''Cloudy Cloud Calculator'' is the third

studio album An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as Digital distribution#Music, digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early ...

by Japanese musician

Takako Minekawa is a Japanese musician, singer, songwriter and writer. Career In her childhood, Minekawa acted in film and television. Minekawa's first musical venture was playing in Lolita, a band she formed with several college friends. Afterwards, she perf ...

. It was released on December 10, 1997 by Polystar. The album was released in the United States on November 17, 1998 by

Emperor Norton Records Emperor Norton Records was a Los Angeles-based electronica, hip-hop, and dance-music record label. Among the artists featured on the label were Ladytron, Arling & Cameron, Money Mark, Ugly Duckling, and Fantastic Plastic Machine. Additional ...

. Minekawa played almost every instrument on the album and wrote, produced and arranged nearly all its songs. Minekawa toured in the United States to support the album. The EP ''Ximer... C.C.C. Remix'', released on September 23, 1998 by Polystar, features remixes of tracks from ''Cloudy Cloud Calculator'' by various artists.

Critical reception

Heather Phares of

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...

described ''Cloudy Cloud Calculator'' as one of Minekawa's "finest and most unusual moments" and "highly inventive, restrained pop". Christian Bruno, writing in ''

Metro Metro, short for metropolitan, may refer to: Geography * Metro (city), a city in Indonesia * A metropolitan area, the populated region including and surrounding an urban center Public transport * Rapid transit, a passenger railway in an urba ...

'', referred to the album's songs as "wonderfully cute, all-synthesizer musings".

Track listing

Personnel

Credits are adapted from the album's liner notes. Musicians * Takako Minekawa – vocals, acoustic guitar, bass, drums, electric guitar,

electronic drum Electronic drums is a modern electronic musical instrument, primarily designed to serve as an alternative to an acoustic drum kit. Electronic drums consist of an electronic sound module which produces the synthesized or sampled percussion sounds ...

s (Yamaha DD-7,

E-mu SP-1200 The E-mu SP-1200 is a sampler created by Dave Rossum that was released in August 1987 by E-mu Systems. Like the product it was meant to replace, the SP-12, the SP-1200's intended use was as a drum machine and sequencer for dance music producer ...

güiro The güiro () is a Puerto Rican percussion instrument consisting of an open-ended, hollow gourd with parallel notches cut in one side. It is played by rubbing a stick or tines (see photo) along the notches to produce a ratchet sound. The güiro ...

, recorder,

synthesizer A synthesizer (also spelled synthesiser) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and ...

(Boss SYB-3, Casio SA-1, Casio VA-10,

Minimoog Voyager The Minimoog Voyager or Voyager is a monophonic analog synthesizer, designed by Robert Moog and released in 2002 by Moog Music. The Voyager was modeled after the classic Minimoog synthesizer that was popular in the 1970s, and is meant to be a s ...

Moog Prodigy The Moog Prodigy was a monophonic analogue synthesizer produced by Moog Music from 1979 to 1984. Of the 11,000 produced, versions released after 1981 included a control voltage/gate input on the back that allowed the VCF to be triggered and cont ...

, Roland CR-5000,

Six-Trak The Six-Trak was an analogue synthesizer manufactured by Sequential Circuits in San Jose, California and released in January 1984. It is notable for being one of the first multi-timbral synthesizers, equipped with MIDI and an on-board six-trac ...

vocoder A vocoder (, a portmanteau of ''voice'' and ''encoder'') is a category of speech coding that analyzes and synthesizes the human voice signal for audio data compression, multiplexing, voice encryption or voice transformation. The vocoder was ...

arrangement In music, an arrangement is a musical adaptation of an existing composition. Differences from the original composition may include reharmonization, melodic paraphrasing, orchestration, or formal development. Arranging differs from orches ...

* Yuko Aiso – violin * Yumiko Ohno – bass, maracas, synthesizer (

Minimoog The Minimoog is an analog synthesizer first manufactured by Moog Music between 1970 and 1981. Designed as a more affordable, portable version of the modular Moog synthesizer, it was the first synthesizer sold in retail stores. It was first popul ...

theremin The theremin (; originally known as the ætherphone/etherphone, thereminophone or termenvox/thereminvox) is an electronic musical instrument controlled without physical contact by the performer (who is known as a thereminist). It is named afte ...

* Atsushi Tsuyama – drums * Mooog Yamamoto –

turntables A phonograph, in its later forms also called a gramophone (as a trademark since 1887, as a generic name in the UK since 1910) or since the 1940s called a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogu ...

, "bird call" *

Seiichi Yamamoto is a Japanese musician. While perhaps most famous for his role as guitarist for the noise rock band Boredoms, he has released multitudes of records both as a solo artist and with several other musicians and bands, in addition to composing the so ...

– acoustic guitar, electric bass, electric guitar, electronic drums, synthesizer (

Roland JP-8000 The Roland JP-8000 is an analog modeling synthesizer released by the Roland Corporation in 1996. Overview The Roland JP-8000 was released in early 1997 as part of the first wave of virtual analog modeling synthesizers (VA synths). Others from ...

), arrangement * Masaaki Yoshida – synthesizer * Sugar Yoshinaga – arrangement Production * Takako Minekawa –

production Production may refer to: Economics and business * Production (economics) * Production, the act of manufacturing goods * Production, in the outline of industrial organization, the act of making products (goods and services) * Production as a stati ...

* Tetsuya Kotani –

engineering Engineering is the use of scientific method, scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad rang ...

* Masao Nakazato – mastering * Seiichi Yamamoto – mixing, production * Sugar Yoshinaga – production Design * Sheila Sachs – design * Chikashi Suzuki – photography * Mariko Yamamoto –

art direction Art director is the title for a variety of similar job functions in theater, advertising, marketing, publishing, fashion, film and television, the Internet, and video games. It is the charge of a sole art director to supervise and unify the visi ...

, design * Mooog Yamamoto – art direction, design

References

External links

* {{Authority control 1997 albums Takako Minekawa albums Emperor Norton Records albums