Cornelius at Webster Hall

By: Alibastard | in: Music |

Cornelius

It’s not uncommon for musicians to have employed the most advanced and eccentric performative elements within their live shows these days. At this point, most of them seem owing to the psychedelic antics of The Flaming Lips, who, themselves, point their fingers unabashedly towards pre-sellout Butthole Surfers for many of the key elements involved. Overall, Wayne Coyne-led shenanigans excluded, the obligatory shtick of party-throwing non-sequitors is getting somewhat dull.

But with the highly synchronized, audio-visual performance of Cornelius’ “Sensuous” tour, glimpsed to my supreme satisfaction at last little more than a Friday ago, the Japanese multi-media artist maintained fresh new territory within that romantically gutted, ballroom-in-the-round, Webster Hall.

For starters a barrage of music videos accompanies each song, ranging from re-appropriated B-reel collage pieces (penned most likely from Cornelius’ own hands), surprisingly well-executed home video projects (one involving his hand “walking” on two fingers through a series of environments), powerfully meditative animations and high caliber, tastefully CGI-infused short films (of which “Fit” is particularly mesmerizing. Peter Gabriel eat your heart out…).

Cornelius

Alongside this display of bewitching, frequently hand-made and perfectly synched visual material, is Cornelius’ performance itself. Introduced with dancing color bars, their shadows and spotlights eventually beckoning the white sheet between band and audience to drop like hell to the ground, the quartet rips open with neon perfection and joyous self-reflexivity, each with their own personal wind-chime to ignite mischievously somewhere throughout the show. And Cornelius plays guitar. And Cornelius sings. And Cornelius pulls a kid from the audience at some point and guides his hand through a spontaneous theremin solo. And he’s totally genuine meanwhile.

And the Cornelius Band blasts through “I Hate Hate” and trips through the explosive ether with “Watadori” and nearly explodes with “Gum”.
Downstairs I was still swimming at the bar. A strange assortment of scantily clad women were prancing into a closed-off section of double doors, which had the sign “Ladies Only”. Webster Hall was up to its old tricks again, nurturing the competing tastes of its audiences’ polarized interests. From the bartender’s description, there were apparently near-naked men shucking and grinding for an audience of these girls, a small group of guys waiting in the bar for the panting spectators’ need for attainable after-party hook-ups thereafter.
I had met two Columbia grad students with a weekly four-square tournament, danced till exhaustion, saw two random friends I had gone to school with and was no where near a creep-show striptease. So I was happy I saw Cornelius instead.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWgqwuG2TBA

Website
Myspace
The Plugg - Cornelius - Sensuous

[Subscribe to this feed]

Posted on May 26, 2007