Yukio Yung's second solo album is a one-man-band operation with a 1990s twist. Working with an early version of digital recording software, Yung (a classically trained keyboardist with an advanced degree in computer engineering) created these 14 songs completely out of samples and loops of "real" instruments. Though the popular concept of an all-samples record is something like the Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique or maybe Nine Inch Nails, Art Pop Stupidity has much more in common with English Settlement-era XTC or mid-period Squeeze. The songs have their noisy elements -- the otherwise perfectly normal Jimmy Pursey features a sound like the buzzing of 100 electronic cicadas droning through its background -- but most of them are based on layers of piano and acoustic guitar that give a human warmth to even the most processed songs. Although there's a surface humor to song titles like Old Dickhead Is Back (which is based on the bassline from Fontella Bass' Rescue Me, amusingly enough), the overall tone of Art Pop Stupidity is a sort of resigned melancholy that at times, as on the morbid See You Tuesday, dips down into actual depression. However, Yung's melodic gifts are such that even songs with titles like His Problem's Boring Me and No One Went to Heaven are instantly hummable. The dreamy Intercourse With Barbara Steele has the best chorus and the most judicious use of hand claps and "ba-ba-ba" backing vocals, though the psychedelic-layered harmonies at the end of Big Binoculars are equally fine. Covers of ELO's Mr. Blue Sky and Look at Me, I'm You by little-known British psychedelicists Blossom Toes are nice tributes to two of Yung's clear influences, although the 35-second hardcore punk recapitulation at the end of the former shows off Yung's cheekily independent spirit. ~ Stewart Mason, Rovi