SAN FRANCISCO PRODUCER Seth "Sutekh" Horvitz's music is difficult to explain. To my ears, it has rhythmic, minimalist melodies that are frequently disrupted by discordant abrasions – and those are the more-accessible, dance-friendly tracks. Critics often misinterpret his balancing of rhythm and experimentation as "laptop techno" that teases listeners with acidic, computer-generated bleats before flushing them with cold sheets of ear-shattering noise. But even at its most disjointed and mysterious, it's never unlistenable. There is a serene, intellectual curiosity guiding Sutekh's productions, which he has released through several record labels, including Germany's Force Inc. and fellow producer Joshua "Kit" Clayton's Orthlorng Musork.

Exploring the borders of sonic chaos, Sutekh's experimental techno is seemingly in the spirit of his adopted namesake, an ancient Egyptian god who was credited with plunging the country into civil war. But it's just a coincidence. "It does end up being the Egyptian god of chaos," the 28-year-old musician concurs before dispelling my notions about his recording alias. "But it wasn't like it was an intentional thing. Someone had come across some information on the history of [the name Seth] and sent it to me. It had all these variations of my name. At that point I was in the middle of trying to figure out a name to use for music, and [Sutekh] just popped out." Still, it's a sign that the locally based Sutekh takes what he does seriously.

The then-and-now continuum is on my mind when I meet Horvitz at his home in the Panhandle neighborhood.

Ghost in the machine

Sutekh's catalog can be broken into straight-up techno tracks and "experimental" adventures. An example of the former is his Pigeon Funk EP, coproduced with Clayton, an inscrutable mix of gritty, angular clef notes overlaid with infectious 4/4 beats. The Sutekh-produced Every Dot and Tittle EP freaked dance floor patterns from a series of tweaked-out frequencies that subtly jutted back and forth like a synthetic metronome. Those two efforts, Sutekh says, fulfilled the challenge of making "something funky – what interested me at that point was how fucked-up can the music be without losing its dance floor appeal?"

By contrast, his two solo albums, 2000's Periods.Make.Sense and the recent follow-up Fell, ignore that question entirely in favor of abstract portraits that are solemn in their employment of space between sounds – whether it's a patchwork of samples or a straight-up beat – and threateningly direct in the manner in which those sounds are used. But for the most part, he says, "I think that a lot of my music fits somewhere in between [those albums]."

Two years in the making and just released last month, Fell, Sutekh says, "is definitely more experimental than anything I've done." While Periods.Make.Sense featured the sort of ominous, aqueous electronic dub landscapes often associated with European producers Pole and Pan Sonic, Fell reflects Sutekh's increased interest in sound collages created by distorting and twisting everything from field recordings to computer effects. "Recession Clouds" opens with several jarring bursts of white noise that are then sequenced into a brisk rhythm track. "It sounds like water at the beginning," he says, "but it's not a sample of water at all. That whole track is based on a sample of real audio excerpt from a corporate earnings meeting. It came from a part-time job I had doing Webcasting." He isolated the sample and kept "processing it and reprocessing it until I came up with some different textures. I had to add a couple of actual drum sounds: a bass drum and one bass note. Everything else is taken from a really lo-fi audio excerpt."

While "Recession Clouds" explicitly deconstructs the connection between a dot-com company's malaise and the harsh, disorientating environment it has unwittingly created, Sutekh argues that he doesn't try to infuse his music with political messages. "I'm not out there to convey specific ideas with my music. I'm most happy with my music when I feel that it's more open to interpretation."

Sutekh does not consider himself a card-carrying member of the dreaded IDM (intelligent dance music) movement, which is often accused of sucking the soul out of techno. "I can't stand that term and would refuse to use it in relation to my music," he says, "but it's become such a standard that it's impossible to avoid it."

He doesn't consider himself part of the equally suspicious-sounding "laptop techno" scene, either. "I was called 'laptop techno' in reviews before I had a laptop computer," he observes dryly.

Some of his tools include a Max/MSP "patch" developed by Clayton, who works as a programmer for Cycling '74, an S.F.-based software company. The "patch" allows him to "play audio files in a loop and keep them in sync with one another." However, he answers most of my inquiries about his studio gear with the caveat, "I'm not obsessed with downloading the latest software or getting the latest model of this or that." He seems concerned that I'll assume he's more interested in collecting expensive toys than in making music with them.

"A lot of people are [like] that," he explains. "And it doesn't add to the music at all. Part of my struggle is to try and make music that doesn't just reflect the technology or the tools I'm using but stands apart from that."

Roots

Despite his love of new sounds and production techniques, Sutekh knows techno history, having immersed himself in dance music shortly after arriving from southern California to attend UC Berkeley in 1991. "You can go back and find stuff that sounds pretty up-to-date," he says. "If you listen to some of the Kraftwerk stuff, it sounds exactly like a lot of the new tracks that people are producing. You can even go to Herbie Hancock, who in '73 was making stuff with synthesizers and arpeggiated loops that sound really techno. Now you have a lot of 16-, 17-year-old kids who are making this 'IDM' music with this certain kind of melody lines that they're copying from Autechre. But then, Autechre came from this other tradition of U.K. stuff that was directly influenced by Detroit techno, if you trace it back. It's weird how that progression takes place, and you have people being influenced from the end of the chain. Now it doesn't resemble the original, but you can trace the lineage."

Before, Sutekh had been a fan of industrial acts like Nurse with Wound and the Hafler Trio, along with punk bands like Crass and Bad Religion. He affectionately calls the moment when he discovered dance music – and San Francisco's burgeoning rave scene – a VUE (violent unexpected event), taking the acronym from Peter Greenaway's The Falls. "It's probably my favorite film of his. It looks at a cross-section of people afflicted by this disease, or some kind of unknown affliction caused by this 'violent unknown event,' " he says. "I was trying to think of a way to make some kind of explanation for my sudden fascination with dance and electronic music in the early '90s." Eventually, however, Sutekh drifted toward "hardcore" techno producers like Underground Resistance and British auteur Aphex Twin. "Coming from the industrial side, I was always into the stuff that was harsher, more aggressive sounding," he explains.

"It's hard to say what drew me to electronic music," he continues. "I liked the idea that you could save up a little money, get a couple of pieces of equipment, learn how to use them, and start making really creative music without knowing music." In a fit of inspiration, he "blew all this money" on an analog synthesizer and a computer. "I was really just messing around for years and wasn't making anything I felt proud of," he says. Meanwhile, he hosted a radio show at KALX-FM in Berkeley and spun records at various club nights around the city, including Static and Sabotage (R.I.P.).

Finally, in 1997, Sutekh coproduced his first release, the Swivel EP, with Darin Marshall, owner of the now defunct Belief Systems label. Two years later Sutekh started his own imprint, Context Free Media, which has put out nine 12-inch singles to date, including tracks by local producers Safety Scissors and Shawn "Twerk" Hatfield as well as Mexican composer Fernando "Murcof" Corona and Vancouver DJ Ben Neville. The Web site for the label (www.context.fm) is a platform for Sutekh's burgeoning graphic design skills. Someday, he says, "I'll separate this Context Free Media entity into a design and record label."

Context Free Media usually sells between 600 and 1,200 copies per release – "pretty average," Sutekh says, for a small techno label. Most of his patrons, he notes unapologetically, are "nerdy white boys in their bedroom." He has had trouble keeping Context's various 12-inches in stock at local record stores – which I discovered when I shopped around for his recordings – including Fell (which, tellingly, was released on Orthlorng Musork).

Predictably, much of his audience can be found overseas where Sutekh often travels to perform. "It's a great feeling," he says, "playing in a club where they normally play really straight dance music and being able to play weird, fucked-up dance music and still get people into it." He adds that he usually plays electro and minimal techno as well as "stuff that's really close to house music."

"I don't want to just make sound art," he says. "I still love DJing in clubs and making people dance, so that's important to me too."

Sutekh isn't the only avant-garde, frequently misunderstood artist who doesn't fit into a neat, marketable category. It doesn't help, though, that his recordings, as accomplished as they are, demand your undivided attention in order to absorb the subtle melodies and impressionistic sound collages. His sometimes complex and difficult-to-understand work is more than just music for a dance-friendly lifestyle, but he's not trying to shut the audience out.

"I hope to have a kind of wide appeal," he says, adding, "It's just that I'm not thinking of my audience when I'm making music."