Keigo Oyamada, also known by his moniker Cornelius, is a Japanese musician and producer who co-founded Flipper’s Guitar, an influential Shibuya-kei band, and subsequently embarked on a solo career. Oyamada was born in Setagaya, Tokyo, Japan. His first claim to fame was as a member of the pop duo Flipper’s Guitar, one of the key groups of the Tokyo Shibuya-kei scene. Following the disbandment of Flipper’s Guitar in 1991, Oyamada donned the “Cornelius” moniker and embarked on a solo career. He commissioned a song, about himself, on Momus’ 1999 album Stars Forever. In 1997, he released the album Fantasma, which landed him praise from American music critics, who called him a “modern-day Brian Wilson” or the “Japanese Beck”.
In April 1999, he performed at The Bowlie Weekender, a music festival curated by Belle and Sebastian. Starting in August, he joined The International Music Against Brain Degeneration Revue, a tour organised by The Flaming Lips—also Bowlie participants—which featured artists including Sebadoh, Robyn Hitchcock, IQU, and Sonic Boom. That same year, he also performed at the Glastonbury, Reading and Leeds, and Coachella festivals. As of September 2006, he was no longer signed to Matador Records. In 2007, Rolling Stone Japan ranked Fantasma in 10th place amongst the “100 Greatest Japanese Rock Albums of All Time”.
In December 2008, Sensurround + B Sides was nominated for Best Surround Sound Album at the 2009 GRAMMY Awards. In 2009, he began performing as a member of Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band. On the album Between My Head and the Sky, released in September of that year, he performed on guitar, bass, Tenori-on, programming, and percussion. In 2010, he contributed the song “Katayanagi Twins vs. Sex Bob-Omb” to the film soundtrack of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. In 2011, he began the salyu × salyu project with Japanese singer Salyu, producing the album s(o)un(d)beams, released in April. In 2013, he participated with Taku Satoh and Yugo Nakamura directing the music for the exhibition Design Ah! at 21_21 Design Sight in Tokyo. In January 2016, METAFIVE—a band formed by Yukihiro Takahashi, Yoshinori Sunahara, Towa Tei, Tomohiko Gondo, Leo Imai, and Oyamada—released its first album, META.
In 2017, he produced the vinyl record Audio Check Track for checking audio equipment settings. That October, he also performed as a special guest at Beck’s live show at the Nippon Budokan. In 2018, he performed three songs from his album Mellow Waves on NPR’s “Tiny Desk Concert”. In the same year, he composed “Audio Architecture” for an exhibition of the same name held in Tokyo. The title of the exhibition was inspired by a phrase used by Sean Ono Lennon to describe Cornelius’s music. In 2019, he released the digital single “Too Much Love for Sauna,” written as the opening theme for Sado, a sauna-themed Japanese TV drama series. Later, a newly arranged version was released in 2024 and used as the opening theme for the sequel, under the title “Too Much Love for Sauna (Falling Deep).” In 2020, he released a limited white vinyl LP—a collection of tracks originally written as background music for PARCO, a cultural complex in Shibuya. Rosalía shared a Met Gala–themed Vogue playlist in May, featuring her all-time favourite songs and including Cornelius’s “Typewrite Lesson.”
In 2021, he released “Forbidden Apple,” an instrumental track featuring the sound of biting an apple, written to showcase Sony’s 360 Reality Audio surround technology (and can also be heard in standard stereo). That same year, he contributed “Kora (Cornelius Remix)” to GoGo Penguin’s May release GGP/RMX. In 2022, he performed Yellow Magic Orchestra’s “Cue” with Haruomi Hosono at a concert celebrating Yukihiro Takahashi’s 50th anniversary in music, and contributed a remodel of “Thatness and Thereness”, originally from Ryuichi Sakamoto’s 1980 album B-2 Unit, to A Tribute to Ryuichi Sakamoto – To the Moon and Back, released in November. In 2023, he exhibited his installation works at “Ambient Kyoto 2023,” which showcased ambient-themed audio visual art. In December, he co-curated a music playlist with Terry Riley for the BBC Radio program “Ambient Focus”.
In 2024, he held Cornelius 30th Anniversary shows in Japan and “Dream In Dream” World Tour 2024. At the Barbican Centre in London, Ichiko Aoba performed as a special guest. he also created the show music for KENZO Fall-Winter 2024 Runway Show by Nigo, presented at Paris Fashion Week in January. Later that year, Velludo—a neo-psychedelic band formed in the late 1980s around him and Shuntaro Okino—released its first album, Between The Lines. In January 2025, Ichiko Aoba brought him out as a special guest at her 15th anniversary concert in Kyoto. In March, he performed at co-headlining concerts with The Flaming Lips in Tokyo, and in October with Ryoji Ikeda in Osaka. The Japanese CD edition of Sparks’ May release MAD! included “Do Things My Own Way (Cornelius Remix)”. On October 7, Gwenno digitally released “Utopia (Cornelius Remix)”.
