Album Notes

"...Tomovsky had obviously already won over the crowd. I quickly saw why. He was a charming young man. It was just him playing on a keyboard, until the last two songs when he switched to a guitar. The songs were wonderful inventions which he sung in a versatile, childlike voice. ...the highpoint was definitely his winning presentation of the material." RockofJapan 9/99 The Secret of Tomovsky Tomovsky has spent his musical years devising sumptous, wry, unforgettable melodies, becoming a cult favorite for his casually powerful live performances. Tomovsky's early listening was to Tchaikovsky,and other classical music aimed at children. He became a ping pong champion in high school, and explored music with his twin brother, who favored punk. While the two looked exactly alike, Tomovsky was more moved by such artists as the Beatles and XTC, and he gave up a life of pingpong mastery to become Tomovsky, creating music with one foot in the glorious melodies of the 60's and the other in his own skewed take on the world. The band of musicians that Tomovsky put together were called Castella, named after a popular dessert bread in Japan. They had no record label, but played to increasingly large audiences who were puzzled and intrigued by Tomovsky's sarcastic, sensous lyrics and caustically charming performances. His horizons opened up, the band even played CBGB's, believing that they could bring their sly humor to the rest of the world. It didn't happen quite that way, but Tomovsky did hone his performance skills to a fever pitch. After a time, Tomovsky decided to go back to the life of a lonely troubador, composing his strange, affecting music at home. The results of this lonely life were two beloved cult hit albums in Japan: Negachov and Posikov and Expo. Sony Japan had signed Tomovsky by this time, and they put him together with producer Yukihiro Takahashi (YMO) for his next album, Leisure. Various people in the US were sent his albums. We here are De-I Recordings especially loved his song "Let's Do It On the Phone" (which is not what you may think), and asked to release it as a single in the US. At the same time, Tomovsky came to CMJ to do a live solo gig in Sept. '99, and completely won over the tough New York crowd. Now he's completing his next album, with two songs being produced by Joey Waronker (drummer for Beck, REM and Smashing Pumpkins, among others).