User:Wandering Ponderer/Kikuo

Keisuke Kikuchi (Japanese: 菊地恵介), professionally known as Kikuo (Japanese: "きくお") (born September 21, 1988) is a Japanese songwriter, Vocaloid producer, and DJ. As an independent artist publishing under his own record label, he produces the lyrics and music for each of his songs, often with vocals provided by popular Crypton Future Media voicebank, Hatsune Miku. His unique style of music production is characterized by detailed, high-tempo sound design, with several overlaying instruments and effects to create colorful and upbeat harmonies, often juxtaposed by unsettling lyrics.

Additionally, Kikuo is best known for his song, "Aishite Aishite Aishite (Love me, Love me, Love me)" (Japanese: 愛して愛して愛して) which surpassed 100 million streams on Spotify in January 2023, the first Vocaloid song to achieve this feat, establishing him as a leader of the Vocaloid genre.

Biography
Kikuo credits experiences in elementary school for inspiring him to be a creator, recalling that bullies would not harass him when they took interest in his creations, such as "gamebooks." In a 2023 interview with Japanese web magazine Freezine, Kikuo specifically discussed how bullying shaped his worldview and motivation to create:

Original Japanese: "すごい前までさかのぼると、小学生のころいじめられてたけど、一人遊びで作ってたゲームブックみたいなのを見せたら、「お前すげぇ」みたいな風になって、ゲームブックやらせてるときだけ一時的にいじめが止んで、ゲームブック引っ込めたら途端にいじめられるみたいな. そういう状況から、「あ、創作じゃないと生きていけないんだ、俺この社会で」ってなって、中学のころに創作ならとりあえずなんでもいいから、自分の得意なもの探さなきゃと思って、いろんなことチャレンジしたんですけど苦手なこともでき. . . ないこともすごく多いし、めっちゃ飽きっぽかったんで、あらゆることに飽きた結果、最後に一つだけ飽きなかったのがDTMだったみたいなことだったんですよ."

English Translation: "Going back a long way, when I was in elementary school I was being bullied, but when I showed them a gamebook that I made by myself, they were like, 'You're amazing,' and the bullying stopped temporarily when I was playing with the gamebook, but as soon as I took the gamebook away, the bullying started again. From that situation, I realized, 'Oh, I can't survive in this society without creativity,' and in middle school I thought I had to find something I was good at, anything creative, so I tried a lot of different things, but I couldn't do the things I wasn't good at...There were a lot of things I didn't have, and I got bored very easily, so I got bored of everything, and in the end, the only thing I didn't get bored of was DTM."

Kikuo's passion for Desktop Music (DTM) lead him to start creating music in 2003 while still in middle school, uploading songs to 2channel. Noticing little interest in his early works, bright and flashy pop songs with dance tempos, he investigated the Vocaloid genre. Kikuo found that songs with more grotesque themes experienced greater success and transitioned to making darker pieces, himself.

Kikuo published his first Vocaloid song in 2010, followed by his 2011 debut studio album, "Kikuo Miku." In 2016, he performed alongside other acts at the Dwango sponsored "Smile Super Party" (Japanese: "ニコニコ超パーティー") in Saitama Super Arena in Saitama Prefecture, Japan. Kikuo's work gained popularity, even being featured in the Educational Arts Company high school textbook, "High School Music 1" (Japanese: 「高校生の音楽1」), as part of a section covering the Vocaloid genre. His song "Six Greetings" was referenced in the chapter's text along with a snippet of a lead sheet featuring lyrics and notes from the song. Kikuo was also featured in a documentary by the Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK) about Hatsune Miku. As of 2024, Kikuo has created over 1,000 songs and worked with various shows, film projects, games, and other media.

Production
Kikuo is very open about his music production, using a wide range of known and unknown instruments, effects, plugins, samples, and vocal synthesizers to create detailed compositions. Additionally, many of his songs feature unorthodox sounds, such as crushing fruit, wrenches and machinery, squeaks of toys and even sounds of childhood classrooms to enhance the settings of his songs. Unfamiliar with MIDI keys, he points and clicks with a computer mouse to create melodies. His production process has been recorded and highlighted as part of the 2012 "Miku Creator's Project" on Google+.

Japanese and Chinese software-voicebanks (collectively known as Vocaloids) provide the main vocals and ad-libs in most Kikuo songs. Via experimental audio manipulation and chopping, the vocals provided by Vocaloids can also be used instrumentally to create beats, a technique which has become a staple of Kikuo's work. Recurring Vocaloids used by Kikuo include the popular virtual idol, Hatsune Miku from Crypton Future Media, and Qi Xuan (Mandarin:绮萱) from Beijing TimeDomain Technology's ACE Virtual Singer (Mandarin: ACE虚拟歌姬). He has also made demo songs (see Demo Songs below) for various Vocaloids running on the Vocaloid3 engine, including Tone Rion (Japanese: 兎眠りおん), IA (Japanese: イア), and Anri Rune (Japanese: 杏梨ルネ). In addition to Vocaloids, Kikuo has also worked with traditional human voices as in the case of his lower-tempo, collaborative album "Kikuo feat. si_ku," where his friend and repeat album cover artist, "Kou Kiku Shikku" (Japanese: 黄菊しーく) or "si_ku," provided vocals.

Kikuo uses Studio One as his preferred DAW with VST plugins for instruments (VSTi) and effects (VSTfx). For VSTi, he is known to use Omnisphere, Kontakt, Massive, and Addictive Drums. For VSTfx he is known to use Fabfilter, Glitch Machines, Waves Signature Series, Ozone, and Komplete. Additionally, Kikuo acquires samples from Splice and Loopcloud, utilizing the software "Reference4" for acoustic corrections. His hardware preferences include the A7X Active Studio Monitor speaker from ADAM Audio in conjunction with Focal's Clear MG Pro headphones.

Themes
A common motif in Kikuo's most popular songs is that of the problem child and accompanying suffering. His use of upbeat and bright melodies, audio samples of toys, and lyrics about childhood experiences, accompanied by the youthful voices of the Vocaloids, often make the dark subject matter of his songs appear more twisted. The juxtaposition of vibrant sounds with dark lyrics have become a staple style of the Vocaloid genre. Such lyrics about childhood frustration could be influenced by the artist's childhood experiences with bullying in elementary school. Many Kikuo songs also explore dreams and themes of escape, often amplified by abstract harmonies and otherworldly lyrics.

The perspective of many of Kikuo's songs are from that of a child, whose innocence may leave interpretation of the lyrics up to the listener, much like in the case of an unreliable narrator.

Childhood Trauma
Examples of childhood trauma are found in songs throughout Kikuo's discography, but notably so in his most-streamed songs, highlighting the theme's popularity among the fandom. The lyrics of Kikuo's most streamed song, "Aishite Aishite Aishite/Love Me Love Me Love Me," for example, depict a toxic relationship between a child and some unseen character (presumably their parent). The child engages in people-pleasing behaviors in an attempt to earn affection, ultimately falling short of the unchanging expectations of their parent. For this reason, some listeners describe the song as depicting a subset of Dependent Personality Disorder (DPD) known as "good child syndrome," where a desperate child will do anything they can to please someone (usually their parents) in return for an often unrequited love. Similar themes are conveyed by Kikuo's third most streamed song, "Kimi wa Dekinai Ko/You are a Useless Child" (Japanese: 君はできない子), where a child struggles with feelings of worthlessness in the eyes of a verbally abusive parental figure. In this song, the parent degrades the child, calling them dirty, poor, and worthless in regards to their grades, fitness, and ability to speak. The lyrics hint at physical child abuse and self-harm in response to such criticisms, continuing to highlight the theme of struggle through commons parts of childhood.

Darker examples of childhood trauma are found in Kikuo's fourth most streamed song, "Gomene Gomene/I'm Sorry I'm Sorry" (Japanese: ごめんね ごめんね), a song which focuses on the sexual abuse, rape, and prostitution of a child by an adult. The lyrics (from the child's perspective) convey sorrow as she expresses guilt and apology to the abusers for her uneasy feelings during such situations. The song exemplifies the tendency of victims to blame themselves for their abuse, feeling as though they are the problem. The theme of the problem child is continued in "Mono o Parapara Kowasu/Breaking Things into Pieces" (Japanese: 物をぱらぱら壊す). The song describes a child who takes pleasure in the vandalism of personal belongings with attached memories and sentimental value. Some interpretations of the song label the child's behaviors as sadistic or as exhibitions of rage and attention seeking, while others attribute the destructive tendencies to innocent, child-like clumsiness or similarly, dojikko.

Escapism
Following the theme of trauma, many Kikuo songs delve into escapism or avenues to avoid pain and reality altogether. The lyrics of "Anagura-gurashi/Hole-Dwelling" (Japanese: あなぐらぐらし), for example, describe children at play in an inescapable and claustrophobic world of holes. Interpretations of the song attribute the suffocating feelings described in the song as representations of overbearing romantic partners, helicopter parents, or even the nature of Japanese work culture. The song could also be a description of Denpa, characters who are often disconnected from reality, and who seem strange to outside observers. Similarly, the song could be about hikikomori, a form of severe social withdrawal primarily recognized and criticized in Japan. Another popular example of escapism is approached by Kikuo's second most-streamed song, "Shikabane no Odori/Dance of the Corpses" (Japanese: しかばねの踊り). The song's lyrics describe a rhythmic dance of corpses, marching toward the underworld. The narrator finds the dance tempting, hinting at suicide ideation and self destructive behavior's in response to adversity and hardship. The innocent and childlike nature of Kikuo's songs allow the lyrics to be up to interpretation, though, much like in the case of an unreliable narrator. In the case of these two songs, the means of escapism addressed may simply be a play-pretend world and delusion or, more harshly, reclusion and death.

Asian Melancholic
Asian Melancholic is a Kikuo side project debuted in 2015. Compared to other projects, Asian Melancholic's work is eponymously more pensive and low-tempo, often instrumental with minor exceptions.

Manga
Kikuo created a ｍanga in 2014 called "I Want a Big Sister" (Japanese: 僕はお姉さんがほしい), available on the Japanese art site Pixiv.

Affiliated Works
In addition to the above works, Kikuo has also supported various media projects including games, TV shows, movies, promotional content for Yamaha's Vocaloids (see Demo Songs above), and musical productions by other artists. His roles across these projects encompass all the roles of a sound engineer including, lyricist, composer (writing and arranging), audio master, mixer, et al. Projects with minor/loose Kikuo involvement are listed below:


 * Ikitama - Musical group headed by "si_ku" (Kikuo's friend, collaborator, and main artist). Kikuo helped compose and master.
 * Kaikai Kitan/Ao no Waltz by Eve - String Arrangment alongside Nene Rio.
 * Love Death 555! (Japanese: らぶデス555!) - Composed main theme "Itsudoko!? Love☆Link de Go Go Go!!!" (Japanese: イツドコ！？らぶ☆リンクdeゴーゴーゴー!!!)
 * Touhou Project's 2012 game "東方蒼神縁起" - Composed much of soundtrack.
 * Chunithm New (2021 Sega Arcade Game) - Helped compose "Spider's Thread" on the OST.
 * Nagi Yanagi's Album "Memorandum" - Composed and Arranged "Surréalisme"
 * Nintendo's 2019 Collaborative Album with Daoko for Dragalia Lost: "DAOKO × Dragalia Lost" - Composed and Arranged three songs across two discs.

Tours and Events
Kikuo has made several appearances in Japan over the years. His first world tour, "Kikuoland-Go-Round," will occur between 2024 and 2025.