The transformer

Interview, Dec, 1998 by Ethan Smith

He's got a devil's haircut, and he's wickedly sharp about the pop scene. He's Japan's big-deal sound boy. Welcome to the original mind of Cornelius

Keigo Oyamada, a.k.a. Cornelius, may go down in history as the man who saved pep music, The soft-spoken Tokyo native is far too modest to indulge in such speculation himself, but the potential is there. Well aware that at the end of the twentieth century, it's all been done before, Oyamada dauntlessly mines pop history, finding the most sparkling bits to meld into wonderfully eclectic compositions - on which he serves as singer, producer, engineer, and musician. Fantasma (Matador), Cornelius's third album, which has sold half a million copies in Japan, moves effortlessly from full-out My Bloody Valentine roar to bouncing Beach Boys harmonies to perfect Dylan simulation. It's Oyamada's knack for seamlessly juxtaposing these disparate elements, as much as his mimetic abilities, that makes his music breathtakingly cool. He's the first true virtuoso of the cut-and-paste pop pioneered by the Beastie Boys, Beck, and the Dust Brothers.

On top of his success as a musician, Oyamada is a favorite on Japanese talk shows, and he has released numerous bands on his own record label, Trattoria. He borrows his stage name from the late Roddy McDowall's character In Planet of the Apes. Like the chimpanzee-philosopher, Cornelius the musician is both ahead of and behind his own time - and is, from that strange limboland, making a mark on the West as well as the East.

ETHAN SMITH: How would you describe your music for someone who has never heard it?

KEIGO OYAMADA: You could compare it to a Transformer: You've got a car and a train, then you put them together and they become a robot. It's that kind of feel with my music, too: It's different types of music put together in various ways, to make a whole new kind of music.

ES: You've been in a lot of cover bands. Did that help determine your style?

KO: Yeah, now that you mention it. When I was in high school, I played in ten or twenty different cover bands. A lot of the members were the same in the different bands, but each band played one particular band's music: the Specials, the Cramps, 7 Seconds.

ES: Fantasma opens and closes with the same motif, which struck me as symphonic in a way. Do you also have classical training?

KO: No. The theme is the same, but it's not the influence of classical music. I have no training, classical or otherwise! [laughs]

ES: Some American critics have compared the song "2010" to video game music. But it's actually Bach, right?

KO: Yes, it's a Bach cover. In the '60s there was a singer who put lyrics on top of the same Bach song and had a hit. And that's what "2010" is all about, but arranged my way.

ES: Did you set the Bach piece to a Jungle beat to create an ironic Juxtaposition, to play up the discord of the song's ingredients?

KO: Discord was not the original intent; I just thought that they worked well together. I downloaded MIDI data from a Bach home page on the Internet - I think it's his Toccata and Fugue in D Minor - and attached drum and bass to it.

ES: Your music is often referred to as Shibuya-kei. Could you explain that term?

KO: Shibuya-kei means Shibuya-style. Shibuya is a neighborhood in Tokyo. Tokyo is like Los Angeles, very spread out. Within the city there are individual towns with their own personalities, like Hollywood or whatever. In Shibuya, there are a lot of record stores, lots of lights, younger people going record shopping, and fast food and ice cream places. There isn't really a definition of Shibuya-kei, though. It's the kind of music people would buy at record stores in Shibuya. Stuff that sounds supposedly Western.

ES: Is that where you live?

KO: When I was in junior high and high school, I lived in Shibuya. But at this point, I don't live there or work there. People just call my music Shibuya-kei. My friends work in record stores there.

ES: Who else is considered Shibuya-kei?

KO: Some people call Pizzicato Five Shibuya-kei. Original Love is also Shibuya-kei. But now, if you said something was Shibuya-kei in Japan, people would laugh at you; it's already over. The newest thing is visual-kei. If you mix glam rock with hoodlum rock, that's visual-kei. They're the ones who top the charts. They dress up as unisexual - between female and male - in makeup and so on, and they try to look beautiful. That's what visual-kei is all about. It's sort of like gothic L.A. glam metal.

ES: A lot of Japanese bands have been getting attention in the U.S. In the past year or so. Is Japanese pop in fact experiencing some kind of renaissance right now, or have we just been missing out?

KO: Japanese music has always been there, it's just that foreigners are starting to notice it. But on the other hand, my generation is starting to change Japanese music by incorporating a lot of music from different countries. So I guess the music is broadening. But the bands that are actually part of this new movement, if you can call it that - they're not actually mainstream. It's more the underground bands that are getting picked up abroad - Buffalo Daughter would be the most obvious example.