Cornelius review, from magnetmagazine.com

CORNELIUS
Sensuous

The challenges facing Keigo Oyamada whenever he makes an album aren’t much different than those bedeviling people who design consumer electronics products: how to successfully marry form and function, innovation and comfort, the daringly spiky and the so-chic sleek. Like 1998’s Fantasma and 2002’s Point, Oyamada’s latest album is essentially a compendium of clever solutions to creative problems disguised as a crash-course in 22nd-century pop-music fundamentals. Sensuous opens with the relatively mellow ringing chimes and steel-guitar tone poetics of the title track before taking off in fantastic, nearly new directions. There’s “Wataridori,” a flailing knot of flickering guitar scales cornered by strobing synths. “Gum” reimagines the act of chewing as a Stereolab-ish, mono-chord ax grind to nowhere, dispensing Oyamada’s flatly spoken syllables at rhythmic intervals. “Beep It” could be a drastic-overhaul remix of Nine Inch Nails’ “Only,” flagellating and knifing a similarly mesmerizing bass line with sampled instrumental light sabers in order to repeatedly sabotage its own beat; “Like A Rolling Stone” pairs a harmonizing choir and the flicked-comb electronic effect from Autechre’s “VI Scose Poise.” What’s ultimately the weirdest about Sensuous is that Oyamada’s constructions don’t seem weird at all; a so-kooky-it’s-cosmic logic runs through it. No wonder, then, that this futurist-pop mash-up is as pleasing to the ear as a curvy, compact BlackBerry is to the eye and to the touch. [Everloving, www.everloving.com]
—Raymond Cummings