Fantasma

Taking his stage name from Roddy McDowall’s character in Planet Of The Apes, former Flipper’s Guitar member Keigo Oyamada produced arguably the defining record of Tokyo’s eclectic cut-and-paste Shibuya-kei scene of the mid-90s. It’s reductive to describe Cornelius as the Japanese Beck, as many did upon Fantasma’s US release on Matador in 1998. He may share much of the post-modern magpie moves listeners were wowed by on Odelay, but the kaleidoscopic Fantasma is far more difficult to pin down – a head-spinning fantasia of breaks, cult film samples, 50s kitsch and spangled psychedelic pop that spoke of Oyamada’s deep love for his hero, The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson.