Takako Minekawa

Takako MINEKAWA (嶺川貴子) is a Japanese musician, composer and writer. She was born on June 3rd, 1969.

As an accomplished all-around musician, Minekawa's musical skills set her firmly outside of the J-Pop "idol" tradition: she writes and composes most of her material, singing quirky lyrics about subjects such as clouds, cats, and the color white (her personal favorite), with her love of Kraftwerk and French Pop Music also showing through her unique experimental sound. She often makes use of vintage Casio keyboards, and analog Moog sythesizers, as well as vocoders and other electronic instruments.

Her live debut was in 1990, as a member of the group Fancy Face Groovy Name alongside Kahimi Karie. She was also a member of the band L <-> R before releasing her solo debut, Chat Chat in 1994.

Although as a child Minekawa had a short acting career, this interest has not resurfaced in her adult life (aside from her voice exclaiming "Playstation!" in a recent commercial for the product).

She has written professionally, as regular columnist in the Japanese edition of Keyboard Magazine; she also contributed a serialized novel to the Japanese quarterly Bungei.

She married fellow musician Keigo Oyamada (Cornelius) in 2000. The pair have collaborated on several projects. Cornelius remixed some of her songs, including the well-received song Milk Rock. He also produced her album Fun9.

Influences

Minekawa's musical influences are as varied as her lyrics. She is an avowed fan of French pop, some of her favorite French artists include Françoise Hardy and Pierre Bachelet. The influence of the British band Stereolab can also be heard in her music. While there are certainly touches of humor in her lyrics and tone, but she is a sincere fan of Krautrock, particularly electronic music pioneers Kraftwerk, to whom she dedicated the song Krautpark!

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!"