Hip-bop for the chic clubber in you
consumer123 | Los Angeles, CA | 12/10/2002
(4 out of 5 stars)
"More varied in its colors of music than a bag of Skittles in its colors of candy, Korean-Japanese producer Towa Tei's 5th solo album, "Sweet Robots Against the Machine", is a delightful grab-bag of wondrous variations of distinct music genres all in the employment of Tei and his highly creative musical imagination. Upbeat and energetic, "Sweet Robots..." is a perfect introduction to current Towa Tei.While the most popular association of electronic music is with techno and the more vague category of dance music, Towa Tei steers his course through whatever kind of music avails itself to his genius and uses it to fit his artistic ideas. Everything from Hawaiian music to a bizarre sound system incorporating Sony's robotic pet dog Aibo, "Sweet Robots..." sounds like sophisticated video game music with a sheen of irresistible "cuteness." As Tei confesses in the liner notes for the album, "I don't know why but I wanted to keep the image of `CUTEness' on all tracks of this album." Cute it may be, but it has a sensibility that is clearly evidence of a knowing producer who knows when and how to drop the beats.The single from the album, "Free" - while a cover of Dennis Williams' "Free" - is an amazingly refreshing and clever composition in the house style, even while sporting soulful vocals common to the genre. What is most surprising about the track is that the totally incongruent idea of a ragga vocal section in the song set to funky breaks seems to fit.The rest of the album swings back and forth between the deliberative musings of a musical intellectual and predilections for the simply danceable. Eccentric yet interesting and palatable enough to the minimally initiated in electronic music, "Sweet Robots..." is a fantastic voyage through the almost limitless realms of electronically produced music as demonstrated by a master."
Track Listings (13) - Disc #1