One of my favorite party tricks: Pull up a bunch of Cornelius videos on a screen, mute it, and slowly wait for people to demand to hear the sonic magic accompanying the surrealistic images. It literally works every time. This is truly visual music, and a rare case in which one enhances the other.

For over two decades, the Japanese artist Cornelius (born Keigo Oyamada) has played with both wildly inventive indie-rock and minimalist electronic music, like a buzzing wind-up toy from another dimension. Mellow Waves is his first album in 11 years, and today's announcement comes with a video for "If You're Here," featuring visuals from Koichiro Tsujikawa, who made many of the eye-opening videos for 2006's Sensuous. This one's no different, a fluid journey through a blue canvas, as Cornelius croons over a slow jam.

Mellow Waves comes out July 1 on Rostrum. Track list below:

"If You're Here"
"Sometime / Someplace"
"Dear Future Person"
"Surfing on Mind Wave pt 2"
"In A Dream"
"Helix / Spiral"
"Mellow Yellow Feel"
"The Spell of a Vanishing Loveliness"
"The Rain Song"
"Crépuscule"

Copyright 2017 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

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