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 performed under the alias Mamene Kirerie in the duo Fancy Face Groovy Name with

Kahimi Karie , better known by her stage name , is a Japanese singer, songwriter and photographer. Her music is closely associated with the Shibuya-kei aesthetic. Karie sings in English, French and Japanese, among other languages. Karie began her music caree ...

, backed by

Flipper's Guitar Flipper's Guitar (フリッパーズ・ギター) were a Tokyo-based rock band led by (and later a duo of) Keigo Oyamada and Kenji Ozawa. The band were influenced by the chirpy sound of British 80s pop and post-punk groups like Haircut 100, Exhib ...

, and under her own name in the band L⇔R. Minekawa debuted as a solo performer in 1995 with the release of her first album ''

Chat Chat ''Chat Chat'' is the debut studio album by Japanese musician Takako Minekawa, released on June 25, 1995 by Polystar. Track listing Personnel Credits are adapted from the album's liner notes. Musicians * Takako Minekawa – vocals, guitar, ...

'' by the Japanese label Polystar, followed later in the year by the EP '' (A Little Touch Of) Baroque in Winter''. With her second studio album, '' Roomic Cube'' (1996), Minekawa began pursuing a more refined musical style rooted in influences from

bossa nova Bossa nova () is a style of samba developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It is mainly characterized by a "different beat" that altered the harmonies with the introduction of unconventional chords and an innovativ ...

French pop music French pop music is pop music sung in the French language. It is usually performed by singers from France, Canada, Belgium, Switzerland, or any of the other francophone areas of the world. The target audience is the francophone market (primaril ...

and experimental

electronic music Electronic music is a genre of music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments, or circuitry-based music technology in its creation. It includes both music made using electronic and electromechanical means ( electroac ...

. It increased her popularity in Japan, while also crossing over to listeners in North America, where it received airplay on

college radio Campus radio (also known as college radio, university radio or student radio) is a type of radio station that is run by the students of a college, university or other educational institution. Programming may be exclusively created or produced ...

stations. She released her third studio album '' Cloudy Cloud Calculator'' in 1997. The EPs ''Recubed'' and ''Ximer... C.C.C. Remix'', consisting of remixes of tracks from ''Roomic Cube'' and ''Cloudy Cloud Calculator'' respectively, were released in 1998. 1999 saw the release of Minekawa's fourth studio album '' Fun 9'', which featured prominent contributions from her then-partner Cornelius. In 2000, Minekawa released the EP '' Maxi On'', a collaboration with American

experimental pop Experimental pop is pop music that cannot be categorized within traditional musical boundaries or which attempts to push elements of existing popular forms into new areas. It may incorporate experimental techniques such as musique concrète, al ...

band Dymaxion, after which she took an extended break from her musical career. After a 13-year hiatus, Minekawa recorded a new album, ''Toropical Circle'', with collaborator

Dustin Wong Dustin Wong is an American guitarist formerly active in the art-rock band Ponytail and a former member of the experimental guitar duo, Ecstatic Sunshine (along with Matthew Papich). Biography Wong's style is characterized by influences of surf ...

, which was released in 2013. Minekawa and Wong released two subsequent collaborative albums, ''Savage Imagination'' (2014) and ''Are Euphoria'' (2017). The duo also collaborated with American

experimental music Experimental music is a general label for any music or music genre that pushes existing boundaries and genre definitions. Experimental compositional practice is defined broadly by exploratory sensibilities radically opposed to, and questioning of, ...

band Good Willsmith on the album ''Exit Future Heart'', recorded in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

and released in 2018.

Musical style and influences

Minekawa's musical skills set her firmly outside of the

J-pop J-pop ( ja, ジェイポップ, ''jeipoppu''; often stylized as J-POP; an abbreviated form of "Japanese popular music"), natively also known simply as , is the name for a form of popular music that entered the musical mainstream of Japan in the 1 ...

idol Idol or Idols may refer to: Religion and philosophy * Cult image, a neutral term for a man-made object that is worshipped or venerated for the deity, spirit or demon that it embodies or represents * Murti, a point of focus for devotion or medit ...

" tradition: she writes and composes most of her material, singing about subjects such as clouds, cats, and the colour white (her personal favourite), with her love of

Kraftwerk Kraftwerk (, "power station") is a German band formed in Düsseldorf in 1970 by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider. Widely considered innovators and pioneers of electronic music, Kraftwerk were among the first successful acts to popularize the ...

and

also showing through her unique experimental sound. She often makes use of vintage

Casio is a Japanese multinational electronics manufacturing corporation headquartered in Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan. Its products include calculators, mobile phones, digital cameras, electronic musical instruments, and analogue and digital watches. It ...

keyboards and analog

Moog synthesizer The Moog synthesizer is a modular synthesizer developed by the American engineer Robert Moog. Moog debuted it in 1964, and Moog's company R. A. Moog Co. (later known as Moog Music) produced numerous models from 1965 to 1981, and again from 20 ...

s, as well as

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 ...

s and other

electronic instruments An electronic musical instrument or electrophone is a musical instrument that produces sound using electronics, electronic circuitry. Such an instrument sounds by outputting an electrical, electronic or digital audio signal that ultimately is pl ...

. Minekawa's musical influences are varied. An avowed fan of French pop, some of her favourite French artists include

Françoise Hardy Françoise Madeleine Hardy (; born 17 January 1944) is a French former singer and songwriter. Mainly known for singing melancholic sentimental ballads, Hardy has been an important figure in French pop music since her debut, spanning a career of ...

and

Pierre Bachelet Pierre Bachelet (25 May 1944 – 15 February 2005) was a French singer-songwriter and film score composer. He was also known as Andrew Bascon. He died of lung cancer in 2005. Personal life Pierre Bachelet was born on 25 May 1944 in the 12th ...

. The influence of the British band

Stereolab Stereolab are an Anglo- French avant-pop band formed in London in 1990. Led by the songwriting team of Tim Gane and Lætitia Sadier, the group's music combines influences from krautrock, lounge and 1960s pop music, often incorporating a repetit ...

can also be heard in her music. While there are certainly touches of humour in her lyrics and tone, she is a sincere fan of

Krautrock Krautrock (also called , German for ) is a broad genre of experimental rock Experimental rock, also called avant-rock, is a subgenre of rock music that pushes the boundaries of common composition and performance technique or which experiments ...

, particularly the earlier works of

pioneers

, to whom she dedicated the song ''Kraftpark!'' In an interview, Minekawa explained her admiration for the band: "I decided to describe the landscape of Kraftpark with sound and narration. This song is not a parody of Kraftwerk. I did it because I love them!" Another influence is

Yellow Magic Orchestra Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO for short) is a Japanese electronic music band formed in Tokyo in 1978 by Haruomi Hosono (bass, keyboards, vocals), Yukihiro Takahashi (drums, lead vocals) and Ryuichi Sakamoto (keyboards, vocals). The group is conside ...

member

Haruomi Hosono , sometimes credited as Harry Hosono, is a Japanese musician, singer, songwriter and record producer. He is considered to be one of the most influential musicians in Japanese pop music history, credited with shaping the sound of Japanese pop for ...

, whom she paid tribute to with

cover version In popular music, a cover version, cover song, remake, revival, or simply cover, is a new performance or recording by a musician other than the original performer or composer of the song. Originally, it referred to a version of a song release ...

s of his song " Kaze no Tani no Nausicaa" (1984) in 1995 and again in 2007 with

Ryuichi Sakamoto is a Japanese composer, pianist, singer, record producer and actor who has pursued a diverse range of styles as a solo artist and as a member of Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO). With his bandmates Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi, Sakamoto inf ...

Other ventures

Minekawa has written professionally as regular columnist in the Japanese edition of ''

Keyboard Keyboard may refer to: Text input * Keyboard, part of a typewriter * Computer keyboard ** Keyboard layout, the software control of computer keyboards and their mapping ** Keyboard technology, computer keyboard hardware and firmware Music * Musi ...

'' magazine. She also contributed a serialized novel to the Japanese quarterly '' Bungei''.

Personal life

Minekawa married fellow musician Keigo Oyamada (aka Cornelius) in 2000. They divorced in 2012. Together they have one son, Milo. Minekawa and Cornelius have collaborated on several projects, including a remix of Minekawa's ''Cloudy Cloud Calculator'' track "Milk Rock" and several tracks on Minekawa's album ''Fun 9''.

Discography

Studio albums * ''

'' (1995) * '' Roomic Cube'' (1996) * '' Cloudy Cloud Calculator'' (1997) * '' Fun 9'' (1999) * ''Toropical Circle'' (2013) * ''Savage Imagination'' (2014) * ''Are Euphoria'' (2017) * ''Exit Future Heart'' (2018) Extended plays * '' (A Little Touch Of) Baroque in Winter'' (1995) * '' Athletica'' (1997) * ''Recubed'' (1998) * ''Ximer... C.C.C. Remix'' (1998) * '' Maxi On'' (2000) * ''Kannazuki'' (2019)

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Minekawa, Takako 1969 births 20th-century Japanese women singers 20th-century Japanese singers 21st-century Japanese women singers 21st-century Japanese singers English-language singers from Japan Japanese women singer-songwriters Japanese singer-songwriters Japanese women pop singers Japanese women in electronic music Shibuya-kei musicians Electropop musicians Japanese child actresses Living people