Generally for each festival I’ll pick one band that I have to see while there. This year at Coachella it was Cornelius. I didn’t end up making it into the festival so I obviously missed Cornelius but I had a fallback plan because he and his band were playing with Holy F-ck at the El Rey the Monday night afterwards.
For the uninitiated, Cornelius is one man, Keigo Oyamada, and also a band… when on tour. I had never heard of Cornelius back in 1999 when I ended up at Coachella upon returning from hiking the Appalachian Trail. I looked like a wookie as I wandered around the fest trying to catch Modest Mouse, Spiritualized, At the Drive-in and a bunch of other bands. While passing through one of the tents I was instantly entranced by a group of Japanese men in space suits playing a type of music I couldn’t quite define. One thing I remember for sure is that I wasn’t the only one getting blown away by their electronic/space rock/erratic music. In the years that have passed that show has become a myth among our Long Beach posse who all randomly found our way into that tent that day.
Cornelius’ new album, Sensuous follows in the footsteps of his last few efforts. It has the feel of one person spending a lot of time in a studio making things perfect. There’s a lot of synthesizer and electronic sounds and bleeps but the live show is stripped down to a rocking four piece band that mostly consisted of two guitars, bass, and drums(with a good mix of keys and a little thermin action).
The night’s show was billed as “The Cornelius Band present the Sensuous Synchronized Show” which just about says it all. Apparently it takes most of the day to set up the stage, screens, and lights, and it’s obvious that everyone taking part in the “show” is a near perfectionist. Most bands who play to synchronized video usually have tracks so that they can make sure the music and video are perfectly in time. For “Fit Song”, the first single off the new album, they played along flawlessly to the elaborate music video, without any noticeable tracks, which still mystifies me.
Knife, Steph, and I were all located a few folks back from the stage on the left hand side and our extended group of friends were all getting down. I was a bit surprised to see so many people standing still. Songs like “Gum” off the new album, demand getting down. I summarized that the light show was drawing a lot of attention and maybe some people were a little burnt from Coachella. Either way it was one hell of a show and I can only hope that more people will be able to experience it.
Our boys in Holy F-ck opened the night and they were the perfect band for the job. With their groove-heavy, mostly-instrumental jams, they mixed it up proper and the crowd was very receptive. They also played the Prospector the following night where Ikey Owens sat in for half the set on melodica and keys. Both nights they closed their set with their single “Lovely Allen” off their new self-titled EP which is my favorite song of theirs and a great way to end things with a BANG.
If you’re on the right side of the US, you still might be able to check out Cornelius and Holy F-ck on their abbreviated US tour. DON’T miss this. Cornelius doesn’t play the US often and you’ll never see anything else like it.
