Dream In Dream (Deluxe Edition)

Starting with 2001s Point, Cornelius Keigo Oyamada took a gentler, but just as inventive, approach to his music by forsaking surprising contrasts in favor of thoroughly exploring a few ideas and sounds on each album. He seemed to reach the apogee of this style with Mellow Waves delicate ebb and flow, but Dream in Dream might be an even lighter and smoother excursion. Oyamada uses a tightly curated palette to create its ambient-jazz-pop meditations on perception and impermanence: warm, buzzy synths, shimmering, droning electronic washes, and guitars that are either taut or rippling. He combines these 1970s and 80s-indebted musical building blocks with the same imaginative attention to detail that made Fantasmas collisions of the Beach Boys, Bach, and My Bloody Valentine a Shibuya-kei masterpiece, and Dream in Dream reveals other connections to Cornelius music as a whole. "Change and Vanish" begins the album with a spacious, tender, Mellow Waves-like invitation before getting lost in spiraling synths. Driven by live drums, "Sparks" laid-back but intricate pop is as captivating as Sensuous "Breezin" or Points "Drop." Dream in Dream often resembles a more minimalist version of the latter album; like Point, its streamlined gestures express a universe of moods. "Night Heron"s chilled-out funk has a mischievous slink that evokes the music of frequent collaborator Shintaro Sakamoto, who penned the lyrics to "Drifts," a flickering reverie embellished with theremin and clarinet. Two of the albums highlights touch on Cornelius other projects and friendships. He gives a city pop sheen to "Environmental," a song he originally performed with the supergroup METAFIVE, whose founder, Yellow Magic Orchestra member Yukihiro Takahashi, passed a few months before Dream in Dreams release. Oyamada pays tribute to Takahashi again on "All Things Must Pass," naming its bittersweet acceptance of lifes comings and goings after one of his favorite George Harrison songs. ~ Heather Phares

6年ぶりのオリジナル作は、前作『Mellow Waves』に続く歌もの中心の作品と位置付けられるだろう。だが、今回は"変わる消える"以外のすべての詞を自身が手掛け、その自身の言葉こそに重きを置いている点において、前作を含む過去作とは異なる地平へと進んでいる。選び取られたシンプルで乾いた言葉は、彼流のミニマルな音像と不可分に結びつき、現実とサイケデリック、痛みやメランコリー、エモーションを立体的に描く。胸が熱くなる瞬間は多いが、禁欲的な展開から〈蜃気楼〉の一言でハーモニーがぐにゃりと歪む"蜃気楼"に痺れた。シンガー・ソングライターとしてのCorneliusの在りようを示す重要作だ。
bounce (C)澤田大輔