Top Qs
Timeline
Chat
Perspective
Cornelius (musician)
Japanese musician (born 1969) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Remove ads
Keigo Oyamada (小山田 圭吾, Oyamada Keigo; born January 27, 1969), also known by his moniker Cornelius (CORNELIUS（コーネリアス), Kōneriasu), is a Japanese musician and producer who co-founded Flipper's Guitar, an influential Shibuya-kei band, and subsequently embarked on a solo career.
.jpg)
Remove ads
Life and career
Summarize
Perspective
Oyamada was born in Setagaya, Tokyo, Japan. His first claim to fame was as a member of the pop duo Flipper's Guitar, one of the key groups of the Tokyo Shibuya-kei scene. Following the disbandment of Flipper's Guitar in 1991, Oyamada donned the "Cornelius" moniker and embarked on a solo career. He commissioned a song, about himself, on Momus' 1999 album Stars Forever.
In 1997, he released the album Fantasma, which landed him praise from American music critics, who called him a "modern-day Brian Wilson" or the "Japanese Beck".[2]
As of September 2006, he was no longer signed to Matador Records.[3]
In 2007, Rolling Stone Japan ranked Fantasma in 10th place amongst the "100 Greatest Japanese Rock Albums of All Time".[4]
In December 2008, Sensurround + B Sides was nominated for Best Surround Sound Album at the 2009 GRAMMY Awards.[5]
In 2009, he began performing as a member of Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band. On the album Between My Head and the Sky, released in September of that year, he performed on guitar, bass, Tenori-on, programming, and percussion.[6]
In 2010, he contributed the song "Katayanagi Twins vs. Sex Bob-Omb" to the film soundtrack of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.
In 2013, he participated with Taku Satoh and Yugo Nakamura directing the music for the exhibition Design Ah! at 21_21 Design Sight in Tokyo.[7]
In January 2016, METAFIVE—a band formed by Yukihiro Takahashi, Yoshinori Sunahara, Towa Tei, Tomohiko Gondo, Leo Imai, and Oyamada—released its first album, META.[8]
In 2017, he produced the vinyl record Audio Check Track for checking audio equipment settings.[9] That October, he also performed as a special guest at Beck’s live show at the Nippon Budokan.[10]
In 2018, he performed three songs from his album Mellow Waves on NPR's “Tiny Desk Concert”.[11]In the same year, he composed "Audio Architecture" for an exhibition of the same name held in Tokyo. The title of the exhibition was inspired by a phrase used by Sean Ono Lennon to describe Cornelius’s music.[12]
In 2019, he released the digital single "Too Much Love for Sauna," written as the opening theme for Sado, a sauna-themed Japanese TV drama series.[13] Later, a newly arranged version was released in 2024 and used as the opening theme for the sequel, under the title "Too Much Love for Sauna (Falling Deep)."[14][15]
In 2020, he released a limited white vinyl LP—a collection of tracks originally written as background music for PARCO, a cultural complex in Shibuya.[16]
In 2021, he released “Forbidden Apple,” an instrumental track featuring the sound of biting an apple, written to showcase Sony’s 360 Reality Audio surround technology (and can also be heard in standard stereo). [17]
In 2022, he performed Yellow Magic Orchestra’s “Cue” with Haruomi Hosono at a concert celebrating Yukihiro Takahashi’s 50th anniversary in music,[18] and contributed a remodel of “Thatness and Thereness”, originally from Ryuichi Sakamoto’s 1980 album B-2 Unit, to A Tribute to Ryuichi Sakamoto – To the Moon and Back, released in November.[19]
In 2023, he exhibited his installation works at “Ambient Kyoto 2023,” which showcased ambient-themed audiovisual art.[20] In December, he co-curated a music playlist with Terry Riley for the BBC Radio program “Ambient Focus”.[21]
In 2024, he held Cornelius 30th Anniversary shows in Japan and "Dream In Dream" World Tour 2024.[22][23] At the Barbican Centre in London, Ichiko Aoba performed as a special guest.[24] he also created the show music for KENZO Fall-Winter 2024 Runway Show by Nigo, presented at Paris Fashion Week in January.[25] Later that year, Velludo—a neo-psychedelic band formed in the late 1980s around him and Shuntaro Okino—released its first album, Between The Lines.[26]
In March 2025, he performed at a co-headlining concerts with The Flaming Lips in Tokyo.[27]
Remove ads
Musical style
Cornelius was a pioneer of the Shibuya-kei style of music in Japan.[28] The music of Cornelius could be described as experimental and exploratory, and often incorporates dissonant elements alongside more familiar harmonically "pleasing" sounds. He also incorporates sounds and samples from mass culture, pure electronic tones, and sounds from nature (such as on his Point album).
Personal life
Summarize
Perspective
Oyamada married musician and collaborator Takako Minekawa in 2000 and they have one child, Milo, named after the son of Cornelius in Planet of the Apes.[citation needed] They divorced in 2012.[29] Since 2020, he has been in a long term relationship with Minami Yamaguchi, the owner of a fashion shop in Setagaya, Tokyo.[30] He is a second cousin of Joi Ito and Miki Berenyi,[31] the latter who appears on the song "The Spell of a Vanishing Loveliness" from Mellow Waves.[32]
Bullying controversy
In interviews in 1994 and 1995, Oyamada said that he had bullied students with in school.[33] In one interview, Oyamada dismissed the incidents with a laugh.[34] In a 1995 interview for Quick Japan,[35] Oyamada said he was involved with a group of bullies who had locked a disabled student in a vaulting box,[36] wrapped another student in gymnastics mattresses and kicked them,[37] made fun of a disabled student running a long-distance race.[36]
He also said that such acts were committed only up until his early teens, and recounted several episodes reflecting his friendship with the disabled student, which lasted from elementary through high school.[38][39] The disabled student himself also responded in the same article—during the interviewer’s visit to see him—when asked whether he had been close to Oyamada, saying that he had.[40]
On July 14, 2021, the Tokyo Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (TOCOG) announced that Oyamada would be a composer of the 2020 Summer Olympics opening ceremony. Then, the sharing of a blog post—distorting his portrayal by selectively quoting his past interviews—by an anti-Olympics account on Twitter triggered a social media backlash.[33][41] Two days later, Oyamada tweeted an apology,[36] but also said articles had contained exaggerations or mistakes that he had not corrected.[42] Toshirō Mutō, the chief executive of the Organising Committee, said he wanted Oyamada to remain.[37] On July 19, four days before the ceremony, Oyamada decided to leave the creative team for the Tokyo Olympics on his own terms.[43]
In September 2021, Oyamada appeared in a two-hour interview with Shūkan Bunshun addressing why[further explanation needed] he took so many years to address his past actions.[44] He made an additional statement which stated how a blog post that circulated online edited information from past interviews to describe Oyamada as the perpetrator, even though the original Quick Japan interview stated that he did not commit the acts in question.[45]
Later, two major publishers in Japan released books examining the controversy surrounding Oyamada.[46][47] One of them discusses a series of events—in which a distorted image of him, shaped in the 2000s on 2channel, an anonymous Japanese message board, and later on a blog, led to an online backlash that was subsequently reported by mainstream media without sufficient verification—as an example of an infodemic.[48]
Remove ads
Discography
Summarize
Perspective
The discography of Cornelius consists of seven studio albums, three soundtracks, eleven remix and compilation albums, three extended plays, twenty-six singles and seven video albums.
Studio albums
Soundtracks
- Ghost in the Shell: Arise (Warner Music Japan; January 23, 2013) – JP No. 33[49]
- The Cat That Lived a Million Times (Warner Music Japan; October 31, 2013) (EP)
- Ghost in the Shell: The New Movie O.S.T. (Flying Dog; June 15, 2015) – JP No. 62[49]
Remix and Compilation albums
Extended plays
- Holidays in the Sun (September 10, 1993) JP No. 12[49]
- Cornelius Works 1999 (1999), rare CD-R promo from 3-D Corporation Ltd. (Japan)
- Gum EP (2008)
Singles
Video
 |
- Promotions! (1994), music videos
- Love Heavy Metal Style Music Vision (1994) – live performances
- EUS (2000) – live performances
- Five Point One (2003) – a DVD package of music videos and PM
- From Nakameguro to Everywhere Tour '02–'04 (2008) – live performances
- Sensurround (2008) – a DVD version of Sensuous with accompanying videos and 5.1 surround sound[53]
- Sensuous Synchronized Show (2009) – live performances
Compilation appearances
- Tribute Spirits (May 1, 1999)
- The Powerpuff Girls: Heroes & Villains (Music Inspired by the Powerpuff Girls) (July 18, 2000)
- DJ-Kicks: Erlend Øye (April 19, 2004)
- Matador at Fifteen (October 12, 2004)
- The Wired CD: Rip. Sample. Mash. Share. (April 22, 2009)
Other works
- Coloris (2006) – a Nintendo bit Generations game for Game Boy Advance[54]
- "Count Five or Six" appears on the soundtrack to the TV series Spaced.
- Composed music played by the Katayanagi Twins characters in the film Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.
- Produced Salyu's S(o)un(d)beams (2011)
- Contributed "Windmills of My Mind" to a limited 7-inch vinyl commemorating the 10th anniversary of Nero magazine (2022)[55]
- Crafted sounds for The Ambient Machine – Cornelius Edition, a collaboration with Yuri Suzuki (2024)[56]
- Composed the show music for kolor Autumn Winter 2025-26 Runway Show (2025)[57]
Remove ads
References
External links
Wikiwand - on
Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.
Remove ads