Various Artists: “Four Men, 32 Angels and a Princess” Flat Black Records (***)

File this strange, sprawling, impossible-to-categorize recording--actually an elaborate joke posing as a compact disc--under E for “eccentric,” but also for “engaging.”

“Four Men” comes billed as the soundtrack to a film that hasn’t been made--and probably never will be, judging from the silly-to-bizarre characters and plot points alluded to in the 30-page CD booklet. In fact, the movie-music scenario is mainly an excuse for Richard Moser, the album’s auteur, to exercise his absurdist wit in booklet print.

The futuristic story, such as it is, comes off as a cross between Thomas Pynchon, Frank Zappa and Jorge Luis Borges. It involves a band of ne’er-do-well rock musicians, the discovery of a parallel universe and assorted loopy shenanigans. As Moser notes in one script aside, “The only person who knows what it’s all about is Alfie, and he’s on the way to San Jose.”

If you’re heading toward San Jose yourself, the 72-minute playing time of “Four Men” will get you past L.A. without a grimace, no matter how trying the traffic.

This is catchy, exuberant music, much of it with a charmingly antiquated feel. Interludes of romantic orchestral music conjure lush scenes out of an old black-and-white movie.

The album is sprinkled with slightly twisted, dated-but-appealing versions of ‘70s Southern California folk-pop, and moves toward the present with snappy, synthesized takes on cinematic techno-pop.

Moser, who spent the first half of his career designing engines for racing cars, then turned to running a recording studio in Santa Ana, didn’t deliberately set out to create this opus.

Instead, “Four Men” is a patchwork vehicle, assembled from spare and unused parts that were sitting in his studio vaults. Moser went through tapes of demo sessions and in-studio experiments that he and his buddies had conducted over the years, threw some of the best bits together and declared himself the proud propagator of a concept album.

His chief musical ally is Danny Ott, one of the most gifted guitarists on the local scene in his dual career with the Mike Reilly Band and Chris Gaffney & the Cold Hard Facts.

Ott does a lot of the singing, a batch of the songwriting, and most of the string-bending. He is responsible for such highlights as “Love Makes Music Happy,” a sweetly sentimental-bordering-on-goofy notion that would fit nicely in Rhino Records’ tongue-in-cheek “Have a Nice Day” series of disposable ‘70s pop artifacts.

Also crucial to “Four Men” is Michael Harrison, the composer-orchestrator responsible for the album’s string sections.

Harrison’s compositions are not mere connecting fragments and mood-setters but have the architecture of fully realized pieces that work on their own, even when intended as spoofs of such film-land musical cliches as the racing-action sequence and the “Godfather”-style Sicilian elegy rendered with much wistful rustling of mandolins.

The album’s rock- and pop-based instrumentals also work as well-structured songs; one of the highlights is the opening anthem, “High School Reunion,” which Chris Gaffney & the Cold Hard Facts play as a more lighthearted answer to “Time Is Tight,” the inspirational Booker T. and the MGs hit.

Gaffney and band are famously willing to adapt almost any style of music in their own quirky way. Here, they saunter beyond all bounds of good sense with “Mexicalli Reggae,” a dopey, languidly blissed-out bit of tropicana that sounds like Kenny G’s next hit.

Ultimately, “Four Men” is a piece of the purest whimsy; the skilled cast gives it the advantage of sounding swell too. Listening is like spending an hour with a radio station where they’ve thrown out the format, burned the playlist and opted for playtime instead.

(Available from Flat Black Records, P.O. Box 6202, Santa Ana 92706, or by E-mailing Dave@Flatblack.com.)

*

Ratings range from * (poor) to **** (excellent). Three stars denote a solid recommendation.