"The America’s Cup’s about to kick off, I’m up on the veranda looking out across the bay, across the city and hoping I see some speeding sails,” says Thomas Dolby by phone from San Francisco.

It’s hardly a surprise to find him on the water again given the transatlantic scope of 2011’s A Map of the Floating City, a three-part sonic voyage that takes listeners to the imaginary realms of Urbanoia, Amerikana, and Oceanea. The album, Dolby’s first in tw...