While electronic duo capsule's hit 2011 album "World of Fantasy" was undoubtedly a development of ideas introduced in earlier songs such as "The Music," it was also a discrete (if frequently indiscreet) work in its own right: a near-concept album linked by a uniform 128 bpm tempo, a relentlessly hedonistic atmosphere and a focus on beats, dynamics and nonsensical sloganeering over conventional melody- and lyric-based pop songwriting. New album "Stereo Worxxx" has more in common with 2010's "Player" — more a sandbox for musician Yasutaka Nakata to play around with and refine ideas from various parts of his earlier work.

For fans of Nakata who have been dismayed by the growing divergence between his work with capsule and electropop group Perfume, there are signs that the two wings of the family are still on speaking terms. Opening duo "Feelin' Alright" and "Never Let Me Go" are what Perfume might have sounded like if, instead of just remaking "One Room Disco" again and again, they'd continued making songs such as "Game" and "Edge." Toshiko Kojima's vocals hold down a simple melodic and lyrical motif while the beats and synths move around them, driving each change in tone or tempo. In quite different ways, they're both solid (if still incomplete) examples of how the repetitive onslaught of "World of Fantasy" and the often frustratingly fluffy pop of Perfume's "JPN" can be reconciled.

Also like "Player," "Stereo Worxxx" contains a couple of songs culled from Nakata's soundtrack work, with "Step on the Floor" (from the film "Liar Game") the most striking. Nakata's straight-up pop songs (Perfume's "Voice" and the aforementioned "One Room Disco" are good examples) often suffer from lingering unnecessarily long on a relatively unremarkable verse before hitting you with the sparkling chorus. "Step on the Floor" at first feints as if to do this but when it hits the chorus just after the one-minute mark, it keeps bombarding you with fresh hooks. It's one of Nakata's most complete pop songs and an excellent example of the marriage of multilayered arrangement and simple, effective electropop.