The electone, better known as the home organ, might recall memories of drunken uncles playing shambolic versions of Christmas songs, or upwardly mobile parents forcing a bit of culture down junior's throat. In many family homes, it is a dust-gathering fixture, a hulking monument to the musically dasai.

Or at least until Tucker.

For the last three years, Tadashi Takatsuka, a k a Tucker, has spent his spare time scouring ward-office lists of unwanted items in search of abandoned electones.

"Most people buy it to educate their children, but after their little girl turns into a kogyaru, it becomes a large piece of junk, a place to put a flower vase," he says.

Every Saturday night at the Instant Cafe in Ebisu, Tucker takes his one-man electone campaign to the stage. Its usual repertoire, lounge music, is his basic weapon. Yet calling a Tucker set another installment of easy listening is like describing David Lynch films as portraits of middle-class life in America.

Seeping into the strands of his opening number, "Sunny," a classic standard of velvet wallpaper locales worldwide, are the family disputes and petty bourgeois ambitions of whatever living room Tucker's mammoth instrument once occupied. As the beat switches from the mellow preset rhythm to something more vigorous (say rumba or rock), Tucker summons up a warped portrait of domestic dysfunction with a flick of his wrist.

"The smell of curry and an ojiisan asking what I am going to do with such a useless thing, that's part of the appeal of my search," he admits. "When I took one apart, I found a school exam that the owner's daughter didn't want to show to her parents."

Tucker combines the showmanship of Liberace with the offbeat hipness of a Beastie Boy, looking as much proud papa as obsessive otaku as he plays his instrument. He coaxes a startling array of sounds from the electone's collection of buttons and knobs. A flute will flutter to the surface, then maybe a bit of saxophone.

Most of it is unidentifiable, though, a sonic stew. Combined with the organic rhythms from his ancient beatbox, the Dongomatic, Tucker re-creates the electone as the perfect postmodern instrument.

"I look for things like presets that say guitar, but sound nothing like one. That makes an electone particularly endearing," he says.

Tucker's musical odyssey began, like most young men's, with a guitar. "But when I looked in the mirror," he says, "I decided the guitar was not my instrument. It looked better on a tall skinny guy. I thought drums or keyboards would be better."

Although his home too had an electone, he only studied it briefly as a child. His rediscovery of the instrument didn't come until his mid-20s.

"The whole culture of taking music lessons is something that your parents make you do, you know, playing 'Billy Jean,' on the electone. My musical tastes turned toward thrash and punk so I never really had an opportunity to get acquainted with the instrument."

The electone's use as an educational tool, with all the associated social baggage that educational pursuits in Japan carry, means that, like brand bags or new cars, new models become quickly obsolete. Having the latest greatest electone is part of sending your kids to the right nursery school. While other instruments have rich musical traditions to draw from, the electone has had, as Tucker puts it "no scope to develop its own culture.

"I have a really deep affection for these intruments and I feel a lot of anger when I see them heading for the dump because I don't think they should be used as a status symbol." Tucker's use of the electone seems as much a visceral reaction against waste as music. It is, in its way, a particularly idiosyncratic form of recycling.

"I've always liked hip hop," he explains. "Though it has become an established style, if you look at its roots, it began with people going through their fathers' old record collection, through the dollar bins, and making something out of nothing. I am interested in creating something from zero yen.

"I like DJ battle contests for the same reason. I don't really draw inspiration from the style, but I like to see the process whereby a DJ can get as much as possible out of only two records, to see the creative act itself.

"In Japan, there is a sort of dilemma about originality," he continues, "a groping for it. I think it is important not to just swallow your influences whole, but to find your creativity in things that are unwanted or perceived as useless."

Tucker has rescued four of the instruments from a grim future at the garbage dump, scoring them for free or bought for a pittance. One has a permanent residence at the Instant Cafe. The others have been crammed into his small apartment.

"I'd like to modify the circuit board because the electone is so large and unwieldy, and perhaps, taking it out, it could be fit into a suitcase," he says.

"But on the other hand, it's important for people to recognize it as an electone. If I were to make it too small, people wouldn't get it."

Tucker performs every Saturday night at 10:30 at the Instant Cafe, Ebisu Kokuto Building, 5A 2-9-9 Ebisu-Nishi. There is no cover charge. For information call the Instant Cafe at (03) 3476-1480.

Tokion means the sound of fun, and the magazine of that name is giving its readership a chance to experience just that Feb. 11 with another party at Ebisu's Milk. Among the DJs are electrodoodler Smurf and Kuranaka from noted Kyoto outfit 1945 (expect heavy doses of didgiridoo). The highlight of the evening is a rare performance by Cornelius' gal pal Takako Minekawa, backed up by Ahh Folly Jet (formerly Asteroid Desert Songs and producer on Minekawa's second album, "Athletica").