The year was 1993 when Shibuya-kei was officially recognized as a new genre of music. Named after the Shibuya district of Tokyo that gave birth to the new sound, Shibuya-kei was a form of Japanese pop heavily influenced by the sounds of 1960’s western pop music. Cornelius, a Japanese musician and producer, is credited as being foundational to the genre, and in 1997 he brought Shibuya-kei onto the international stage with his album “Fantasma” which landed him praise from Western music critics. Cornelius went on to release “Point” in 2001 and “Sensuous” in 2006, and then he stopped. The genre that had restructured the Japanese music industry soon vanished along with him,
It’s been eleven years since Cornelius’s last solo album, Shibuya-kei has long been considered a “dead” genre and now Cornelius emerges from this hiatus with a new album titled “Mellow Waves,” in a genre that is considered by many to have died out long ago. So how does one emerge from an eleven year long break and breathe life into a dying genre? With a fresh sound and a fresh start.
From the very first track it becomes clear that Cornelius’s sound has changed, his albums have become calmer with each release, and this work is by far his calmest (hence the name “Mellow Waves”). This album is a huge departure from Cornelius’s past works, it’s less playful and experimental than his earlier material, but the album still makes it clear that it is done by the same talented individual. The album is dominated by soothing synth noises mixed with light acoustic guitar. Cornelius’s dreamlike singing almost sounds as though he is singing a lullaby to the listener, enticing them into a peaceful slumber. Overall this album flows much better than his other albums, there’s less variation or experimentation in the instrumentation than his other works. Personally I find this to be disappointing, as some of my favorite songs by Cornelius are the ones where he incorporates the sounds of dripping water or samples himself doing a mic check. This album offers very little of that, the closest “Mellow Waves” gets to sounding like past Cornelius is on the song Helix / Spiral in which the vocals are sung by what appears to be a text-to-speech robot. This album is also much more ambient than past Cornelius works. The final song off the album, Crepuscule, is a good example of this and it is an instrumental acoustic guitar duet that slowly fades off.
The album remains very consistent throughout, and the songs are all fairly good but not outstanding. There is nothing off this album that really stands out amongst the others. This is by no means the best work by Cornelius, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad or that I even dislike it. The album is good, it’s just not Cornelius’s best. Certainly worth a listen, but if you’re only going to listen to one album by Cornelius you should listen to “Fantasma” over this.
“Mellow Waves” is considered to be a new release in the Shibuya-kei genre, but I kind of disagree with that ruling. The album seems more like an ambient pop album than a Shibuya-kei album with only the occasional song like 夢の中で actually sounding like a Shibuya-kei song. I’m a big fan of the this genre and I’d love to say that this album has successfully revived it, but in my opinion it hasn’t. Shibuya-kei is a genre that’s known to be upbeat and playful and this album isn’t. Shibuya-kei needs to go back to it’s roots of eccentric pop music, the very last thing it should do is mellow out.
Written by DJ TJ
