Cornelius - 69/96 (1995)

Okay, here's where things start to get crazy. Cornelius moves even further away from his more pop-oriented roots with this second album 69/96. I've always felt that the Japanese perspective is unique. It's particularly fascinating when this lens is focused on Western music. To lack the baggage of being born and living in Western society can lead to a creativity that is free of a reference point. I see this in the crazy 70s metal take of "Heavy Metal Thunder," to the warped psychedelia of "How Do You Feel?" to the breakbeat electronica sound of "Volunteer Ape Man (Disco)." I suppose it's the style jumping and collage mentality that inspires most critics to compare Cornelius to Beck. I've never been very comfortable with this, though; for my money, Cornelius' work is much more interesting and consistent, heck, it's simply better.

Check out the music video for "Moon Walk":



Cornelius cohort Kahimi Karie lends her syrupy sweet vocals to the opening intro track and to "69/96 Girl Meets Cassette." Check out this clip from a variety show on Japanese channel NHK where they appear together to lip-sync "Moon Walk" and "69/96 Girl Meets Cassette." Love that theremin:



This is another album I grabbed from the excellent bittorrent tracker JPOPSUKI. Most rips of this Trattoria rarity stop at track 15. Tracks 16 through 68 are an ocean soundscape replete with cawing seagulls. Track 69 is a short track called "World's End Humming." Tracks 70 through 95 are digital silence and, finally, track 96 is another short track called "Welcome to the Jungle." All of this track finagling was done presumably to create music tracks 69 and 96 to fit the concept of the album title. Although I haven't mentioned it before, I always use mpTrim Pro to strip the digital silence from the beginning and end of all my MP3 tracks, whether I encode them myself or download it elsewhere. So, after stripping the silence, I used MP3 Splitter & Joiner to merge tracks 16 through 68 into one 4:08 track. For lack of a better title, I called this new joined track "16-68."

If you enjoy this album, be sure to check out Cornelius' in-print third and fourth albums, 1998's Fantasma and 2002's Point. Both are absolutely incredible. Fantasma is generally considered the apex, but I personally prefer Point for its razor-sharp production values and completely unique sound. Speaking of which, if you get a chance to watch Cornelius' DVD video collection for Point (called Five Point One), do it. The album is aggressively remixed into full 5.1 surround sound and the imagery is completely mind-blowing. 2006's Sensuous is, unfortunately, a fairly mediocre album. But still, even mediocre Cornelius sits at a fairly high quality level and is worth checking out.

Cornelius - 69/96 (1995)
1. 69/96 A Space Odyssey ~Prelude (In Atami) (1:19)
2. Moon Walk (5:31)
3. Brand New Season (5:18)
4. Volunteer Ape Man (Disco) (5:26)
5. 1969 (Case of Monsieur Kamayatsu) (0:21)
6. How Do You Feel? (5:47)
7. 1969 (4:25)
8. Last Night in Africa (5:10)
9. 1996 (1:03)
10. Blow My Mind (3:19)
11. 69/96 Girl Meets Cassette (4:17)
12. Concerto No. 3 From the Four Seasons (Pink Bloody Sabbath) (1:03)
13. Heavy Metal Thunder (5:54)
14. Rock/96 (7:16)
15. World's End Humming ~Reprise (In Hawaii) (2:27)
16. 16-68 (4:08)
69. World's End Humming (0:33)
96. Welcome to the Jungle (1:18)

111.09MB RAR archive
MP3: Variable bitrate (239.6kbps average)
Exact Audio Copy w/LAME 3.97 (--preset fast extreme)

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