In Their Rooms

There is a subculture of musicians who worship the Studio Brian Wilson, the guy who pushed, bent, and manipulated studio recording. These musicians pray to the iconic image of the "In My Room" Brian--the lonely genius creating music to an audience of patch bays and sequencers. One of these musicians has recently gotten under my skin, or into my ears: Keigo Oyamada, who records under the name "Cornelius." His 1998 album "Fantasma" has been cemented into my CD player for the past week. Although the album sounds more along the lines of The Jam meets My Bloody Valentine, the specter of B.W. is strong. He pays homage to B.W. by composing modular music chunks within songs, recreating a few well-known B.W. images and naming a song "God Only Knows." In addition, this tech wiz is perfectly happy to be alone with his ProTools software.