The pastiche of whatever is on one’s plate that passes for post-modernism was driven to its breaking point during the time when hip hop revealed what recorded music was capable of. As the notions aurally expressed on break beat albums covered the globe and ushered in an international movement – or at least continued one with significant stylistic updates – there were a number of producers who figured sample based music needn’t any longer be just about dancing. And as a result of that, a slew of complex, composerly efforts cropped up during the late eighties and early nineties.

One of those releases which maintained its entertainment value over the subsequent twenty years or so sprung from the mind of a producer working under the name Cornelius. While that name might only summon images of the cartoon pig serving as Duckman’s sidekick, in the realm of music he was Keigo Oyamada, a Tokyo native as indebted to the lush sixties harmonies of pop bands as he was – and remains – an adherent to difficult electronic musics. Well, that and every other kind of music imaginable.

After working in a group called Flipper’s Guitar – it had to have sounded better in Japanese – the early nineties offered up an opportune time to move beyond the staid pop music and embrace any or all of his musical influences.

Pretty frequently, Cornelius’ albums find themselves compaired to Beck’s genre bounding work. And while that might not be an inept touchstone to proffer, the Japanese producer works in much more diverse styles and eschews any of the acerbic lyrical stuff often associated with his State’s side brethren.

The first of his discs’ to be properly distributed here, through Matador, Fantasma arrived in 1997, a bit too late to get lumped into America’s then recent fascination with new dance musics, and to odd to be alternative. While one’s inability to properly sit the work within a category was a hallmark of its success, it may have also contributed to Cornelius not locating a huge following. Or it could have just been that his music was bizarre.

“Magoo Opening” sounds like the Dumbo soundtrack if it were composed by Pee Wee Herman after ingesting a speedball. And much the same can be said for album opener “2010,” which is a hair more paranoid that its latter album partner.

Of course, given the bent of his method, Cornelius tosses in an appropriate nod to hip hop stuffs on “Mic Check,” which features a pervasive sample repeating the title of the track. Musically, the song’s all lopping beats with brief pauses to insert some obtuse sample while heading back into the fray just moments later. It probably counts as the only truly rap related effort here. But again, the methodology of this producer, despite the results occasionally sounding punky, poppy or otherwise, sit him firmly in a tradition spawned in the South Bronx and spread all over the world.

Portions of Fantasma are going to come in too difficult of dilettantes, but anyone truly interested in exploring sampled music is going to be instantly enamored.