Piko

An internet video sensation, angel-voiced singer Piko effortlessly straddled the worlds of J-Pop and visual kei with his astonishing vocal range and androgynous good looks. His major debut album entered the Japanese Top 10, and the follow-up performed almost as strongly. Born March 11, 1988 in Kobe, he began singing in high school, performing in a band and participating in the school’s keionbu (light music club). It was Piko’s mother who first encouraged him to upload some of his performances to the Japanese video-sharing site Nico Nico Douga. Taking the name of his pet dog as his stage name, he took her advice, and his recordings — primarily covers of songs that music fans had produced using the popular voice synthesizer software Vocaloid — became enormously popular, with millions of hits. Piko’s remarkable vocal range (at least three octaves) allows him to produce an uncannily convincing facsimile of a female voice, in which he records many of his songs. Many listeners hearing him for the first time mistakenly believe him to be female. As a result, his fans dubbed him “Ryouseirui”, literally “both voice types.”

His online success gave him the confidence to record and independently release a single, “Thanatos” — featuring the brilliantly monikered Tissue Hime (“Tissue Princess”) — and an album, Infinity. Both releases charted, not incredibly highly, but enough for the major labels to sit up and take notice. In 2010, Piko signed with Sony offshoot Ki/oon, home to huge acts like L’Arc-en-Ciel, Art-School, and Sid. Unlike most solo J-Pop singers, he was marketed to appeal to the visual kei fan base, with fancy costumes on his record covers and surprisingly tough music within, based in rock but also encompassing electronic styles like pop-trance. “Story,” his debut single for Ki/oon, entered the charts at number 10, and in May 2011 his first major album, the uninspiringly titled but musically excellent 1Piko, reached number eight. Almost exactly a year later he delivered more of the same high-quality pop/rock on his follow-up album, 2Piko. Eventually, coming full circle, his voice was used as the template for a Vocaloid character, and he recorded an album of the covers with which he'd made his name. ~ John D. Buchanan, Rovi