* (restored)
My introduction to VOCALOID was through the eclectic Teen Witch zine’s coverage of “cyber idol” Hatsune Miku and her hologram concerts some years ago. VOCALOID consists of YAMAHA’s multitude of software of synthetic voicebanks and the accompanying character mascots depicted on box art and promotional material, fueling endless creativity by users of the software and inspiring the creation of fan art and animated videos.
The aquamarine, pigtailed Miku, “an android diva in the near-future world where songs are lost,” is undoubtedly the most famous VOCALOID and generally the only one that people outside of the community are aware of. However, there are more than 60 VOCALOIDs altogether, with language-specific voicebanks including Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Spanish, and English. Some VOCALOID voicebanks are provided by famous musicians and voice actors (such as jrock/pop idol Gackt for Gackpoid) while other voice providers have been left anonymous.
Since anyone with VOCALOID software can create songs using these voicebanks, there are thousands upon thousands of VOCALOID tracks in existence. Separating the wheat from the chaff is no easy matter. For your viewing and listening pleasure, I have curated a selection of eight music videos and tracks pertaining to the boys of VOCALOID and some of the more complex or bizarre themes I’ve come across in my travels, followed by some honorable mentions and further links. Most have been voiced by masculine providers to begin with though there are also a few surprises in store.
Kagamine Len – “Gigantic O.T.N.”
“Entering an unscrupulous terms of service, plaster me with “I love you’s” / Decide on my eight point love valigarmanda … Don’t come to hate this dreamy boy … Pick me up, I’m solid, absolute monarchy” (Lyrics)
Meshing traditional Japanese sounds with contemporary pop beats, “Gigantic O.T.N.” simultaneously extols the virtues of VOCALOID Len’s apparently big dick (the titular ochin) and unexpectedly equates Final Fantasy VI summoned monster bird Valigarmanda with strategic love maneuvers.
Luo Tianyi – “The B♥chy Idol”
“The price is labelled long ago / come possess me, at this second / The waist is twisting like a water snake…everything outside the camera can be thrown away” (Lyrics)
While this track is sung by Chinese VOCALOID Luo Tianyi — a feminine voicebank — the video depicts a genderswapped version of the character in a submissive but pushy, bratty role as an alluring but “poisonous” pop idol. Catchy and with lyrics dripping with opulence, this is my favorite of the bunch.
Oliver – “Amygdala’s Rag Doll”
“From the mouth of a cauterized rag doll / Supplications to leave him alone / From the mouth of the cauterized rag doll / Throw the nails away and leave him alone” (Lyrics)
A frantic, circus-like English VOCALOID track with themes connected to trypophobia (fear of holes) and the brain’s innermost fears manipulating consciousness like a puppeteer.
Steampianist / Oliver – Secrets of Wysteria
“Little children went astray / In the sunny soil beneath, / Wriggling worms in disarray. / Hear them laughing underneath.” (Lyrics)
Released in time for Halloween in 2014, the eerie, sing-song track with music box chimes is about American serial killer Albert Fish. From the VOCALOID Wiki: “The VSQX (VOCALOID sequence file) riddle was solved after by milkyflandre…an image of Albert Fish [was] hidden in the audio of the song.”
Oliver -“Gay Sex”
(Lyrics)
One of the more controversial VOCALOID tracks out there, “Gay Sex” comes off as a puerile joke with blatantly explicit lyrics and the utilization of OLIVER, whose voicebank was originally provided by a 13 year old British boy. According to the VOCALOID Wiki, however: “The author’s actual purpose for writing the song was not as a joke, but as a psychological experiment. They commented that this particular song has gotten more views, likes, and dislikes compared to their other songs which [weren’t] as explicit in content, stating that the results astonished them.”
Oliver – “超強烈快感嗡嗡嗡震動” (Ultimate Climax Buzzzzz Vibrate)
“When I am going out / I will never forget equip / Please take this controller / Playing me all around” (Lyrics)
An energetic eletro track all about remote-controlled vibrator-assisted orgasms on a night out. The music video features a prominent Greek letter theta (the “big O”?) swirling around along with the word “yes” and a strangely lengthy explanation of theta’s meanings at the end.
KAITO – “ネコミミアーカイブ” (Cat Ear Archive)
“A perfect tea time a virgin to toasting / A new page is being carved, even today I tear away the annoying prey / Come, do as you like / With these phantasmagoric cat-ear archives” (Lyrics)
VOCALOID KAITO appears here as a catboy (nekomimi) romping around a festively traditional Japanese enclosure replete with cat masks and hanging lanterns. KAITO’s nasally voice spouting off rapid-fire lyrics, his playful feline gestures, the multitude of outfit changes from teal kimono to shirtless and sporting regrettable plaid capris…all of these ingredients come together to create a so-bad-it’s-good, psychedelic nightmare effect.
VOCALOID momotaro and Kasane Ted – “脳漿炸裂ガール” (Spinal Fluid Explosion Girl)
“This absurdity would not go away. / I’m wearing my school swimsuit. / As I spew out vomit, maybe I need to defragment my wild fantasies. / Because I didn’t keep my eyes on the road, my face is now badly injured. / I don’t really care anyhow. I just want to eat some macarons.” (Lyrics)
Originally a Hatsune Miku and GUMI duet (“Spinal Fluid Explosion Girl”) in 2012 and the inspiration for a 2015 movie of the same name, this cover is performed by VOCALOID momotaro and UTAUloid Kasane Ted (UTAU being a freeware application similar to VOCALOID). The gross-out lyrics are interwoven with technology (“Google has made me realize how uninformed I actually am. / My ultra-thin Japanese smartphone’s contract will be up after 2 years.”) and sex (“apparently even the nonchalant asexual boys / will let themselves be loved by me”).
Honorable mentions:
Fukase – “気になるあいつは怪獣少年” (My Crush Was a Monster Boy)
“Having followed my crush, I witnessed his secret / The popsicle thrown into the air, it was devoured by a giant maw;” (Lyrics)
Oliver – “Superficial Addiction”
“Soon your names will be splattered on the papers / Next time it could be twice as much” (Lyrics)
DEX – “EAT”
“MY FUTURE SEEMS SO TOXIC / I CANNOT STOP EATING” (Lyrics)
Len – “重い木箱” (Heavy Wooden Box)
“They put me in a casket right in front of my eyes / The box was dragged, burnt and is becoming smoke” (Lyrics)
GUMO – Bad Apple!!
(The pitch-shifted, ‘masculinized’ version of GUMI is known by fans as GUMIYA or GUMO)
“Ever on and on, I continue circling / With nothing but my hate in a carousel of agony” (Lyrics)
Further exploration:
Rate Your Music Ultimate Box Set > Vocaloid
VOCALOID Wiki: Masculine vocalists
MikuMiku Dance – Boy Tracks and Animations
Project DIVA – Boy Tracks and Animations
*
p.s. Hey. Know that I am working to get the problem causing Cloudflare verification thing removed. It’s strangely difficult. But I am on it and determined to get rid of it, possibly/ hopefully as soon as later today. I’m very sorry for the trouble. ** James Bennett, Hi. Hm, okay, interesting. Thanks. If they pop up over here, I’ll proceed with a certain amount of caution. I’m ok, you too I hope. ** jay, Thanks for the fill-in about the city itself. I’m imagining it being haunting, which it probably isn’t, and I’m imagining sneaking into those awful mansions and exploring, which is easier dreamed than done, I imagine. I didn’t know about Miike’s mini-series, huh, I’ll investigate. Oh, shit: your bank account thing. They won’t … reimburse you? Money problems are a horror. No, I actually was trying hard to keep the ‘TMS’ voice from becoming too Sadeian, just dense and multi-faceted and overly fancy, but everyone makes that comparison, so I obviously failed. So, no, the opposite, I guess. Happiest day! ** _Black_Acrylic, Hey. Dude, that was one trippy PT episode you built there, Mr. Robinson. I loved it. Great opening run. Nice to hear a Vatican Shadow track I didn’t know. If my calculations are correct, that bad LSD trips track certainly lived up to its name. Pretty amazing, The whole wild, discombobulating last stretch of the show was stellar. Yeah, great one, sir. Big thanks from the peanut gallery. ** Charalampos, Hi. I liked that Capote back when too, but it seems a little overly precious to me now. A fellow ‘Counterfeiters’ veteran. We should form a club or something. Love back from very, very rainy Paris. ** HaRpEr in Blogland, Ah, shit, sorry. When I had to move here across Paris some years ago, it was extremely difficult and took forever, so I feel your stress. I really hope something comes up as soon as possible. Is it a total given that your emotions go wild when you start hormones? It must quite a big task for the body, yeah. Maybe what you’re going through and what the hormones will make you go through will kind of cancel or balance each other out? I’m probably reaching there, I’m sorry. That’s very true about the weight of the premise of the great American novel and that American idea that such a novel should be one’s goal. Plus back then there was still the unspoken but overriding idea/vibe that straight white guys were the designated literature advancers and masters. So there was that weird pressure too. You saw that start to fall apart with Gaddis and Metcalf and Burroughs and a few other language foragers. But, yeah, that’s a huge factor in that era of American experimental fiction. I think when Barth’s good though, he’s really very good. ** Jacob, Howdy. Uh, I don’t remember how exactly I came to Blanchot. I think ‘Death Sentence’ was first published in the US whenever that was, in the early 80s, I guess, and I was reading every French experimental novel I could get my hands on, and I bought it, and the reverence re: his work in general followed. Here it’s pounding rain and almost wintery. Strange, but I’m very digging it. Lego’s cool. I used to be a K’nex snob, but that wore off. I don’t now why scale models are so riveting. Some vestige of childhood interest in things that can fit in your hands merging with an adult interest in structure maybe? Salo: I just don’t think the kinds of unspeakable, ‘shocking’ things Salo attempts to depict work complicatedly enough when they’re visually faked/acted out as they do when they’re depicted in the neutral, insinuating form of language where the reader has to build the act on their own to whatever specifications their fears or fetishes or whatever need in order to seem or feel ‘real’. So to me ‘Salo’ is just kind of a horror movie with intellectual intentions or something. Visualising the sadism offers protection to the viewer by making it easy to reject something that they themselves didn’t create. Or something. Anyway, interesting, thanks! Luck with everything. ** Okay. Today I brought back this very charming (I think) old post from the past originally made for the blog by the artist Marilyn Roxie. Dig in? See you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 
*
Oh, I’m a huge Miku fan, but I’ve never seen this kind of stuff before, thanks for sharing it! What a strange phenomenon, I suppose I’d never really considered gay vocaloid fans. I think I’m almost a bit more fascinated by v-tubers, I don’t know if that’s a rabbithole you’ve fallen down.
Mmm, I am gonna try and get reimbursed, but UK banks are super super stingy at the moment. The mansions here are pretty amazing too, I’ve been to one or two parties in them, and they’re all like spectacularly ugly, in a super expensive way. Like, they look like the houses that’d be victims in home invasion films. If that somehow makes sense.
The Miike series is great, btw! It’s called MPD Psycho, it’s pretty terrible narratively (the core conceit is a man with two personalities, one of which is a serial killer, and the other one of which is a detective), but the visuals are totally incredible. The manga’s pretty bizarre too, there are tons of lovely rendered panels of like, dismembered and half eaten naked women. It’s obviously sort of vile, but I can’t help but be a little fascinated by it.
Oh no, I didn’t mean TMS was de Sadeian. It felt super different, de Sade really goes in for “fuck, prick, ass”, and far more open prose in a way your narrator really doesn’t. I guess I just was asking if you wrote your protagonist as a kind of character in a de Sade novel / de Sade reader’s fantasy. I sort of felt that he was part of a de Sadeian game, played by his father et al, and was able to escape by passing as a libertine, despite not fully understanding the system he inhabited. But yeah, idk, I think a lot of people will call any old-timey sexual prose de Sadeian. Anyway, see ya!
Morning D! i’m gonna dig into these tasty morsels a little later, they look very appealing. it’s gonna be really hot here today, 27 degrees, it’s been raining and about 20 for a week so it’s a little weird. i miss the rain already. thank you for the pdf offer, that’s so kind, but i really want to read it in its physical form. reading stuff on a screen is so different for me, and i don’t enjoy it much. how’s the ear today? i have a really sore throat today so i think i have to cancel some stuff and try to chill as much as possible. this post-sickness period of tiredness and sore-throatyness is the most tedious. trying to just accept it. i also did something weird with my back last week at work, my lower back really hurts, and it got better first and now it’s worse, so i’m gonna try to find a physical therapist today. tediousness abounds:;((
i did make a miniature playpen day before yesterday. i made a regular one earlier, and now i made one with a roof, or like with planks shutting off the top. turned out pretty cute. yesterday i had my french course which was nice. trying to remember what i learned. when someone sneezes, you say ‘santé,’ is that accurate? i know it also means cheers. like when you clink glasses, not the british cheers. we listened to a song by christophe mae, know him? it wasn’t good. and one by joe dassin which was. i learned théiere means teapot. and to speak a little in the past tense. that’s what i can recall. then i went to a ceramics workshop and started to make what’s gonna be a lamp-body in the shape-ish of a pyramid-ish. then i met a friend for coffee, went to the grocery store. came home, talked to another friend on the phone, ate cookies and frozen pizza. went to bed early. how about you? give me the juicy or dry deets.
what does doing the last minor special effects on the film entail exactly, if i can ask? when the film’s done and out and making the rounds maybe we can get it here with you guys. i think mike sperlinger, my old teacher you met, is still at the cinematheque here and if so has some strings to pull. bonne journee xxx
oh and my two cents on the hormones thing; i didn’t notice any mood swings at all, i think it’s not uncommon to not have any effects of that nature, although of course many do.
Oh thanks, that’s interesting to know. My moods are pretty unpredictable anyway and people around me have been joking about if they’ll even be able to tell haha. I’m sure a lot of it depends on someone’s personality as well as what dose they are on. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of the emotional stuff is because it’s kind of inherently an emotional thing to start HRT and it’s difficult to tell what’s caused by the hormones and what isn’t.
@ Marilyn, thank you for this intro to the VOCALOID form. it’s not a genre that I had any prior awareness of, so it makes for an initiation on my part. Just going by first listen, I’m very much into Oliver – Ultimate Climax Buzzzzz Vibrate here.
We used to have a TV show here in the UK called Top of the Pops. Every week the nation would watch a rundown of the week’s chart. Occasionally something weird (like KLF in 1991 here) would pop up at and this would be excitedly discussed in playgrounds across the country. Would be nice to think that VOCALOID could invade our living rooms in just such a fashion.
i used to be a vocaloid — well utauloid — producer in a previous life, though i wiped that part so hard that i think the only places you can find any traces are like ten year old dead links,. so it is p fun seeing all of this stuff again, makes me reconsider it. i even saw my singer of choice here — GUMIYA / GUMO. something something it’s a sign something.
miike discussion made me rewatch my favorite movie by him, AGITATOR. his three hours long yakuza anti-epic. it is probably of minor interest to people who are into for his extreme stuff — even saying that as it has a scene of miike doing a personal cameo where he sticks a microphone up a girl’s ass in the first part — but damn, miike really knows how to do a dense crime saga like no other.
also, it’s on youtube — as an assemblage of the ‘international’ cut and the vhs cut, a longer version of it meant for rental market, but i genuinelly think the vhs scenes are pretty essential… even if it makes a two hour and twenty minute long movie into a three hour long one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoKNa5raSvQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwvjYHnbwao
sickness is mostly weening, so i should be back to focus on my attention on reading, watching, etc. fevers always love to take me out for no reason.
that should be all. not sure if i got anything else to add. we’ll see.
Oh, I’m actually more of a Miike yakuza film fan, weirdly. I do like his horror stuff, but I think his crime films are so much more fun, in a weird way. I think he did a really great one that was tangentially related to a videogame, or like a really really loose adaptation, that I remember absolutely loving, I think it was “Like a Dragon”. But yeah, I actually don’t think his horror / yakuza films are that disparate, I think he sort of drew the two sides of his work together with Ichi. I don’t know, I suppose all of his stuff is about masks, and public and private selves, which are obviously kind of central to a lot of mafia film, but also his social horror like Audition. Anyway, I haven’t actually seen Agitator, so I’ll give that a watch!
hi! sorry for disappearing for two days again, it’s just been much of the same, although things are looking a little better right now, perhaps. how about you? how are things? I’m sorry that the meeting you had the other day wasn’t as great as it could have been, ugh. I hope you’re well on your way to fix stuff now. before ‘ada or ardor’ (which I started today and am loving already), I read the entirety of ‘go tell it on the mountain’ because a friend was also reading it—and to be honest I appreciated it but it wasn’t super revelatory for me or anything. I don’t know. I’ve read 3 of Baldwin’s novels by now and while I do really like them and think he was an incredible person his fiction just really isn’t in the realm of things I’m interested in or really want to pursue personally, at least I don’t think. on that note, I have started writing again a little. hoping I continue on like this at least throughout the weekend and I hope you have a great one too. here’s some friends I’ve made recently. https://imgur.com/a/JLV56K9
Hi. I’m feeling better about things today. As I said, it’s just a matter of time, my fear is that I will never find anywhere. That’s unlikely, yes, and very Kafkaesque, but it does worry me. Anyway, I’m taking a new approach. I’m searching for flatmates instead of rooms to see if I can find some cool people to find a place with.
And I had my first hormone dose. It’s a gel that comes in pouches that you rub into your legs and abdomen. I think it’s only after about a week or more that the emotional changes start to pop up. I should add that the emotional changes are apparently different for everyone. Some people feel very euphoric and happy, others will have crazy mood swings, and some people will start crying more than they normally would.
The only possible initial effect is that I feel kind of hot and cold at the same time, but it could just be the weather. I’ll have to see if it continues. I do suddenly feel more hopeful, and it feels surreal because I’ve been waiting so long for this and it’s suddenly happening during an unfortunately shitty moment.
Yeah, a lot of American postmodern writers were super macho and made a concerted effort to make literature masculine, and wanted to remove the notion that there was something effeminate about writing. It’s funny, because employing an ‘androgynous voice’ was a big thing in Modernism. The great American novel is a trope at this point: a book that’s romantic, long, probably touches on the author’s childhood in some way, has a protagonist go from poverty to riches and back again. I don’t know why a writer would want to say ‘I’m a writer, but before that I’m an American’. I guess America is probably the only country where the concept of a great _ novel exists. I don’t know, it feels like an impossible task to write something that everyone can come together and celebrate. I think all of my favourite books are books that people say ‘you either love it or hate it’ about.
Ahhhh, sorry to hear (sorry!) about your ear!! I’m sending you a whole bunch of cotton buds just in case you need them, but the catch is that the box is rigged with a very finely-tuned projectile system that means that when you open it up all of the cotton buds are launched into the air and when they eventually land they’ll spell out “hey, Dennis!” or at least something close to that.
Several days late replying to this but actually didn’t smoke at all in Amsterdam! Birthday was great, though. Got kinda drunk on a tour boat, took a really long walk and had a really good hotdog somewhere. Currently back in Glasgow where it’s… [drumroll] raining!
Oliver was such an odd choice for Vocaloid. Some of the songs are great — but, yeah, he’s pretty limited, which I guess is sort of related to the point that ‘Gay Sex’ is making. Also ‘Cat Ear Archive’ got me thinking, has your slave/escort research shown a bit of a catboy boom in the last few years? Or have they always been consistent? I feel like they’re everywhere lately.