Towa Tei (JP)

About

Also known as: Sound Museum, Towa Tei, テイトウワ, テイ・トウワ

Few producers can claim they helped put 'Groove Is In the Heart' on the map, but Towa Tei was right there as a member of Deee Lite when that track became a global earworm in 1990. After seven years in New York, a back injury during a Deee Lite show in Brazil nudged him toward new sounds, and his 1994 solo debut Future Listening! arrived as a dizzyingly eclectic mix of electronic, bossa nova, jazz and house, loaded with collaborators including Bebel Gilberto and Ryuichi Sakamoto. His 1997 album Sound Museum remains his commercial peak in Japan, and its single 'GBI (German Bold Italic)' with Kylie Minogue and Haruomi Hosono charted in both Australia and the UK. Since then Tei has kept up a steady run of albums under his own name and the alias Sweet Robots Against the Machine, working with artists as varied as Ringo Sheena, Arto Lindsay and, for the 2009 album Big Fun, international collaborators he found purely through MySpace. He has also launched his own creative company, hug inc, which produces his signature sunglasses.