http://www.lawrence.com/users/photos/2014/jan/21/267807/

Labeling an artist’s genre is getting increasingly difficult, but if producer Freddy Todd had to take a stab at putting his style into words, this is what he’d say:

“Bass-driven funky underground, beat-music, glitch hop, jazz, soul, dubby electronic, acid, 808, future ’80s dance party on a raptor’s space cruise ship.”

I really couldn’t have put it better myself. With just a couple shoutouts to some of his favorite artists, it’s easy to believe his DJ sets are 100 percent original based on that description.

For those unfamiliar with “glitch” music, there isn’t a hard and fast definition for this style. It has been described as a genre within electronic music that originated in the mid to late ’90s that “adheres to an aesthetic of failure,” often by using glitch-based audio equipment to distort sounds and make small cuts in previously recorded works. Glitch hop has been described by Freddy Todd as incorporating electronic production, loud synthetic bass, hip hop/crunk and often including edgy music production techniques which are normally heard in IDM (intelligent dance music).

While Todd started out with what he calls “vocally- indie- poppy electronica stuff,” he prefers the vocal-void beat-infused genre-spanning work he produces now.

“Who knows? Maybe I could have been the next James Blake or Ellie Goulding,” he says.

But that may have been the wrong move for his audience. Glitch hop is not only popular in the U.S. underground scene but gaining even more attention abroad everyday. He recently tweeted “beats transcend all languages,” alluding to the accessibility of his music.

“Basically that tweet was a manifestation of this thought I was having of how I have fans all over the world, and some of these people don’t speak English,” he says. “[Instrumental music] is something you feel, and is a language within itself.”

Todd is excited to be back in Lawrence (he played Granada in September of last year) with his live synthesizer to feel the crowd out because that’s when he’ll know the song lineup. I guess no teaser this time around.

“My set depends on the day, what the venue is like, and even if I pick out a certain flow of songs for the beginning, it’s very likely that the people in the room at that moment in time will affect the set and cause me to jump around and play stuff that I didn’t necessarily plan on playing,” Todd says.

His next full-length LP “Golden Tremendous” is getting shopped around right now, but before that album drops, he has a remix album in the works with ill-esha, Mr. bill, Vibesquad, Supervision, Elfkowitz, and “a handful of other fellow space-cadets remixing classic tunes” off his two previous albums.

As for the future of his unique sound:

“To be honest right now I’m working on a tune that’s a mix of Detroit techno, Brazilian carnival drum lines, and trilled-out, funky west-coast sexy 808 beat music slaps,” Todd says. “So, the future is weird, but golden, and never before heard. I’m certainly excited.”

Well said.