Who wears a purple dinosaur costume, mixes live DJ sets with spazzy, self-produced hip-hop, house, and electro break beats and runs his own label? It's not Barney on ecstasy; it's San Francisco native, Mochipet, aka David Wang. Wang has been releasing music since 2002, and has since released nine full-length albums. Did I mention he also runs his own label, Daly City Records?

What's most impressive about Wang's machine-like ability to turn out material is the range his music covers. This year alone, Wang released two albums-Master P on Atari, a hard hitting, bass heavy glitch attack, and Bunnies & Muffins, a collection of older unfinished works that is much more accessible and mellow. Even on last year's album, Microphonepet, a collaboration with a bunch of Bay Area MCs, his styles range from fuzzy party beats, to funky hip hop, to wobbly dubstep.

"I have kinda ADD really bad," Wang says, laughing. "A lot of artists do one thing and they're really good at it. I want to do that, but I don't think I'm built that way. I would get so bored, I just need other things to wake me up and feel creative again."

After playing guitar in metal bands since he was 15, his easily distracted mind led him to start making electronic music.

"Being in a band is like being married to three or four other people," he explained. "I just wanted to write music, I didn't want to deal with any of the social interaction."

He stopped playing in bands and started writing and recording by himself on a four-track tape recorder once a friend showed him how to use a drum machine. His dad then got him a computer when he went to college, which he used to make samples on the half-megabyte sound card it came with.

Though still making most of his music behind his laptop, Mochipet has moved beyond his dorm room, touring around the world from San Francisco to countries like Italy and the Netherlands.

Thanks to a wide repertoire of music, Wang has the ability to appeal to a variety of crowds. "Most of the time I'm playing live sets � Some people are obviously more apt to 4/4 dance music, so I try to keep it on that level for them, some people are definitely more into hip-hop or dubstep, or different things. I kind of feel the crowd out and see how it goes and see what they're into and try to give everyone a good time. And I'll throw in random things here and there just to switch it up a little bit. You know, to wake them up."

Since a lot of his music is pretty experimental, and almost inaccessible at times, the ability to create a live experience that most people can enjoy is pretty challenging.

But while a lot of experimental electronic music can feel cold and distant, Mochipet's ability to go beyond convention and still have fun is one of his most endearing qualities as an artist. Even if you can't dance to some of his music, it's hard not to laugh at a song like "Laffy Taffy Core," where Wang samples the rap hit from D4L, cranks up the tempo and adds a hardcore techno beat to make it feel like the original song on a sugar rush.

Mochipet has another album in the works for 2010 and plans to incorporate a lot more acoustic instruments and vocals.

"I'm really trying to not pigeonhole myself as just an electronic beat producer, because I like to do so many things."

Nine albums since he started mailing his first mix-tape on burned CDs to anyone who asked, he's far from any sort of pigeonhole. I don't think even he knows what's next.

Tags: MOCHIPET