4 out of 5

Label: Matador

Produced by: Keigo Oyamada

It’s just music.  Miraculously produced and composed music, but nonetheless.

I heard ‘Count Five or Six’ on a Matador comp I bought like the first week I worked at a music store – a mall Sam Goody – and was immediately drawn in by the accessible rock factor.  I toyed with getting a Cornelius album for a while, but Modest Mouse’s ‘Heart Cooks Brain’ was also on that comp and I ended up getting that disc first… which sort of shaped my indie pursuits down a post-rock avenue thereafter.    And along the way (and in part due to the same comp), I heard Pizzicato Five and just sort of ‘got it,’ and realized I probably would never get that Cornelius album.  It’s wrong, of course, to brush off an artist based on other groups linked to that artist or the genre (Cornelius generally being tossed into the shibuya-kei noise-pop scene), but it wasn’t so much that as it crystallized a concept that’s pretty much remained true for me: when it’s just music, regardless of how infectious or inventive, I have a tough time getting into it.  I can only appreciate it from a surface level, but it never becomes that disc I want to listen to.  This spirals off into a conversation on genre over content, and isn’t something to get into here.  Firstly because you hate me, but secondly because Fantasma is by no means a mass offender of this concept.  It gets as close to emotional highs as is possible within its exploratory, experimental pop, but there’s still definitely a stress on music uber alles.  Half the tracks’ lyrics are empty odes to song (New Music Machine, Clash) or hazy psychedelic narratives that fittingly involve Elephant 6 kids (Chapter 8).

The compositions are jaw-dropping at points – just check the breathless electronic / sampling / guitar mash-ups of Micro Disneycal World Tour or 2010 – and also proof positive that Oyamada (Cornelius) has an ear for what sounds right, as every track, whether blistering rock like Count Five or Six or Free Fall or a 7-minute epic like God Only Knows, stretches on for just long enough and effectively fades into the next genre swirl.

But it’s still just music.  And because these compositions get so close to breaking through that barrier, it’s almost a slight disappointment that Oyamada doesn’t push himself that bit further.  Alas, that’s not the scene.  And if these is your scene, maybe the toe-tapping is enough to make that emotional connection, and you’d give it five stars.  Remember how this isn’t your review, though?