Customer Reviews

Fun 9

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Takako Minekawa sounds like a talented musician with an ear for pulling offbeat samples into an already strange mix of styles. "Plash", "Spin Spider Spin", and "Fancy Work Funk" are terrific tracks. If the majority of the rest of this CD weren't such obvious filler, she'd really have a great disc.

The CD's length of 39 minutes doesn't justify a full length price tag. Even worse, five of the twelve tracks are throwaways - short fragments that sound neat but hardly qualify as tracks (one is 16 seconds long).

Plus, the last track (a "bonus track for the USA") is just a replay of "Spin Spider Spin". I could detect little difference between the two. So you've really only got seven songs here, and a couple of those are clearly half-hearted attempts without much effort put into them ("Flow in a Tide" and "Soft Graffiti").

She's got talent and can obviously create great stuff when she tries, but I'd never buy another CD by her without hearing it front to back first.(...)

Eclectic, progressive, and seductive, Fun9 represents all that is good in Japanese and American pop music. Minekawa, as she has proven before, is a strong musical force by herself, but on Fun9, the true beauty of her musical experimentations are enhanced and brought to life by her collaborations with Cornelius and DJ Me DJ You. "Tiger" is one of the best tracks, displaying the trance-like, sitar influenced, rare groove tendencies of DJ Me DJ You, while allowing Minekawa to delve into a mystical realm of unintelligibly beautiful lyrics. "Plash" is super-cool. Period. Cornelius demonstrates his wonderous ability to add acoustic guitar into this Missy Elliot-influenced track of pure beat-laden fun, making the song dancable and intelligent. All in all, the record is trippy and smart, making it a surely pleasing aural experience.

I heard this album just about the same time I heard her other album, "Cloudy Cloud Calculator." Her style is still evident, though this seems a bit off the dot for her. "Plash" caught my attention when I heard it the first time, and it still does, but some parts of the album are lacking a little. It isn't quite up to my first impressions of it, but it's still very good. Similar to Kahimi Karie, and still very cute and friendly, this album makes good picnic or chilling music. I still recommend this album.

i just want to say that this record blows my mind! Only the japanese could come up with this musical hybrid that defies definition. Only miss minekawa could inject such beautiful innocence into this thrilling aural rollercoaster of breaks, samples, and guitars. Cornelius and DJ Me DJ You are brilliant!

Fun9 is a treat because it features some of Takako's absolute best songs that she's ever written. "Plash", "Tiger" and "Spin Spider Spin" are all landmarks in her musical career that show off an amazing songwriting skill as well as a keen ear for production. as a whole, Fun9 doesn't do much for expanding or progressing on Takako Minekawa's musical legacy. there are plenty of great moments, but the momentum is cut short by too many filler interludes and goofy samples that tend to get in the way a bit too much for my personal tastes. it's not a bad album by any means, but the music has not held up so well over time as the recordings on Cloudy Cloud Calculator. there are plenty of worlds of possibilities presented here on many of these tracks, but few seem to lift me up as much as the three songs i mentioned before. well..."Soft Graffiti" is nice. i give this album 3.5 stars.

I was drawn to Takako Minekawa via Ryuichi Sakamoto's contributions to numerous chill out albums. I have always encouraged a previously dormant curiosity of japenese culture, specifically music, which is what drew me to the category of Japanese Music in the first place. If you will notice, our culture is increasingly influenced by japanese media . . . I am not some anime spaz, but the aesthetic phenomenon is definitely worth looking into. Takako's collaboration with the eastern dj, cornelius will prove to be a successful venture.

As far as the chordal tone and melody, Fun9 contains faint elements of traditional japanese folk (fantastic journey), Hawaiian Paradisio (flash), and even american western, (tiger). All themes are veiled with electronica that is neither out-dated or annoying.
Beat wise the cd can be summed up in lazy drum and base, faint jungle, and ambient tracks. Lucky Takako opts not to draw out songs with no ethos for a terribly long time.

I want to give it five stars, but she has done better. Ximer is an exceptional album, specifically the song milk rock,remixed by cornelius is transcendantly soothing and kinetic, ergo the decree is an appropriate four stars.

This is really neat music, that makes you feel good inside. Some of the music on this album is part of the sountrack for the movie Southlander. I plan on buying this CD.

I heard Milk Rock and Spin Spider Spin on internet radio but I fell in love with Tiger. If she were to make a greatest hits CD I would vote for Tiger to be on it. It has a great flow to it like all of her music. On this CD I also liked Gently Waves and Soft Grafitti which are both quietly beautiful. I don't think the length of the song should dictate how much you like it, and that's certainly true of Gently Waves.