Hideki's bio

Hideki was once the vocalist for the insanely talented Siam Shade and he also shared the role of vocalist of ACID with Junpei for a short period of time.

His solo music ranges from sweet ballads and love songs to the punk-rock and hard rock sounds he was known for in his previous bands.

Hideki is very kind and sweet person, albeit a bit goofy sometimes, and he puts his whole heart into everything he does. In addition to being a magnificient singer, he's also an activist for many causes like helping children and AIDS prevention.

Hideki was born on January 29th, 1972 in Setagaya, Tokyo. In March of 1991, he and a high school friend, bassist Natin decided to create a band. At this time, Hideki went by the name Chack.

It took a few years for the band lineup to get fully established but in 1994, after the arrival of drummer Junji, Siam Shade was set to take on the music world. The band released their first album, which was self-titled. It stayed on the Oricon charts for many weeks. Siam Shade gained fans very quickly and it wasn't long afterwards that the band became major. After the release of their Siam Shade III album in October 1996, Chack changed his name to Hideki, his real name, and has kept it ever since.

The years went by and Siam Shade kept themselves busy with many releases and sold out tours. As Hideki is a big fan of helping various causes, the band created the Siam Shade Romania Charity and the proceeds went to help children in Romania. Then, Hideki and the band made history as they were the first Japanese rock band to play a live in Korea at the Pusan International Rock Festival in 2000. Before the event, the Japanese language was prohibited in Korea though the band had released one of their albums there completely in English.

At what fans of the band consider the ultimate, end-all live performance of the band, Siam Shade held a nearly three hour long live called Legend of Sanctuary in December 2001. Little did their fans know that this live would later become a special memorial event as the band annouced the following month that they would disband. Their final live, Start and Stand up, occurred on March 11th and emotions ran high with the band as well as their fans and by the end of the live, there wasn't a dry eye in the place.

Not even a month after this, Hideki opened his official site and in the following months, he worked extra hard for the charity that's name was changed to the Hideki Romania Charity. In December, he teamed up with his friends Koji (La'cryma Christi), Kuroyanagi Yoshio (Sophia) and "Joe" Miyawaki (Ziggy), as well as other bands and artists, at an event that's proceeds went to AIDS prevention.

Back tracking for a moment, Hideki opened his official fanclub, CLOSE MY FRIEND in April and he promised that he would be releasing solo material very soon. Fortunately, Hideki's fans didn't have to wait very long as his first solo album, Punk Drunker, was released in September. They were somewhat suprised since his style had changed a bit from his days with Siam Shade. On some songs, he showed a softer facet of his vocal ability, but his underlying strength and power still remained. The album featured a few ballads and even some songs that were similar to his former band's. With the release of his second album in spring of 2003, Hideki continued to amaze everyone with his mix of hard rock'n' roll songs and heartfelt ballads. The album also contains one of the absolute fan favourites: Rain Knell.

The next month, he held his first solo live and because it was so successful, a second followed. However, Hideki shocked his fans with his announcement in July that he would be ending his solo career. The reason for this was that he intended to create a new band called ACID and that they would be debuting the next month. ACID was a rare treat as many bands today do not have such a diverse mix of members not to mention twin vocals nor three guitarists. At first, they played many hard rock songs and relied heavily on Hideki's influence. During lives, they played many of his solo songs and at the end of 2004, they headed into the studio to record their first album. After the album was released in the following March, Hideki decided to focus solo on keyboarding. He also wanted ACID to be known for their own merits instead of being "Hideki ex Siam Shade's new band." Hideki felt completely confident in the member's abilities and left the band in June. He's stated that this band was his pride and he'd like to see them play in Tokyo Dome one day.

Hideki thus restarted his solo career and he's had many famous fellow musicians support him. For example, his Toki ga Owaru made tada... album was produced by Masahide Sakuma and he's also worked with Toshimitsu Nagai (GLAY's support drummer) and Hitoki (ex Kuroyume) among others. The aforementioned album featured the song Senou Hantai which showed a different side of Hideki. We got to hear the punk-rock side he had long been hiding and the members of ACID joined in on the chorus. He said that the song was written during the days of the Gulf War and since he was unable to stop it or do battle with the tanks, he wrote the song with "the hope that we could shout this song together in live houses and that things could be changed." He's also planning to release his first two solo albums internationally.

Since then, Hideki had been releasing what he called Gekkan Hideki, or in other words "Monthly Hideki," which consists of a single and a magazine. The releases are extremely popular and you can always tell that he's having fun experimenting with new styles and seeing how far he can push boundaries. Hideki is, as he said of himself, very spontaneous and crazy, so we'll never know what he'll come up with next. close