which featured songs from their Tokyo concerts. In 2013, the band performed in St. Louis for the Sonic Boom 2013 event and at the 2015 Youmacon in Detroit. For the 25th anniversary of the Sonic series, Crush 40 performed at the San Diego House of Blues during Comic-Con in July 2016 and at Summer of Sonic in London the following month. In July 2017, Senoue performed Sonic-related music with the Video Game Orchestra at Comic-Con. Crush 40 also contributed to the 2019 game Team Sonic Racing, performing its main theme, Green Light Ride.