Cornelius is a pseudonym for Japanese musician Keigo Oyamada, born January 27, 1969. His pseudonym is actually derived from a character in Planet of the Apes that carries the same name, Cornelius. As a musician his first taste of fame was as a member of the pop duo Flipper’s Guitar, one the key groups of the Tokyo Shibuya-kei (A subgenre of the Japanese pop music) scene. Following the disbandment of Flipper’s Guitar in 1991, Oyamada with the name ‘Cornelius’ went solo.

Cornelius genre can be said as rock and is mostly experimental and exploratory. He first debut was in 1993 with the EP Holydays in the Sun, the first release from his own Trattoria label. His big break came in the release of 1994′s full-length The First Question Award and a year later he issued the album 69/96, followed in 1996 by the remix 96/69. In 1997, Cornelius then released the Fantasma which became his creative and commercial breakthrough.  Cornelius while being hailed as a genius and future of Rock and Roll by many, is also interested in design, fashion, video, conceptual and pop art, and live extravaganzas. As stated in Wikipedia, his practice of bringing in sounds and samples from mass culture, pure electronic tones, and sounds from nature as seen in his Point album, lead Cornelius to become categorized as “acquired taste“.