My initial thought was that, with Point, Cornelius had made an album not of songs but of machines: twittering little trinkets and gewgaws, clockwork formalist tricks, hooks, and grooves, tiny snazzy robots covered with push-buttons and blinking lights. I was mostly wrong about this. But back when I didn't know that, I was all set to talk about Cornelius's Other Half-- Takako Minekawa-- and, more importantly, her collaborators in Dymaxion, who are, by my estimation, past masters of the sonic trinketry, the clever formalist motorik grooves, and the whole concept of "songs" as basically Rube Goldberg devices-- these things where you watch Tab A snap ingeniously and unexpectedly into Slot B, and then watch the whole machine teeter back and forth. The trick is that while everyone was trying to meld rock genres and dance genres by throwing blippy textures and drum loops under crunchy guitars, some people decided to use the tools of rock but organize them using the structures of dance or IDM.
Point isn't really as like that as I thought, but let's pretend-- just for a second-- that it is: you couldn't possibly ask for anyone to do that stuff better than Cornelius does. Like him or not, he's pretty much the master of this sort of thing-- evidence is littered from his late-period albums with Flipper's Guitar to solo records like 96/69 to tracks like "Mic Check" and "Magoo Opening" from Fantasma, his more "proper song"-oriented U.S. breakthrough. Evidence is abundant on Point, as well: one need look no further than the moment where "Bird Watching at Inner Forest," a sweet, jaunty samba, suddenly and masterfully disintegrates into "I Hate Hate," a whirlwind of sliced-and-diced cartoon prog that sounds like Aphex Twin making mincemeat of a track by the Fucking Champs. If you're going to talk about someone who can produce-- someone who can slap together shimmery organic instruments with the same agility as the world's best glitchmeisters and laptop guys-- Cornelius really should be mentioned.
And he's gotten a lot better at this than he was on Fantasma, a record that, in retrospect, sounds a little too eager to please-- all the tinny, busy layering and the near-constant bells and whistles now look a little like a hyperactive fourth-grader given free reign at the school talent show. Point backs off. It's more efficient, and thus more minimal: Cornelius has learned where a couple instruments and a couple tricks can do the work of ten of each. It's also a lot smoother and more languid-- the bulk of it actually qualifies to be called "subdued." The cleverness, technical mastery and ping-pong stereo effects are all there in spades, but this time they're all much more mellow than you'd think. Listen right and you'll hardly notice them, because you'll be wrapped up by the thing I initially completely missed-- some of these tracks are just plain lovely as songs.
That's right: you could very satisfyingly listen to Point while casting Cornelius as some kind of modern-day Esquivel, a master of arrangement and studio technologically and virtually everything that makes you cup your hands over your headphones and be just plain wowed by the stuff that's coming out of them. But the thing is that Point, like the IDM records it shares some of its formalist leanings with, gradually reveals itself to contain some song forms that are, without qualification, quite beautiful and expressive, and in completely non-trinkety ways. It sounds as if he's been listening to more bossa nova-- subtle acoustic guitar rhythms are all over this record. It sounds as if he's made a conscious effort to turn his vocal harmonies from chirpy amazements to swooning, dreamy soft-touches. It sounds as if he's basically loosened up, and figured out where subtly funky flows and immersive, bubbly drifts are way more agreeable than hyperactive flashes and non-stop banging. He has, in many senses, mellowed out.
And there's what's good about Point. Cornelius comes across as some sort of über-hipster from the glossy fashion mags, a cultural curator, a buzzy Japanese pastiche guy making music that feels like Bandai pocket games-- I've no doubt that a lot of you will hear Point somewhere and be turned off by precisely this quality, and I'll admit that before throwing Point on I sort of feared that it might be just another totally mid-90s reiteration of that heavily explored model. But Point isn't all about playing with trinkets and baubles. "Point of View Point" develops from an airy bounce into some delicious, dynamic, sweeping chord changes. "Drop" teases you by offering and then withholding a beautiful groove that sounds like Antonio Carlos Jobim taking a stab at writing funk, and then "Another View Point" finishes the job. "Tone Twilight Zone" is the equivalent of a Boards of Canada pastoral played live. "Brazil" applies singing-Macintosh software to a gorgeous laid-back ode with an oddly country-and-western chorus breakdown, and "Fly" is a flat-out prog single, in the best possible way.
Cornelius has done well, and he's done it subtly and unassumingly. If you've spent the last six months feeling inclined to listen solely to alt-country records, this may be Officially Not Your Bag. But it's a handsome little bag, and undoubtedly, some people will take great, great pride in wearing it out.
