doriko featuring Hatsune Miku: 「unformed」
How do you go about appraising the talents of a vocal artist who technically doesn’t exist? I’m not sure if Shoji Kawamori expected the arrival of the Vocaloid software way back when he made Macross Plus but it was a neat bit of foresight in envisaging a future when it is possible to not only synthesise a singing voice, but a scenario in which the said technology becomes a music phenomenon on its own. Time will tell as to whether Hatsune Miku’s great-granddaughter will be gracing music stages in holographic form or otherwise, but as a music nerd the idea of creating a singing voice from scratch with little more than typing in the lyrics and melody is spine-tinglingly exciting. doriko is one such artist in that field who has left me, well, pretty impressed actually.
Unformed is a thirteen- (or fourteen-, in the case of the Limited Edition) track album comprised entirely of songs featuring the virtual idoru Hatsune Miku: needless to say the same cute girly Jpop style is present throughout the vocals in all the tracks on offer here, but I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to forget that her voice is a computer programme. Considering how most pop artists these days seem to fall back on pitch correctors and all manner of electro-magic in the studio to the point where even their voices are effectively digital, maybe I shouldn’t find this too surprising.
