Cornelius

A master of luxurious layering, Keigo Oyamada, a.k.a. Cornelius, has always been unabashed about his musical loves. Born in Tokyo in 1969, the singer/musician/producer became a leading light of Japan’s openly referential Shibuya-kei pop scene after co-founding the band Flipper’s Guitar in the late ’80s. Adopting the solo guise Cornelius in honor of a Planet of the Apes character, Oyamada cited The Beach Boys and other touchstone influences in both the music and song titles of 1998’s Fantasma. That immersive breakthrough mingled bashful dream-pop with the sampledelic spirit of premillennial hip-hop and electronic music. Soon Oyamada was remixing such marquee names as Blur, Moby and Beck, before swapping out Fantasma’s bravura busyness for the more low-key jazz and ambient vibes of later releases such as 2017’s aptly titled Mellow Waves. His status as a figurehead of repurposed sounds was confirmed when he guested on 2020’s “Music Is The Light” by kindred collagists The Avalanches.