Few artists occupy such a singular place in contemporary music as Cornelius, the project of Japanese musician, producer and composer Keigo Oyamada. Emerging in the early 90s after the break-up of the influential Tokyo pop group Flipper’s Guitar, he found international fame with Fantasma (1997), a cult record that blended psychedelic pop, electronics, musique concrète, hip hop and the avant-garde, earning him comparisons with The Beach Boys, Beck and the Beastie Boys. Almost 30 years later, its B-side “Typewrite Lesson” has found new life thanks to TikTok and the support of artists such as Rosalía.

It was followed by albums such as Point, Sensuous and Mellow Waves, along with collaborations and remixes for Blur, Beck, MGMT, James Brown and Yoko Ono. In August 2026, he released Refractions, an album written between 2024 and 2025 that explores perception, memory and shifting realities. Unlike his more introspective previous records, this one opens outwards through collaboration: Sean Ono Lennon, who provides vocals and lyrics on the single “Aeons”, Arto Lindsay, Bid (The Monochrome Set) and Shintaro Sakamoto all feature on it.

His live shows, with visuals synchronised down to the millisecond, blur the line between concert, installation and sensory experience. Now, he returns to Sónar for the fourth time to prove he’s still reinventing his own language.