cornelius obscurities

“Coloris” – Cornelius (download)
from Coloris OST (unreleased) (2006)

“Mixed Bizness (Cornelius remix)” – Beck (download)
from Mixed Bizness EP (2000)

“Music (Japanese version)” – Petra Haden (download) (buy)
from Gum EP (2008)

(files expire January 28th)

Super-dooper-like-whoa psyched for the Cornelius gig at Webster Hall next Saturday. And you should be, too. As such, here’s some arcana from the shibuya-kei bitmaster.

First up is part of his contribution to the soundtrack to the Gameboy Advance game Coloris (thanks to Dessgeega for the YouTube vid). I’d love to hear more of this stuff! I like the idea of writing loops and algorithms and standalone pieces of music for video games as a formal challenge to create music that is economical, simple, and satisfying.

Cornelius’s take on Beck’s “Mixed Bizness” is probably my single favorite remix of all time, let alone in the deep catalogues of both Hansen and Oyamada. If there were ever any doubts about one being the Oriental/Occidental counterpart to the other, the mind-blowing singularity of this cut should blow them like so many oblique paper creatures.

My major problem was last year’s Sensuous was its seeming abandonment of the acoustic side of the electro-acoustic equation. On the new Gum EP, vocal acrobat Petra Haden’s take on “Music,” Sensuous‘s penultimate cut, re-humanizes the hyper-organized bleeps. (Also included is Haden’s English language version of the same.)