S(o)un(d)beams is one of the greatest albums you never heard from 2011: a collaboration between mainstream(ish) J-Pop singer Salyu – noted for her extraordinarily powerful upper register and her Quentin Tarantino connection – and avant-garde Japanese pop icon Cornelius.
It’s a fun and imaginative investigation into the human voice: sampling, layering and looping Salyu’s voice and keyboards (mainly). At times, it recalls early 80s close harmony vocal trio The Roches, obscure noise minimalists Miu Mau and Ode To Joy (the Muppets version).
Surrounded by the colour and detritus of Goma’s Future Beauty Japanese fashion season, Cornelius (guitar) and Salyu (keys, vocals) – backed by a light jazz-pop troupe that includes Yumiko Ohno of Grand Royal act Buffalo Daughter – bring S(o)un(d)beams into glorious, vivid life.
It hardly matters half the crowd don’t understand the language: these songs are structured around vowel sounds and dissonant consonants, not words. The vocal acrobatica is skillfully played out in front of our disbelieving ears. The dissonance is offset by the beauty. The jazz licks merge with traditional Japanese wind chimes and a well-placed finger snaps
The opening song S(o)un(d)beams is six minutes of glorious ebb and flow: three voices, the left, right and centre channels switching and double backing upon one another with adroit confusion, drums and bass a low throb. Likewise, the more upbeat and mischievous YouTube cult hit Just Friends welcomed in by a metronomic pulse, taken over by handclaps and vocals.
There’s something almost childish in the pleasure that salyu x salyu derive from the constant interaction of voices, nicely offseting more solemn moments like Sailing Days – think slowly drifting spring landscapes – and the clearly clinical (yet often spontaneous) execution of songs like first encore, the ballad Hostile To Me. Let's Dance in Rain Boots is haunting and beautifully spaced, as is the unexpected and totally wonderful Roches cover (Robert Fripp’s guitar parts expertly covered by Cornelius).
Towards the end, the band step it up a pace and layer the funk on with the sound collage, with Slave and Mirror Neurotic. Cornelius cuts loose on the joyful and fat psychedelic guitar – sparking off the evening’s only serious bout of dancing from a couple of hardy souls down the front. A most extraordinary and invigorating evening. Shame she didn’t play her take on Heroes And Villains – she’d have totally brought the house down. Magical, nonetheless. From: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/feb/02/cornelius-presents-salyu-x-salyu-review
