Tag Archives: Minuano

Minuano “Spring Lovers” Reissue With Translated English Lyrics

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Following the reissue of Love Logic and Fruits Mechanical, Minuano are soon re-releasing their long out of print second album: the fan-favorite Spring Lovers (ある春の恋人) from 2010.

This re-release will be coming out on vinyl and CD in March/April 2025.

Pre-orders are now live at Shopify and Bandcamp. Please note that pre-orders for both the LP and the LP+CD Bundle are only open from November 15 to 29, 2024. Because this is a limited edition pressing, it is highly recommended that you put in a pre-order if you want to be sure to attain a vinyl copy. (A link for CD-only pre-orders will be made available in March 2025.)

But no matter if you are going for the CD or the LP (or both), something that you will find in both editions of this release are my English translations of the lyrics.

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Minuano New Album “Fruits Mechanical” With Translated English Lyrics

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Minuano‘s new album Fruits Mechanical -reimagined works- (機械仕掛けの果実 -再構築音源集-) is set to be released on August 21.

You can now pre-order the CD on Shopify or Bandcamp.

Featuring brand new arrangements—or “reimaginations,” as one might say—the album consists of songs written between 2009 and 2019. These are in essence reinterpretations of nine songs from all-new angles by Minuano mastermind Ogata Takero. Of course, the album also features Sakakibara Kaori (Lamp) on vocals.

Just as with the 2023 re-release of Love Logic, the physical version of the album will include English translations for all of the lyrics. Once again, the Japanese and English lyrics are presented in the booklet side-by-side. (See here for an example from Love Logic‘s booklet.)

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Minuano “Love Logic” Reissue With Translated English Lyrics

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I’m very excited to announce the CD reissue of Minuano‘s first album, Love Logic, on August 22, featuring English lyrics of all songs on the album.

This special reissue is available on Shopify and Bandcamp.

The lyrics were translated by yours truly, and I had the pleasure of spending hours upon hours thoroughly discussing them with Minuano’s main architect and songwriter Ogata Takero, painstakingly going through each and every line to make sure the English lyrics would accurately portray the original vision of the beautiful Japanese lyrics.

Now, just in case you weren’t previously familiar with Love Logic…

Minuano’s debut album, first released in 2009, features influences from MPB, soft rock, jazz, and city pop, reshaping them into a unique soundscape blending romance and ennui, with the whispered vocals of Sakakibara Kaori (Lamp) as the icing on this cake of aural tapestry.

“Lemon Elegy,” a fleeting fusion of the vibrancy of Brazilian jazz and the sentimentality of Japanese lyricism. “Soleil,” with its MPB-esque key changes and a sense of melancholy towards a summer nearing its end. The bossa nova of “A Mischievous Wind,” also featuring vocalist Nagai Yusuke (Lamp). The scaled-down soft rock piece “Rain-Colored Diary” which truly makes one see the raindrops…

A total of 10 songs, capturing in vivid detail these fragments of a world in motion.

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Minuano “Chou ni Naru Yume wo Mita” interviews (2019)

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Minuano is the solo project of Ogata Takero, who you may know as a frequent collaborator of Lamp. On their Facebook page, they are musically described as Brazilian Popular Music, city pop, soft rock, and crossover. Minuano’s third album — their best one to date, if I may say so — was released in August 2019. Like the first two albums, it features Lamp’s Sakakibara Kaori on vocals.

Below, you will find two translations related to Chou ni Naru Yume wo Mita (English title: Butterfly Dream). First, here is an interview with Mr. Ogata originally posted on WebVANDA.

Original interview & text: Uchi Takahide (Japanese text)
English translation: Henkka
Minuano/Ogata Takero on the web: Facebook, Twitter, blog, YouTube, SoundCloud

You can buy Minuano’s music, both physically and digitally, on Bandcamp.

Nine years after their second album, 2010’s Aru Haru no Koibito, Minuano — solo unit of percussionist Ogata Takero — is releasing its third album, Chou ni Naru Yume wo Mita, on August 11th.

Their first album, Love Logic (2009), as well as Aru Haru no Koibito were both works incorporating the essence of 70s/80s Brazilian music and jazz, and yet sublimating it into pop. But on this release, Ogata’s personality and imagination have reached new heights as the album goes on to achieve a kind of conceptual whole. Featuring vocalist Sakakibara Kaori of Lamp — who released their eighth album, Kanojo no Tokei, last year — ardent fans have surely been waiting impatiently for this album.

Their approach towards creating pop music that has echoes of Brazilian music and is yet simultaneously genre-less is something that bears similarities to GUIRO, whose latest release, A MEZZANINE, received a nationwide release last month. The incorporation of so many different musical elements ensures that the listener never gets bored of them. Now, nine years after their previous release, I present to you an interview with Mr. Ogata.

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