Cornelius: Keigo "Cornelius" Oyamada.
Personnel: Toyoaki Mishima (programming).
Audio Mixer: Toru Takayama.
Photographer: Masakazu Kitayama.
Translator: Ricky Domen.
The Japanese sample wizard's sophomore domestic full-length is less cut-and-paste and more fully realized than its predecessor, demonstrating Cornelius's developing technical smarts and sophistication. He combines airy vocals that recall such other pop experimenters as Chicago's Sea And Cake with a variety of cannily incorporated rhythmic backgrounds, including running water samples in "Drop," and bird calls. The tapestry is complex and varied, with multi-layered harmonies and acoustic guitars contributing to the pastoral atmosphere of many of the tracks.
In contrast, there's the choppy funk of "Smoke," complete with apocalyptic guitar solo, the synthetic Brazilian rhythms of "Bird Watching At Inner Forest," and hard, amphetamine rock on "I Hate Hate," whose one lyric is a terse Japanese "Damn!" But the point where POINT's elements really take off is a beautifully set version of the classic "Brazil," where a gorgeous computerized vocal seems to embody both the song's Technicolor tackiness and its simple, lyrical yearning. minimize