VIDEO

Cornelius plays live in New York City.

It's said that love is the universal language, but sometimes so is a musical gadget.

The sight of my Zoom 4-track recorder, which always leads people to ask, "Is that a taser gun?" excites Japanese musician Keigo Oyamada when I arrive for our interview at a New York City club prior to his performance.

I don't speak Japanese and his English is limited, but that doesn't stop us from briefly geeking out over the virtues of fancy digital recorders. Oyamada, who's better known to his fans as Cornelius, says he has one at home, a more expensive Sony model that I've drooled over.

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GOING FOR THE OPTIMUM SETTINGS

Later in his dressing room, he explains through his translator Ricky Domen how he uses it to make music.

"I like to find and capture sounds that sound like music at certain moments," he says.

Take an ink jet printer, for example, which he recorded, edited, looped and used as a foundation for a song on his latest album, "Sensuous." He's used chirping birds and running water in the past.

For "Sensuous," Oyamada says he made it a point to record all of his found sounds at optimum settings. That's 24 bit, 96 kHz for all you techies out there. The result is a crisp, meticulously pristine production quality where every nuance of each layered sample can be distinctively heard.

"Each sound is laid out in a constructive way, so that the more you listen to it the more complex it gets," says Oyamada.

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BANG YOUR HEAD...OR NOT

At times his music entices you to dance, at others to bang your head in heavy metal fashion. There are flourishes of the Beach Boys, the Beatles, Pink Floyd and Joao Gilberto to name a few.

It's an acquired taste, for sure. But like it or not, it's hard to deny that there's a freshness and uniqueness to the 38-year-old musician's eclectic repertoire. For now, his popularity in America remains limited, but like so many artists who are ahead of their time, Oyamada's talents will one day be revered by music historians.

His musical career began in his teens, as a member of Lollipop Sonic. His next band, Flipper's Guitar, was a pop duo that paid homage to '80s British pop. In the early '90s he started his now-defunct record label Trattoria and shortly afterward embarked on his solo career, taking on the moniker Cornelius -- an homage to Roddy McDowall's character in "Planet of the Apes."

"Fantasma" was his first record released in the United States in 1998, two years after Beck's "Odelay." Like "Odelay," it was full of cutups and collages. "Fantasma" covered a lot musical terrain: cartoon music, video game blips,'60s psychedelia, noise rock and classical. Sudden and surprising musical twists and turns were to be found everywhere.

On "Sensuous" and its precursor, "Point," the shifts are much more subtle and the music a lot more linear. It's a reflection of the, "personal influences from the environment around me," he says.

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WORKING 9-TO-5

Oyamada lives in a "very residential area" of Setagaya, the largest ward in Tokyo, with his son and wife. It's a 15-minute drive to his recording studio in the trendy neighborhood of Nakameguro. He tries to stick to a Monday through Friday, 9-to-5 work schedule, preferring to treat the music making process as an office job.

He has several ways of recording. Sometimes he's able to recreate a particular sound in his head with a guitar or another instrument. Once recorded, it's downloaded into one of many software programs and edited. If he finds himself short of ideas, he simply fires up a synthesizer or a piece of audio software and starts tweaking knobs and faders until he finds a suitable beat, drone or hum. And if that's not cutting it, he'll perhaps turn to a theremin for some inspiration.

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THEREMIN? I DON'T EVEN KNOW HIM

On stage in New York City last week, the theremin (which was invented in the early 1900s by a Russian technician and is played by moving the hands around two metal antennae controlling the pitch and volume) was a central part of his show. At one point, he brought an audience member up on stage and held his hands to the instrument, guiding him through a solo. The crowd ate it up.

Visuals also played a prominent role in his show, from a shot of young kid with multiple ears floating around his head or quick successions of animation reminiscent of a skit from the 1970s educational program "The Electric Company." For one song he played a box to control the Claymation-like figures that appeared on a large screen behind the stage. As the band played faster, Oyamada sped up their movement. Later in the show, he let audience members give it a try.

Oyamada thrives on interactivity and is able to appreciate the fact that technology is such that people are able to take an artist's work and reinterpret it and share it with the whole world.

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LOVES TO BE MASHED UP

During our interview, Oyamada, whose remixing talents are in high demand by everyone from Beck to Blur and the Avalanches, lights up when describing a YouTube.com posting that mashed up one of his videos with a Flaming Lips song.

"Music is fun to listen to, but there's also other ways to enjoy music these days -- and it keeps broadening," he says.

He likens the dissemination of music to the germination process.

"By listening to and watching other people's work, I'm then able to spread more seeds," he says. "And if people listen and enjoy my music then, hopefully, they'll go on to spread more."

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Jaime Holguin is an asap reporter in New York.

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