Search - Towa Tei :: Last Century Modern

What Sound Museum couldn't be

Ryan Hennessy | Albany, NY | 11/23/2001

(4 out of 5 stars)

"With everyone one of his album, it looks like Towa Tei is trying to put you in a certain frame of mind as far as time periods go. His first solo record was named Future Listening, and the idea was apparent he was trying to make music for the future throughout the record. And it worked. His next record was Sound Museum which I imagine was supposed to conjure up sounds of ancient musicians, althrough the actual recording didn't serve the title at all. This time he's named his record Last Century Modern, music for the final years of the 20th century. It's more forward-looking than the look-how-far-we've-come idea that the name conjures though."Last Century Modern" is a song of accordions and Balanscu Quartet sounds whirring around your head in space. A Brazilian voiced singer only listed as "UA" sings the title over and over with the emphasis on "mo-darn." I must note however that it seems like UA is only a replacement for my beloved Bebel Gilberto, who does not make an appearance on this album. I guess now that she's making her own records, she doesn't have time for Towa. This is quite unfortunate as she can breathe life into even the deadest Towa Tei song.A breathy French singer is in the spotlight of the glitch/lounge song "A Ring," something that warrants numerous listenings if only for the strangeness and sound effects that you don't expect. Al throughout the record however you can expect Towa's signature filler lyrics. About half the songs feature computer voices, "Last Century Modern" lists various media formats in its lyrics and "Angel's" lyrics are little more than "S-P-E-L-L A-N-G-E-L." He's quite the producer, but hardly ever a great wordsmith, that Towa.There's also as usual the fair share of female-voiced American pop imitations, though they're more fleshed out and more successful than the posh on Sound Museum. "CHATR" is named after and was made with a new text-to-voice program that's been developed as the most realistic computer voice ever made. They gave Towa exclusive permission to use it for this song before the program was ever released, but that doesn't make it a great song. It's listenable fun though. The finest song may be "Stretch Building Bamboo," something created by Towa completely on his computer. It's pretty much all sound effects flying all around your head that all build into a totally funky psychedelic collage. "LCM" brings back the sweet melody from "Last Century Modern" and leaves it up to the Balanscu Quartet and a children's chorus. It would make a sweet final track, but then we get two remixes. One is by Towa's rock-n-roll counterpart wizard, Cornelius. He doesn't do anything too magical to "Butterfly." I would think he'd be more cut-out to re-do "Stretch Building Bamboo" maybe. In the end, Last Century Modern hits all the points that Sound Museum tried to hit but couldn't. Even the rap works. It's funny when wants to be, poppy when it wants to be, and always smart."