Self’s front man and resident melodic visionary Matt Mahaffey has been immersed in music since he was a kid. He was wailing on a tiny drum set at the age of 4 and was playing professionally at the age of 12. Now thanks to eBay and toy stores everywhere, Mahaffey’s latest brainchild has materialized.

Gizmodgery was recorded using only Mahaffey’s personally assembled arsenal of vintage and modern toys. Playing everything from a Playschool Busy Guitar and battery operated electronic drums to baby rattles, voice boxes ripped out of stuffed animals and beeping bubble gum containers, Mahaffey has produced a 42-minute record melding rock, hip-hop, funk and soul that smacks of ingenuity. Filling holes that ’80s toy band Pianosaurus would never have dreamed of, Mahaffey wore his poor mixing boards down to their circuits beefing up the ramshackle midrange chirps of these cheap toys and hammering them together for a sound thick with beat. The result is a beautiful cacophony of reverberated bleeps, whirrs, zaps, buzzes, claps, scratches, rings, wails and whistles.

From beginning to end the effort is a donkey ride of youthful fun. Mahaffey’s use of samples from Queen, E.L.O, Danzig, and Lenny Kravitz highlight the album’s most coaxing track, “Trunk Fulla Amps.” “Pattycake,” adorned in a veritable baby-blue polyester suit and laid on top of a slick dance beat with hand claps, takes us back 20 years for four minutes of old school flavor. With layered vocal harmonies reminiscent of the Jackson 5, Mahaffey and crew sing the praises of the past: “I’m talkin’ bout a time / When a dime bag was a dime.” Humor slices through the heavy toy guitar riffs on “Hi, My Name’s Cindy,” a diatribe on the perils of dating: “Ummm. My name’s Cindy/and I’m your blind date/and I’m really blind.”

The creative apex of the record is a cover of the Doobie Brothers 1979 hit “What a Fool Believes.” The toy organ dances and Mahaffey’s sugary vocals manage to pour out as smoothly as those on the original. It’s the way Michael McDonald and company would have done it if they’d have been hopped up on Fruit Loops and had a stack Toys R Us gift certificates to burn.

Gizmodgery is playful genius: colorful, never gaudy, and it flashes just enough kitsch to stick in anyone’s head.