That not a single electro-acoustic composer is a household name should not come as a big surprise to me, but I'm surprised given how subtle and rewarding David Toop's Museum of Fruit is. It's not like there are a lot of similar composers vying for your $16. I mean, let's face it: the marketing people are going to have to shell out a serious Shania or Mariah amount of company cash to make the general public aware of the latest electro-acoustic sensation. Eh, the world is a truly weird and enigmatic place.

And so in a stimulating and beautiful way is Museum of Fruit. The title, lest you be confused, does not refer to a crumbling episode of "Are You Being Served?". As the third installment of Caipirinha's Architettura series, David Toop has generated an electro-acoustic appreciation of Itsuko Hasegawa's building that houses-- within spitting distance of Mount Fuji-- the "Museum of Fruit" in Yamanashi, Japan. The museum consists of three huge wire-framed domes nestled into a hillside; each dome resembles an enormous wire-framed puffball fungus.

Toop has been experimenting with sound and commentating on the avant-garde scene for over 20 years now. His book, "Ocean of Sound," has had the same dramatic effect on the ambient scene as his 1984 book "Rap Attack" had on hip-hop. Eggheads and university types should pay attention to what Toop writes because he's not slovenly, he's not a cut-and-paster, and he's far more perceptive than most intellectuals would like to admit. His albums, though few, exhibit these same qualities. Anyone serious about ambient should frequently listen to Toop's Screen Ceremonies and Pink Noir; they're each as graceful as anything Eno has ever produced.

I mean, on his Neroli album, Eno tried to give a musical rendition of the zest of an orange peel. Eno's project falters because in order for the translation of smell into sound to be remotely successful, you pretty much have to be a synaesthete. Toop has not tried to correct Eno's false start, though Museum of Fruit tests Toop's ability to translate physical form and formless sensation into music.

This project requires that Toop not only musically interpret the building, but also that he acoustically render the atmosphere of being inside the building, of the experience of enjoying fruit on display. Toop has got a pretty fructal mojo workin' here, because-– glory be!-– just by staring at the disc's heavily-illustrated liner notes and listening intently to the music, I can feel the mangos, see the pawpaws, and-- during the track "Breathing Chaos"-- I can even smell the sewerish reek of a freshly-cut durian fruit.

As you'd expect, Toop uses traditional Japanese instruments to convey the setting of the museum, but unexpectedly, Toop has incorporated bioelectric recordings of fruit into three tracks. The album's lengthiest number, "Smell of Human Life," finds its ground in the aleatorical, clacking of wood blocks. From this shifting, unpredictable foundation, the keyboards and occasional flute peel off into translucence. The title of the opening track is a story that waits for you to supply the conclusion by listening and by imagining you determine exactly what happens to "an arthropod raising its head to see the sirakami."

In the album's liners, Toop invites his listeners to interact with his music in this manner, just as the architect Itsuko Hasegawa invites her audience to experience the novel form of her building. But rather than constructing innovative forms from steel and concrete, Toop's architecture consists of new forms of sound, fusions of the "digital and acoustic, machine made and organic." These new sounds then suggest new environments and plausible realities. Toop's intent is to offer you a fresh, fruitful form of fiction and to save you the airfare.

Y'know the actual Museum of Fruit, though? I wonder if you can eat the museum's exhibits. Toop doesn't mention that-- I'm guessing the museum's staff is comprised of uptight, pseudo-intellectual, pretentious asses that don't let people eat anything. It's like those people who go around putting signs on all the old chairs in antique stores that say, "Please Do Not Sit." It's a drag-- these people ruin it for everyone. I say, you should be allowed to eat the damn fruit; after all, people get way with chomping on grapes and strawberry at the local Safeway. And just what's the difference there?

-Paul Cooper