“… is in reality completely invented, played and sung by Michael Snow himself (via multi-track recording). Each piece is a short ‘sonic film’, Snow creating an illusion of truth ‘truer’ than reality. He plays all instruments, invented or otherwise, and does all vocals as well. The result is astonishing.”
– Raymond Gervais, Music/Sound

In 1987, Snow issued The Last LP (Art Metropole), which purported to be a documentary disc of the dying gasps of ethnic musical cultures from around the globe including Tibet, Syria, India, China Brazil, Finland and elsewhere, with more thousands of words of pseudo-scholarly supplementary notes, but was, in fact, a series of multi-tracked recordings of Snow himself, who gave the joke away only in a single column of text in the disc’s gatefold jacket, printed backwards and readable in a mirror. One track, purported to be a document of a coming-of-age ritual from Niger, is a pastiche of Whitney Houston’s song “How Will I Know.”

Unique Last Recordings of the Music of Ancient Cultures:

1. Wu Ting Dee Lin Chao Cheu (Announcing the Arrival of the Emporer Wu Ting)

Orchestra of the National Music Institute, Seoul Korea

2. Si Nopo Da (By What Signs Will I Come to Understand?)

Women of the Bo-sa-so-sho tribe, Niger, S.E. Africa

3. Ohwachira (Water ceremony)

Performed by Miantonomi and Cree tribespeople, Quebec, Canada

4. I Ching Dee Yen Tzen (The Strings of Love)

Tam Wing Lun on the Hui Tra, Ontario, Canada

5. Póhl’novyessnikh (Full to the Brim)

Performed by a 16-member male choir. Varda, Carpathia, USSR

6.Speech in Klogen

by Okash, Northern Finland

7. Mbowunsa Mpahiya (Battle Song of Bowunsa)

Performed by male members of the Kpam Kpam tribe, Angola, West Africa

8. Quuiasukpuq Quai Gami (He is Happy Because He Came)

Performed by Ani’ksa’tuk of the Tornarssuk tribe, Siberia, USSR

9. Amitabha Chenden Kala (The Simultaneous Welcome of Amitabha)

Performed by the 12 monks of the Kagyupa Sect, Bhutan

10. Roiakuriluo (Dawn Ceremony)

Performed by Sabané, Elahe, Brazil

11. Raga Lalat

Performed by Palak Chawal, Benares, India