Cornelius - Fantasma

Pitchfork 88

By the mid-‘90s, Japanese pop culture had peaked in global coolness. Anime and video games enthralled kids all over the globe, and author Haruki Murakami was starting to gain traction in the English-language world. And although it might not have been quite as universal as Pokemon, Shibuya-kei music was winning praise from Western listeners. The genre’s mish-mash of sonic references and samples spanning the entire 20th century caught the ears of non-Japanese labels, leading to the ‘60s-swooning of Pizzicato Five and lounge-tronica of Fantastic Plastic Machine seeing widespread release. Nothing captured as much critical attention, however, as Keigo Oyamada’s Cornelius project, whose 1997 album Fantasma came out Stateside one year later via Matador Records. Soon after, the Shibuya-kei movement became oversaturated and its biggest names drifted to new sounds.

Fantasma marked the high point for the movement, and has since been celebrated as the style’s ultimate triumph. The Japanese music media isn’t big on “all-time” lists, but when the mood strikes, Cornelius’ third proper album always winds up in the top ten. All this canonization has the side effect of making Fantasma feel like an artifact, a musical museum devoted to a scene that could never exist outside of ‘90s Tokyo. Portland-based imprint Lefse’s new vinyl reissue—featuring four enjoyable bonus tracks, albeit songs that aren’t on the album for a reason —reminds that what makes this set of songs special hasn’t aged. Like Endtroducing… or Discovery, Fantasma took the (often literal) sounds of the past to create something new and exciting, while also ending up a celebration of the process of finding, listening and creating music.

It’s fitting Shibuya-kei’s finest statement came courtesy of one of the people most central to its emergence. Coming of age during Japan’s economically booming Bubble years, Oyamada had time to play in bands and spend hours exploring Tokyo’s well-stocked record stores. Alongside Kenji Ozawa in the group Flipper’s Guitar, he crafted songs drawing inspiration from all sorts of eclectic sources—the Scottish post-punk of Orange Juice, Madchester, bossa nova, the Monkees’ movie debut Head. Despite a tendency to swipe melodies wholesale, they pushed a slew of new sounds into the Japanese music conscience.

Alongside Pizzicato Five and a few other groups introducing unfamiliar styles, Flipper’s Guitar’s CDs sold extremely well at Shibuya music stores—well enough that they snuck into the nation’s album charts. The media, smelling a trend, called it Shibuya-kei (literally, Shibuya style). From there, new artists emerged, not united by a specific sound but rather an ethos that writer W. David Marx pins as “pastiche and bricolage,” offering an alternative to mainstream J-pop. Oyamada launched a label, Trattoria, sharing music from names such as Kahimi Karie and Hideki Kaji, and started his solo career as Cornelius, releasing two albums that found him caught between singer-songwriter and musical curator. He also starred in a Shibuya-kei-tinged hair mousse ad.

Fantasma, though, promised something different and more daring. Whereas previous Cornelius albums launched right into sunny horn fanfare, “Mic Check” begins with a faint click and a lot of space. Someone puffs a cigarette, a can cracks open, and somebody whistles a portion of Beethoven’s 5th. Early copies of Fantasma came packaged with earphones, and “Mic Check” quickly establishes why—it’s a producer’s album, one where every sound is labored over and plays a role in the greater journey. Oyamada wants the listener to be adequately ready for this—“can you hear me?” he asks in Japanese—so that they don’t miss any detail, before letting a semi-song bloom around them.

From there, Oyamada treats listener to a smörgåsbord of musical thrills. His songs here frequently jump between headphone channels—the dizzying Speak & Spell rock of “Count Five or Six” being a great example of this technique—while going one step further by playing around with the idea of recording music. Side two of the record starts with “Chapter 8 (Seashore and Horizon),” which opens with Robert Schneider and Hilarie Sidney of the Apples in Stereo performing a very Apples-in-Stereo-sounding song. But before a minute can pass, someone hits the stop button on a cassette player, and Oyamada jumps in with his own interpretation of sweetly sung indie-pop, the sort of number that could easily slide into the Elephant 6 catalog. Then the player clicks again, the tape rewinds, and the Apples come back in frame.

“Fantasma is a kind of album that only has one entrance and one exit. That is, you can’t listen to if from the middle,” Oyamada told a magazine around the album’s release. As the defining Shibuya-kei full-length, it’s loaded up with references to obscure older music spliced with styles that were, in 1997, fresh—drum ‘n’ bass drills through tropicália on album centerpiece “Star Fruits Surf Rider,” while “Monkey” jams samples sourced from R&B and an old record starring Mr. Magoo to create a playful romp that’s the most stereotypically Shibuya-kei-sounding thing here—but Oyamada wasn’t simply flexing his deep record collection. Sounds reappear frequently across Fantasma, songs referencing one another in subtle ways—early English-language reviews tended to knock Cornelius for having too much going on, but Oyamada knew exactly what he was doing with the rush of noises. Everything ends up in its right place, making for a more cohesive and intimate listen.

And that’s fitting, as Fantasma celebrates the process of discovery and falling in love with music. Shibuya-kei was built on crate-digging discoveries, but oftentimes could come off as simplistic (or, at worst, trying to be too cool with nothing but some obscure records). But only Fantasma peers into the actual act of listening. Half of the songs here feature no coherent lyrics, but when words do come through, they capture the feeling of being at a concert (“Clash”) or shutting out the world via headphones (“New Music Machine”). Sudden shifts in style even make sense within Fantasma’s walls—the twinkling, childhood collage of “The Micro Disneycal World Tour” gives way to the feedback-soaked, adolescent thrash of “New Music Machine.”

Nearly every song title on Fantasma references an existing musical group, obscure or world famous, but it feels like an act of grateful tribute rather than a hip name-check. With Flipper’s Guitar, Oyamada straight-up sampled chunks of the Beach Boys “God Only Knows,” but on his own “God Only Knows” he spends the track’s seven-minute-plus run time weaving an intricate pop production inspired by (but never directly taking from) Brian Wilson (and quoting another Oyamada favorite, the Jesus And Mary Chain). He reveals his intention with the penultimate number, “Thank You For the Music,” which acknowledges all of his musical heroes, along with the listeners who came along for the Fantasma ride, all over a folksy backing track that makes way for a rapid-fire collage of sounds heard over the course of the album...a reminder of the last 50-some minutes.

A lot of Shibuya-kei in 2016 sounds extremely dated, and it’s not totally the fault of the music for this. A big draw of the style was how the artist themselves served as a curator for the audience, funneling the forgotten sounds of yesteryear to a new audience. But the internet has completely changed the concept of curation—anyone can become an expert on niche styles with some focused Wikipedia digging, while the idea of finding a new perspective to old sounds has been replaced with “make me a playlist that sounds best while I’m in the bath.” Not to say there aren’t perks to a digital reality—I downloaded Fantasma off Soulseek in 2005, and it’s easier to find Shibuya-kei deep cuts on YouTube now rather than go to the actual Shibuya neighborhood.

But Fantasma distills the spirit and process of Shibuya-kei down to its purest essence and still sound warm and celebratory today. He imagined musical utopia, where genre lines fade easily and where geographic borders can vanish (in 2016, Japanese artists construct their own imagined versions of albums because of streaming exclusivity). In the ‘90s, Cornelius caught attention for a cool sound that earned him comparisons to Beck, but it’s the sense of sheer joy and excitement running through Fantasma that still makes it an exhilarating listen today.