Electronic Scanner: Bits and Bleeps

A few years ago, you could easily summarize the American beats and bass scene – a vibrant middle ground between experimental electronic music and instrumental hip-hop – with a handful of artists, most of whom were located in Los Angeles. Today, entrants come from every corner and coast, leading to a glut in the marketplace. Making a beat wooze and blip like Flying Lotus is routine, but creating a distinct sound signature that rises above the genre’s established patterns, from its largely abandoned 8-bit glitch flurries to its familiar low-end bass wobbles, is a rarity.

"Vacancy" Comma

"Just Us" Shlohmo

"Como un Perro" Gun Selecta

"Run" Welder

To be fair, most of the artists don’t aspire to posterity, but simply want to make blappers, the kind of tracks that make your head bang whether you hear them on headphones or through massive nightclub speakers. Yet the question of how to stand out amidst the chaff hovers over Surreal Estate, a compilation assembled by San Francisco producer, DJ, promoter and tastemaker Ana Sia. Surreal Estate serves as an introduction to Frite Nite, a new record label whose interests range from U.K.-inspired dubstep and garage to homegrown spins on dread bass and electro-funk. One of its best tracks is Comma’s “Vacancy.” The Bay Area producer, who released his debut EP Colortronics last spring, uses a light mid-tempo percussion rhythm, a wash of synths and some vocal onomatopoeia that sounds as if someone is pleading. The mood is mysterious and yearning, at least until he drops in a massive bass swell that breaks up the melancholic emotions.

Henry “Shlohmo” Laufer is breaking out with his new release, Bad Vibes, which dropped in August on the Friends of Friends label. The L.A. producer’s beats crawl; on the opening notes for “Just Us,” he approximates a faucet slowly dripping. However, Shlohmo doesn’t dazzle with a particular sonic trick, but a combination of them: like the track’s loping bass, his distorted and echoing vocals tumbling over a groove that slinks along, and the subtle glitches that sound like turntable scratches. It’s a coherent aesthetic that Shlohmo impressively sustains throughout the album.

While Comma and Shlohmo seem to be slowly feeling their way towards a unique identity, S.F. producer Brendan Angelides has already crafted something definitive: When you hear one of his Eskmo tracks, and its deep, synthesized arpeggio melodies that sound like a man taking deep breaths, you know it’s him. Ironically, Angelides is reviving Welder, his old alias. On “Run,” a track from the just-released Florescence on the Ancestor imprint, Angelides pairs an orchestral arrangement of strings with a reverberating choral voice. (It sounds much like Shlohmo’s “Just Us.”) However, without those Eskmo laser swords, “Run”’s dizzying tone is less severe. It sounds antiquated, like a classical waltz.

Antonio “Toy Selectah” Hernandez, who often records for Diplo’s Mad Decent imprint, hails from Monterrey, Mexico. Mexicans With Guns, an alias for producer and label owner Ernest Gonzales, comes from Austin, Texas, but he may as well have dropped from planet Mars, as wacky as this year’s Ceremony album was. Toy Selectah and Mexicans with Guns make up Gun Selectah, and their self-titled EP for Friends of Friends features “Como un Perro,” a brazenly cheeky mix of barking dogs, bass drops, and cumbia rhythms, all topped by chants of “Yo!” If Gun Selectah’s any proof, perhaps the best way to escape the boundaries of bass music is to subvert them. -- Mosi Reeves

"Vacancy" Comma

"Just Us" Shlohmo

"Como un Perro" Gun Selecta

"Run" Welder