"What I like most in music is contrast, and freestyle pairs aggressive drums with sweet-sounding melodies."

Elderon's adept way with genre suits one of his recording monikers, Adeptus. He chose the name because — along with invoking "to attain" in Latin, a quest he likens to Afrika Bambaataa's search for the perfect beat — he likes its "Gothic, occult, and dark-sounding" qualities. On the one hand, he's a fan of Ace of Base's 1990s Euro dance pop — in fact, he's competing against eight other remixers in an Ace of Base-sponsored contest in which the person who comes up with the best mix of "The Sign" wins a car. But on his own tracks, he's drawn to seductive somber sounds. As he puts it, "I'm attracted to minor scales."

The public library as a recording studio and potential pop gold mine — it's all in a day's music-making for Elderon, who cut his teeth recording with the eccentric, literally offbeat Tarythyas in Party Effects. "His bedroom is the craziest room I've ever been in," Elderon says, when asked to describe Tarythyas's home dwelling. "There's no less than 20 to 30 fish tanks in the room, all lit up. There are crazy toys and lights everywhere, and six different computer workstations."

The strange is familiar to Elderon, whose past includes a military stint and studies in cellular microbiology, and whose current day job involves flying to Turkey once a month to rescue street animals for a fledgling animal-rights crusader in Beverly Hills. He shows me some passports of pets he's recently flown back to the U.S., including a cat that possesses a mack's satisfied smile. "The animals freak out on the plane, so they give me a ketamine spray," he says.

For now, Elderon is the one traveling, but he's hoping his music will be going international soon as well. At one point he describes Turkey as a "nexus of weird cultures," and the same description could be applied to his music, which has pop immediacy, but allows room for wild personality. He's out to attain something special, and it's just beginning to materialize.