Fidget House

Like many accidental subgenres, fidget house began as an inside joke between like-minded musicians who find journalists funny. In this case, Dave Taylor — better known by his aliases Solid Groove and Switch — and Jesse Rose thought the fidget house tag epitomized the wobbly basslines and choppy samples of singles like "Red Hot," "Get On Downz," and "Didn't I." Sure enough, the term became a trend of sorts, thanks to the top-notch tracks of young guns (Crookers, Sinden, Boy 8-Bit) and such legendary dance producers as Basement Jaxx and the Chemical Brothers, who both received the fidget-house treatment in remix form.

Judging by our Next Steps, the scene's leaders are just getting started . . .

Sample a few fidget house singles and you might assume it's the electronic music equivalent of a shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later action movie — a delirious mess of shrapnel-spewing loops and synths that seem to have a mind of their own. And to some degree it is, right down to the genre-swapping surprises that pop up in the following playlist, including the frayed funk of "Turn It Up," the stuttering strings and hammerhead hooks of "Butter," the sputtering drum breaks and the creeping low-rider basslines of "Fog Bank," and the slightly demented, steam-pressed house of "Have a Good Time (The Count of Monte Cristal & Sinden Remix)."

Speaking of remixes, our Next Steps section is a collision course between skull-dislodging originals and mind-melting edits.

Sometimes the best way to judge club-clobbering producers isn't their own beats; it's the magic they whip up through well-crafted remixes. Case in point: the freshness of the following platters, a deftly tweaked lot that includes a spacey, hiccupping take on "Over and Over," the four-on-the-floor grime/acid-techno fusion of "Police On My Back," two ecstatic throwbacks to the bassline-battering peak of the rave scene (the spliced samples and wailing sirens of "Je t'aime," the queasy jungle jabs of "Tamborzuda"), and a stack of restless edits that dare your aching feet — and spinning head — to keep up ("Radio Fireworks," "So Wrong," "Ill Brutto").

Few late-'00s sounds have captured a neon-doused cross-section of retired ravers, too-cool indie rockers and sneaker-collecting hip-hop heads quite like fidget house. A byproduct of the digital age's à la carte listening habits and shortened attention spans, the Switch/Jesse Rose-sculpted subgenre uses the 4/4 beats and deep bass grooves of classic Chicago house (Frankie Knuckles, everything related to Trax Records) as its foundation, only to briskly obliterate any immediate connections between the two through ultramodern influences like hyphy-schooled hip-hop, down and dirty baile funk, and tech-house that simply refuses to stand still. Simply put, this is dance music that could care less about steady builds or straightforward melodies; instead, artists such as Bobmo, the Bloody Beetroots, Trevor Loveys, Sinden, and a rejuvenated Armand Van Helden head straight for your skull and feet with pitch-shifted vocals, unapologetic basslines, and stab-happy synths.