Category: Live music

Today, Cornelius announces his new album ‘REFRACTIONS’, the forthcoming full-length from Japanese musician, producer and composer Keigo Oyamada. The album is to be released on August 19th on Eat Your Own Ears Recordings and marks a new collaborative chapter in his work. Along with the album announcement, he has also announced a Japanese tour as well as a show at London’s Barbican.

For more than three decades, Cornelius has occupied a singular space in contemporary music, transforming everyday sound into intricate rhythmic systems and immersive, cinematic soundscapes. ‘REFRACTIONS’ continues this trajectory while marking a subtle but important shift outward. Where previous Cornelius records often leaned toward introspection, this new work is shaped more explicitly through collaboration and exchange. A sentiment illustrated with the album’s lead single “Aeons”, featuring Sean Ono Lennon. The track sees Lennon contribute vocals and lyrics, bringing his distinctive melodic sensibility and lyrical voice into Cornelius’ ever-shifting sonic world.

The creative relationship between Kiego and Sean stretches back to the late 1990s, when Cornelius first encountered Sean’s work and was struck by its unusual harmonic language, melodic openness and experimental pop sensibility. Across the years, their exchanges have continued to evolve through shared projects and long-standing artistic trust, with Sean inviting Cornelius be part of Yoko Ono’s re-formed Plastic Ono Band, doing performances is LA, NY, and London.

“Aeons” represents one of their most direct collaborations to date. Speaking about the collaboration, Cornelius says: “As the world and my surroundings changed at an intense speed, I think all of that inevitably shaped this work. Rather than expressing these ideas directly, I approached them structurally – exploring continuity, transformation, and multiple coexisting states within a single, uninterrupted flow of time.”

That same sense of shifting perception runs through “Aeons,” a track built around fluid forms and subtle instability, where melody and texture appear, fracture and reassemble in constantly evolving configurations.

Sean Ono Lennon reflects on the collaboration: “I’m always honoured to work with Keigo, he’s one of my favourite humans on the Earth Planet!”

Listen to “Aeons (ft. Sean Ono Lennon)”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14-VSYqIRWw
‘‘Refractions’’ album links: https://linktr.ee/Cornelius_Japan

Emerging in the early 1990s after the dissolution of Tokyo pop group Flipper’s Guitar, Keigo Oyamada quickly developed a reputation as a meticulous sonic architect, building dense, playful and highly detailed musical worlds that dissolve genre boundaries entirely.

International breakthrough album ‘Fantasma’ (1997) established Cornelius on a global stage and is widely regarded as a landmark in experimental pop. Its collage-like approach to production drew comparisons to The Beach Boys, Brian Wilson, Beck and The Beastie Boys, while helping define a new international appetite for adventurous Japanese music. Nearly three decades later, the album continues to resonate with new generations of listeners, with b-side “Typewrite Lesson” recently unexpectedly finding renewed life in a viral moment on TikTok and support from artists such as Rosalía.

“This time, instead of turning inward, I wanted to open the work through interaction with others,” says Cornelius of his new work. “I’ve come to feel more strongly that reality is not something completed within oneself, but something shaped through relationships and exchanges.”

That philosophy runs through the fabric of ‘REFRACTIONS’, which also features contributions from Arto Lindsay, Bid, and longtime collaborator Shintaro Sakamoto.

Across ‘REFRACTIONS’, Cornelius continues to explore shifting perception, memory and interconnected consciousness, not through narrative but through sound itself. Tracks behave less like fixed compositions and more like living systems: ideas branch, overlap and mutate, forming an evolving sonic landscape where multiple states coexist at once.

Despite its conceptual framework, the record remains deeply human in tone. There is a familiar warmth and playfulness embedded within its intricate construction, a sense of curiosity that has long defined Cornelius’ work. Drawing from psychedelic pop, ambient music, Brazilian tropicália, kosmische experimentation and minimalist composition, ‘Refractions’ ultimately resists categorisation, existing instead within its own internal logic.

For new listeners, ‘REFRACTIONS’ offers a gateway into one of contemporary music’s most quietly influential catalogues. For long-time followers, it reveals an artist still expanding and reshaping his language after more than three decades.

What emerges is not a fixed statement, but something constantly in motion: music that refracts, reshapes and reorients itself as it unfolds. ‘REFRACTIONS’ marks the beginning of a new chapter for Cornelius, an artist who remains entirely singular in the landscape of modern music.

Cornelius live dates:
10 Sep – Yokohama, JP – KT Zepp Yokohama
12 Sep – Tokyo, JP – CLUB QUATTRO
13 Sep – Fukuoka, JP – Zepp Fukuoka
19 Sep – Sapporo, JP – Zepp Sapporo
22 Sep – Nagoya, JP – Zepp Nagoya
23 Sep – Osaka, JP – Zepp Namba
26 Sep – Sendai, JP – Sendai PIT
2 Oct – Tokyo, JP – Zepp Haneda
3 Oct – Tokyo, JP – Zepp Haneda
6 Oct – Tokyo, JP – Zepp Shinjuku (TOKYO)
19 Jun, 2027 – London, UK – Barbican

Keep your mind open.

[It feels like aeons since you’ve thought about subscribing.]

[Thanks to Kate at Stereo Sanctity.]