The Cornelius Group

After giving an impromptu speech in Japanglish about the wonders of working abroad with AIESEC, I had the entire afternoon to waste until the Cornelius concert. Concerts in Japan start around 6 or 7 pm, which is considerably earlier than any concert I've ever been to. I assume it's so people can still catch the train home when the show is finished.

The concert is fairly crowded, and incredibly hot. Then the band plays, and I'm extremely happy to say it was an actual band. With someone like Cornelius, I was afraid a lot of it would be sampled, which would leave the concert with just a couple people pushing buttons and not really entertaining anyone (ie Four Tet live). There was a complete band of 4 members, and while 3 of them stayed mostly with their respective instruments (drum, bass, guitar), the fourth would switch from crazy machines to guitar with crazy machines activated by pedals.

The entire show was synchronized with video being projected in the background. At several parts during the show, a camera was set up on the stage, pointed out at the crowd. The camera caught some segments of audio and video, that was then remixed with some crazy controller. Actually, for a lot of the concert, when Cornelius wasn't singing, he was working some controller to edit video live, as well as looping music that he was capturing. It was impressive.

So, as I already said, the entire show was synchronized with the projected video. A bird would fly, and everytime a tree would appear on screen, it would correspond with a particular instrument. Imagine any Michel Gondry music video. The videos were amazing, as well. Most of it was stop motion, and it's really hard to describe. Hopefully, they'll release a collection on dvd, because it was very impressive.

I barely caught the last bus, and barely made it to my apartment before the torrential rains started. I sit here at an unplugged/no internet laptop, for fear of the lightning ruining my only method of contact with the world outside of Japan; my laptop. Luckily, I have far less concern for the tv that came with the apartment and my record player, so I am able to save battery and listen to records.