Keigo Oyamada a.k.a. Cornelius
Cornelius I have a love-hate relationship with avant-garde music. On one hand, I love how much thought and theory the artists put into their work. I can understand what they’re doing, and I love that they try to turn conventional music on its ear. On the other hand, I just hate some of it so much. The first time I heard Schoenberg, I literally threw my headphones across the room. If you’ve never heard atonal music, it basically sounds like how I imagine Hell would sound. But not all avantgarde, experimental music makes you feel like your ears are curling in on themselves—some of it is downright enjoyable to listen to. One experimental artist I quite like is Cornelius, who hails from Tokyo. Cornelius (né Keigo Oyamada) first entered the music scene in the late ‘80s with the duo Flipper’s Guitar. Following the duo’s disbandment in 1991, he embarked on what has been a very successful solo career. Cornelius doesn’t make songs that you can sing along to, or sometimes, not even songs that
(Tokyo, Japan) you can hum to yourself. He’s admittedly a bit of an acquired taste. But he makes ridiculously awesome music. He’s rock ‘n’ roll, he’s avant-garde. He’s art rock, indietronica, Japanese Beck. His songs aren’t so much songs as they are audio journeys. Possibly the best part of experimental music is the inevitable self-exploration into what music really is to you. A teacher once asked a class of mine to describe music to someone who has never heard it. No one had a suitable answer. I feel like Cornelius would come up with a fascinating response.
“He's rock 'n' roll, he's avantgarde. He's art rock, indietronica, Japanese Beck.”