Takako Minekawa

Takako Minekawa (嶺川貴子 Minekawa Takako, born June 3, 1969) is a Japanese musician, composer and writer. 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 synthesizers, as well as vocoders and other electronic instruments. Her live debut was in 1990, calling herself Mamene Kirerie as a member of the group Fancy Face Groovy Name alongside Kahimi Karie and backed by Flipper’s Guitar. 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 (aka Cornelius) in 2000. The pair have collaborated on several projects. Cornelius remixed some of her songs, including the well-received “Milk Rock”. He also produced her album Fun9.