Cornelius

Five years later, the auteur releases a new album

Courtesy of Warner Music Japan

There aren’t too many pop musicians that can make a record company wait over half a decade for a new album. But for iconoclastic artist Keigo Oyamada, who calls himself Cornelius after the lovable scientist in the Planet of the Apes films, it’s standard practice.

The gap between Sensuous, out later this month, and 2001’s Point was preceded by a four-year wait between that disc and his worldwide breakout, Fantasma. Cornelius can afford the luxury of holing up in his Naka-Meguro studio for years at a time because he has an auteur-like status matched by only a few Japanese pop stars, including occasional collaborator Ryuichi Sakamoto.

Cornelius’ guitar work with the former Yellow Magic Orchestra member was one of the first topics that came up when I sat down with him during a shoot he was doing for the US magazine Interview. Asked to join Sakamoto and the other two former YMO members while on a news program, Cornelius found himself put on the spot. “They made a point of asking me to play with them in the middle of a program, so I couldn’t refuse,” he recalled in a typically matter-of-fact response. “But it’s fun, so why not?”

Cornelius, 37, and now a father, grew up listening to YMO, but said he feels more in common with them now musically than you might imagine. “I wouldn’t say there’s no generation gap at all, but at the same time, I’ve been familiar with their work for years. I feel close to them musically, and they’ve also progressed since their YMO days.”

Unlike the prolific Sakamoto, whose output in any given year ranges wildly from bossa nova to laptop ambient, Cornelius has honed a trademark sound he refines through a craftsman’s approach to production. “I work just like a regular salaryman,” he says about his life in trendy Naka-Meguro. “I get up in the morning and go to the studio, come home in the evening and go to sleep. I take the weekend off and then get back to work on Monday. It’s not exactly 9-5, but the pace is about the same.”

The workmanlike approach shows. Sensuous sounds like an album that’s been fussed over by a perfectionist. It opens with the title track, a sweetly mellow acoustic number with jazzy chord work that highlights Cornelius’ devotion to the guitar over the 15 years since he disbanded his seminal group Flipper’s Guitar. “Flipper’s Guitar was terrible live,” he says with a laugh. “We were famous for not being able to play our instruments properly.”

In contrast to the thoughtful title track, much of Sensuous has an off-balance mood. “You feel like you’re going to tip over but you don’t,” explained Cornelius about the songs as he was writing them. “They barely hang together.” The aptly titled “Fit Song” explodes with stuttering funk rhythms, while the middle of the album runs toward experiments in techno-jazz-rock fusion that position Cornelius somewhere between the guitar explorations of Jeff Beck and the found-sound electronica of Matthew Herbert.

While the catchy “Music” is the likeliest candidate for a hit single, it’s “Gum” that makes for the best rock song Cornelius has crafted in years. Over a foundation of driving, near-punk bass and drums, Cornelius samples and resamples his voice, weaving and overlapping it in an exhilarating exercise in acceleration.

Sensuous sometimes has an otaku intricacy that in the instrumental sections can lead to a sense that its creator suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder, and Cornelius’ half-sung, half-whispered vocals have always been an acquired taste. But with songs like “Sensuous” and “Gum,” he reasserts himself as one of the most inventive forces in J-pop. Whether or not he can recreate the overseas triumph he achieved in the late-’90s with Fantasma, a hit on the North American college charts that paved the way for the current success of bands like Polysics, remains to be seen when the album is released worldwide.

Cornelius is slated to take Sensuous on tour in Japan later in the year, but it’s his overseas experiences that have meant the most to him. “I did about 200 dates in ’98, and it was very tiring. But audiences really get into it abroad. It’s only since I started touring overseas that I’ve enjoyed playing out. I don’t perform that much in Tokyo, and it’s always special for me to tour abroad. It’s an opportunity I thought I would never have.”

Sensuous will be released by Warner Music Japan on October 25.

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