Cornelius

There are two things that serve as the rock solid foundation of the ever-changing musical landscape – pop and experimentation. Occasionally they meet, but more often than not, they tend to stick to their own corners.

** Paul Steel**, a young multi-instrumentalist from Brighton, chooses to stay on the pop side during his opening slot for Cornelius at London’s Koko. All smiles and big harmonies, Steel and his band play to a slowly appreciative audience with an energetic glee that would border on embarrassing if they didn’t carry it off with such oddly heartfelt sincerity. It’s not a performance heralding the arrival of a new pop wunderkind but Steel shows off enough of a glimmer that, come a few of life’s inescapable beatings, he just might craft something with an emotional weight to temper and refine his shiny happy people sensibilities.

But it’s with the tinkling of chimes and coloured barcodes projected onto a white screen hastily erected across the stage that things start taking a turn towards the wonderfully bizarre.

Cornelius first appears on stage as nothing more than a silhouette until the words “Welcome to the Cornelius Synchronised Road Show” flash across the screen. It all comes tumbling down in a blinding flash of light and noise only to reveal the man himself standing there dressed as an extra from A Clockwork Orange – bowler hat and all.

With an explosion of ever-shifting visuals projected behind the band, Cornelius and his entourage of musicians launch into songs like ‘Breezing’, which, with its heavy use of synths, repetition and harmonies, takes on a richer, more organic feel in the live arena; elsewhere, _‘Point’ and_ ‘Drop’, off his previous LP, are wildly cheered on by the crowd. An audio and visual spectacle that few would even dare attempt in this day and age, Cornelius does everything he can to take his audience on a Technicolor ride. At one point he brings someone up on stage and guides them by the hand through a Theremin solo, while later on he steps into the crowd with a sampler and lets people select the next sound sequence. But it’s during _‘Beep Beep’ that the sheer spectacle of the evening hits a high mark when a spiralling light show is splashed across Koko’s giant disco ball decorated ceiling and transforms the venue into a kaleidoscopic firework display in some far off fantasy land. It’s a far cry from the stripped back minimalism heard on his recent recorded efforts.