Club Contact

The new MP3 blog from London's club Contact. The idea is to allow people to hear new music they wouldn't have otherwise found but, if anyone has any copyright issues with a particular song, i'll take the link down. Songs are only available for a limited amount of time.

Saturday, March 18, 2006

The Korean-Japanese producer and DJ Towa Tei became a household name in discerning pop circles for his work as part of Deee-Lite and the fantastic single he recorded with Kylie Minogue, German Bold Italic. Although sharing influences with other Shibuya-kei stars (Pizzicato 5, Fantastic Plastic Machine, etc), he has an instantly recognisable, effortlessly upbeat, sound of his own. Although his solo albums are excellent, i've chosen two songs he recorded for others.

The first is Baby by Nomiya Maki, style icon and lead singer of the aforementioned Pizzicato 5 - probably the first J-Pop group, before Puffy, to make a significant impact on British and American audiences. It's from the album Miss Maki Nomiya Sings which i had been told was terrible but was pleasantly surprised by.

Nomiya Maki - Baby

The second is by the awesome Lee Jung-Hyun who i covered in a previous post. Towa Tei's parents were Koreans brought to Japan as slave labourers during the Second World War - this is the only time i'm aware of that he has recorded a song for a Korean star. Like the Seoul soul-pop star BOA, Tei is credited with helping to spread "pop music diplomacy", bringing a new generation of Japanese and Korean kids together after decades of suspicion and hostility (until relatively recently Japanese music was banned from the Korean airwaves). Now if he could just sort out the North........

Lee Jung Hyun - Brighter Than Sunshine

Buy Towa Tei Stuff

1 Comments:

  • At 6:23 am, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    Really amazing! Useful information. All the best.
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