Minamata

Members: Philippe Escartin (alias Tiburce), Xavier Niel (until 1990), Marie Cardenne (1985-1986)

French industrial and extreme electronic group formed in 1984 by Philippe Escartin and Xavier Niel. The very same year they made their debut release on New Wave Records with the tape Mit Lautem Geschrei. 1985 saw the group expanding with a third member, Marie Cardenne, in addition to their second tape-release, Methylmercure, on the small imprint Europa.

Minamata had their third cassette, Niigata 1964-1965, published on the newly launched label Les Nouvelles Propagandes in 1986, however, soon thereafter the group split up. A posthumous tape, titled Résiduels, appeared late in 1987.

At the tail end of the 80s, Minamata was resurrected as a duo of Xavier and Tiburce. Recordings made in the summer of 1989 by the pair resulted in a CD — Tomoko Uemura — that was published in 1991.

Almost two decades of silence followed this sudden resurge of a CD, but once again, in 2009, Minamata made its return through the ambitious Cyclator-project, that materialized in two CD+DVD releases. Since its ”third coming”, Minamata solely consist of Philippe Escartin.