''Fun 9'' is the fourth

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 July 7, 1999 by Polystar. The album was released on November 16, 1999 in the United States 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 ...

. The album's title is pronounced "fun-kyū", the latter half of the title referring to the Japanese equivalent of the numeral 9, and is intended to sound similar to the word "

funk Funk is a music genre that originated in African American communities in the mid-1960s when musicians created a rhythmic, danceable new form of music through a mixture of various music genres that were popular among African Americans in the m ...

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 ...

wrote that Minekawa had produced a "more eclectic and polished" record while retaining her "playful musical vision", " ashioninga wide array of lush, lighthearted songs into an album that is as self-assured as it is fun". ''

Drowned in Sound ''Drowned in Sound'', sometimes abbreviated to ''DiS'', is a UK-based music webzine financed by artist management company Silentway. Founded by editor Sean Adams, the site features reviews, news, interviews, and discussion forums. History ''D ...

'' writer Samuel Rosean cited ''Fun 9'' as a key

Shibuya-kei is a microgenre of pop music or a general aesthetic that flourished in Japan in the mid-to late 1990s. The music genre is distinguished by a "cut-and-paste" approach that was inspired by the kitsch, fusion, and artifice from certain music style ...

release in a 2018 retrospective article. ''

Tokyo Weekender ''Tokyo Weekender'' magazine is the oldest English publication in Japan. Founded in 1970 by Corky Alexander and Susan Scully, ''Tokyo Weekender'' was first published bi-monthly. Now ''Tokyo Weekender'' is published monthly and is distributed in ...

''s Ed Cunningham recommended ''Fun 9'' to fans of Cornelius' album '' Fantasma'' (1997).

Track listing

Personnel

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

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 ...

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 ...

* Craig Borrell –

analog synthesizer An analog (or analogue) synthesizer is a synthesizer that uses analog circuits and analog signals to generate sound electronically. The earliest analog synthesizers in the 1920s and 1930s, such as the Trautonium, were built with a variety of ...

, MTI Auto-Orchestra synthesizer, trumpet, turntables, vocals, backing vocals * Michiko Endo – additional vocals on "Flow in a Tide", acoustic guitar on "Soft Graffiti" * Ross Harris – analog synthesizer, bass,

Boss SP-303 The Boss Dr. Sample SP-303 is a discontinued digital sampler from Boss, successor of the Boss SP-202 Dr. Sample. The SP-303 was revamped and redesigned in 2005, and released as the SP-404, by Roland Corporation. Features While the Dr. Sample S ...

sampler, drum machine, guitar, turntables * Toyoaki Misha – sound manipulation *

Keigo Oyamada , also known by his moniker , is a Japanese musician and producer who co-founded Flipper's Guitar, an influential Shibuya-kei band, and subsequently embarked on a solo career. In 1997, he released the album '' Fantasma'', which landed him prai ...

– acoustic guitar, bass, drums, guitar, Stylophone keyboard, turntables * Takahiro Unno – French horn on "Spin Spider Spin" 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 ...

* DJ Me DJ You – production * Tadashi Matsuda – mixing,

recording A record, recording or records may refer to: An item or collection of data Computing * Record (computer science), a data structure ** Record, or row (database), a set of fields in a database related to one entity ** Boot sector or boot record, ...

* Michifumi Onodera – mixing * Keigo Oyamada – production * Tohru Takayama – mixing

References

External links

* 1999 albums Takako Minekawa albums Emperor Norton Records albums {{Japan-album-stub