Kenichi Ito

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Kenichi Ito (伊藤賢一 Itō Ken'ichi) was born in Saitama, Japan on November 20th, 1971.

Kenichi's name indicates intelligence in Japanese - the character for "Ken" means intelligent - but Kenichi would prove to be the opposite of all this, becoming a bad student who eventually left high school early. At age 15 Kenichi began a real music life, playing the saxophone in a high school band and first picking up a guitar at age 18, thanks to the inspiration of the Rolling Stones (and other bands popular in the West that he loves to this day). He never went to college.

Kenichi's career really began right around when he sent his first audition tape to Sony/EPIC Records. He was selected out of many others to be the guitarist for Daisuke Asakura's new unit, Iceman. He excelled beyond the other auditions because he could sing 'on his own.' The guitar sounds in Iceman were unique as the guitar's amplifier was plugged directly into a computer, giving Kenichi a lot more flexibility in manipulating the sounds of the performance and recordings.

Kenichi also worked with Daisuke Asakura, with whom Kenichi is the best of friends with, in Mad Soldiers. He was also the guitarist (with singer D.K) in the band The Seeker, and it appeared as K.Ito + DK in the credits to the anime Gravitation. In fact most fans hear their song "Sleepless Beauty" and mistake it for an Iceman song. In addition, he's done work with Pool Bit Boys, Yuki Kimura, T.M.Revolution, and more. His solo career is also going well with singles, yearly concerts, and other events. He announced a hiatus from everything in early 2004. He used said hiatus to work on a new project, Sound EXtreme X(SEXX), which produced the band Endorpin-Machine. Kenichi is continuing solo activity as well.

He fancies himself an artist and voice actor, drawing characters he calls moyashi, or bean sprouts as foreign fans know them; and designing guitars, making CD dramas and telling drama stories at events using his many different voices. He loves aliens, smoking, beer, suits, his pets, being otaku (reading manga/watching anime,) and being weird.

In early September 2006 it was announced that Kenichi (guitar) will be reuniting with former band member Michihiro Kuroda (vocals,)(who was in Iceman with him) Masanori Ishibashi (bass,) and Hideki Mizue (drums) in the band Scarecrow. Together in that band they have released two singles, one album and a DVD.

[edit] Trivia

Kenichi has two rabbits, Chibi and Usa, and one dog named Iggy.
His real hair and eye color are black
His vision is actually really horrible and he always has to wear contacts.
On most of the Gravitation and Kinya songs you can hear Kenichi doing the backup vocals.