First Show of The New Year Is....Cornelius!

On Friday night a the Fillmore, Cornelius (or rather, The Cornelius Group) presented their "Ultimate Sensuous Synchonized Show" - and it was a sight to behold! The show consisted of a long format video presentation that played behind the band and was extremely well synchronized with the music. The vibe was very similar to a Flaming Lips show in that it had the look and feel of a calculated performance, as opposed to a band just being on stage to deliver music.

The video is extremely hard to explain, and hopefully some of our pics will do it justice. It was a highly psychadelic series of images, many of which we were having difficulty figuring out how they were even created. Someone in the Cornelius camp spent just as much time (if not more) getting these videos going as they did on the music.

One of the big surprises for us was the big rock-band feel of the show. We here at H.A.D. had always sort of assumed (obviously incorrectly) that Cornelius was sort of a one man show, and that this would be a DJ-like set. It was really anything but the case: the band was a tight aggressive unit that managed to seamlessly pull of Cornelius' incredibly complex arrangements. The live band format was also welcome in that it gave the songs some new found life: despite adhering to the tracks' intricasies, there was quite a bit of room for experimentation. In particular, Cornelius' guitar playing really showed some shredding instinct that we had no idea was there in the first place!

All in all, this show was solid across the board: the video was spectacular, the band format gave new life to Cornelius' tunes, and the overall performance simply delivered a level of showmanship that's quite unusual in music today. If you have an opportunity to see this show, don't miss it!