Starting with 2001's
Point
,
Cornelius
'
Keigo Oyamada
took a gentler, but just as inventive, approach to his music by forsaking surprising contrasts in favor of thoroughly exploring a few ideas and sounds on each album. He seemed to reach the apogee of this style with
Mellow Waves
' delicate ebb and flow, but
Dream in Dream
might be an even lighter and smoother excursion.
Oyamada
uses a tightly curated palette to create its ambient-jazz-pop meditations on perception and impermanence: warm, buzzy synths, shimmering, droning electronic washes, and guitars that are either taut or rippling. He combines these 1970s and '80s-indebted musical building blocks with the same imaginative attention to detail that made
Fantasma
's collisions of
the Beach Boys
Bach
, and
My Bloody Valentine
a Shibuya-kei masterpiece, and
reveals other connections to
' music as a whole. "Change and Vanish" begins the album with a spacious, tender,
-like invitation before getting lost in spiraling synths. Driven by live drums, "Sparks"' laid-back but intricate pop is as captivating as
Sensuous
' "Breezin'" or
's "Drop."
often resembles a more minimalist version of the latter album; like
, its streamlined gestures express a universe of moods. "Night Heron"'s chilled-out funk has a mischievous slink that evokes the music of frequent collaborator
Shintaro Sakamoto
, who penned the lyrics to "Drifts," a flickering reverie embellished with theremin and clarinet. Two of the album's highlights touch on
' other projects and friendships. He gives a city pop sheen to "Environmental," a song he originally performed with the supergroup
METAFIVE
, whose founder,
Yellow Magic Orchestra
member
Yukihiro Takahashi
, passed a few months before
's release.
pays tribute to
Takahashi
again on "All Things Must Pass," naming its bittersweet acceptance of life's comings and goings after one of his favorite
George Harrison
songs. ~ Heather Phares