Cornelius Stays on Point

magine yourself in a brand new addition to Disney World--a place called NatureLand, where everything is natural but nothing is real. This is the digital dreamland created by Japanese musician Cornelius on Point, his follow-up album to 1998's Fantasma. Crickets chirp, waves slap, dogs howl and birds sing inside his fake plastic forest of sound, the kind of world where robots go to get it on with birdwatchers as synthetic cicada symphonies hum sex-me-up songs in the background.

Cornelius (formerly known as Keigo Oyamada, in his pre-Planet of the Apes life) has a beautiful habit of using instruments in a way that seems the opposite of what they were intended for. Acoustic guitars make up the beat structure, while drum tracks create melodious paths to places no drums should go. Just as Fantasma provided a playground for hip-hop beats and power-rock guitar riffs to duke it out, Cornelius uses Point as a canvas, mixing the organic with the synthetic until it's hard to figure out if those clicks are coming from a modem or a woodpecker. (Those may sound like waves lapping against the shore, but it's really just a Japanese guy splashing around in a bathtub.)

The result of all this nature vs. nurture cycling is a smattering of sound that delights, but only if you listen closely enough to let it. Even though the tracks flow more smoothly than they did on the cut-and-paste joyride Fantasma, there still isn't much cohesion to be found. The air may be filled with lush exchanges between tropical birds and keyboards, but if your mind wanders off into the forest, so will the charm.