Cornelius has put a new album into focus. Keigo Oyamada will release Refractions on August 19 through Eat Your Own Ears Recordings, and the announcement arrives with “Aeons,” a new collaboration with Sean Ono Lennon.
The guest list is the immediate tell that Refractions is not being framed as a tidy solo reset. Pitchfork reports that the album also features Shintaro Sakamoto, Arto Lindsay, and Bid from the Monochrome Set, while Stereogum’s tracklist places Lennon on “Aeons,” Sakamoto on “まざらない / Mazaranai,” Bid on “You Make Me Cyborg,” and Lindsay on “Bad Advice.”
“Aeons” is the first piece of this rollout that feels like a full visual world rather than just a breadcrumb. The official single page points listeners to the track across streaming services, while the YouTube description credits lyrics and vocals to Sean Ono Lennon and music to Cornelius. The song’s clean pulse, clipped guitar flashes, and mirrored-room video all sit in that Cornelius lane where pop structure and gallery-installation logic keep swapping seats.
Refractions follows a renewed stretch of Cornelius activity after his Eat Your Own Ears signing. Pitchfork’s earlier coverage of the label deal noted the 2024 Bad Advice/Mind Train EP and Ethereal Essence, as well as 2023’s Dream in Dream, but the new album reads like the formal next chapter: nine tracks, several collaborators, and a title that sounds almost too on-the-nose for an artist who has spent decades making sound behave like architecture.
The Refractions tracklist is: “Refractions,” “まざらない / Mazaranai,” “You Make Me Cyborg,” “Aeons,” “Mirrors,” “Bad Advice,” “夢寝見 / Yumenemi,” “Twisting & Glistening,” and “溶解線 / Dissolving Line.”