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Towa
Tei Finds Solo Success as a DJ-Producer : Life After Deee-Lite
By Steve McClure
Published: WEDNESDAY, JULY 5, 2000
TOKYO: The Japanese guy with the
thick-framed black glasses in Deee-Lite — that's how many people probably
remember Towa Tei, one-third of the pioneering dance-pop group of the early
'90s.
Tei still sports the trademark geeky
specs, but in the past few years he has become a highly respected solo
artist in Japan and abroad. With his latest international release,
"Last Century Modern," Tei further solidifies his reputation as
one of the world's top producers-remixers-DJs.
Tei's interest in music dates to his
teenage years, when he began putting together audio tapes at home in
Kawasaki, a city halfway between Tokyo and Yokohama best known as a center
of heavy industry.
He left Japan in 1987 for New York. One
reason was to study graphic design at the Parsons School of Design. (Even
today, when he's not making music, he works as art director at the
Tokyo-based Tycoon Graphics.)
But he says the main reason he moved to
the United States was to improve his English. "I'd been going to art
school for two years, and I was working as an unpaid volunteer for Ryuichi
Sakamoto, carrying monitors and amps and stuff like that," he said in
very fluent English. "And when I met some of his friends who were
native speakers of English, I said to myself, 'Why can't I speak
English?"'
After moving to New York, he started
going to clubs for the first time, and ran into Afrika from the Jungle
Brothers at a club. Through that contact, Tei was hired to design the cover
of the Jungle Brothers' second album, "Down by the Forces of
Nature," and he also did some pre-production work for the band.
Another crucial New York club meeting
was with Super DJ Dimitri, who, along with the Lady Miss Kier, was getting Deee-Lite
started. Tei and Dimitri began writing together, and Deee-Lite's star was
soon ascending.
In keeping with the times, Tei chose
the stage name Jungle DJ Towa Towa. "I liked the Jungle Brothers so
much, and also because I felt like I was living in a jungle," he
recalled.
The trio's high point was when the
track "Groove Is in the Heart," from Deee-Lite's multiplatinum
debut album, "World Clique," reached No. 1 on Billboard's Hot
Dance Music Club Play chart the week of Aug. 25, 1990, and No. 4 on the Hot
100 chart the week of Nov. 17, 1990.
After leaving Deee-Lite and returning
to Tokyo, Tei did production work for a wide variety of artists, including
A Tribe Called Quest, Sakamoto's Yellow Magic Orchestra, Pizzicato Five,
KOJI 1200, Nokko, and Noriyuki Makihara.
Tei, a third-generation
Japanese-Korean, said that his parents initially disapproved of his
decision to drop out of college and pursue music as a career.
"For them, having a degree is very
important," he said. Then, "they saw that Deee-Lite was
everywhere, and they saw that my tax bill was this much," he laughed.
"They're happy now."
"I used to say that I was Korean,
but when I was in New York, I would tell journalists that I'm Japanese,
because my cultural background is Japanese," he said.
In 1995, Tei released his first solo
album, "Future Listening!" on Japan's For Life label.
Like many DJ-producers, Tei has no
formal musical training and does not really play any instrument other than
turntables, samplers and sequencers.
"I put my fingers on the keyboard
first, and if it doesn't sound right, then I just dump it," he said,
when asked how he starts building a track.
The musical reference points on
"Last Century Modern" are all over the place: There's the
decadent-ish, fin-de-siècle vibe of the title track, the frothy retro-pop
of "A Ring," the infectious swing of the drum-and-bass-flavored
"Angel" and the funk of Tei's cover version of "Funkin' for
Jamaica."
"When I started making it, the
vibe around the world was, you know, people worrying about the Y2K problem,
and Nostradamus and whether this was going to be the last year of the
world," he said.
The "Modern" in the title
refers to Tei's abiding interest in mid-century modern design and style,
with less of a kitsch-ola twist than say, Pizzicato Five.
"Last Century Modern," which
was released in Japan in August 1999 on Akashic Records-EastWest (Japan)
and in the United States in May on Elektra, is being released in 47
countries.
Steve McClure is the Asia bureau chief
for Billboard magazine.
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