As the cataloguing and availability of pop music history increases, so do the vast array of influences and aural allusions and references. Sounds churn together, spitting out complex amalgams that owe more to random exposure than they do to whatever radio station you might have tuned into, pre-internet. Because of this continuing evolution, the necessity for a cavalcade of increasingly specific subgenres begins to emerge. I've complained before about the silliness of some of these designations - the list of post-insert-genre-here's has become almost self-parodic - but there are areas of music where specificity become important.

Electronica is such a genre. Because it is a style that functions effectively removed from the traditional guitar-drum-bass mold, enabling the creation and exploration of a whole new range of sounds, it becomes helpful to find distinctions: is it aggressive like drum 'n' bass and jungle, cartoonish like chiptunes and glitch, cerebral like IDM and trip-hop, or mellow like dream-pop and chillwave (which, ugh, not a fan of that word, either). Lobsana falls more on the latter end.

Anna Moore is the artist behind Lobsana, a project that began back in 2011 as more or less a lark.

"I got the program called Ableton and started playing around on it," says Moore. "I mainly made a bunch of sci-fi-ish music, but I got a little more serious about it when I started a collaboration with a guy named Justin Tung from Algebraic Satellite. I did vocals for his recently released EP, which we started back in January. It was the first time I recorded some more official vocals, because he had some pretty good gear to record vocals and whatnot. So, I started writing songs for live performance. I did my first show back in May at the Alder Arts Walk. I headlined the first house of the art walk, which is mostly electronic music. Since then, I've been playing shows off and on."

The music of Lobsana is awash in synths that drift dreamily along, steadily building toward a climax in a way that is nearly imperceptible, but can be instinctively felt. Moore's gentle vocals reverberate in and around the glowing tones as beats begin to find their footing and rise up in the mix. Moore's voice breaks off into looped callbacks and half-heard intonations, creating a kaleidescopic effect that makes it difficult to find the live voice amongst the digitally sampled ones. Even though Lobsana began as matter of experimenting with a new computer program, Moore has a sure foot with composition, thanks in large part to her classical training.

"I was classically trained in vocal and instrumentation," says Moore. "I played flute, oboe, and I have some experience on bassoon, actually, too. I actually don't use the skills of any of those instruments in my actual music, but the classical training definitely has a really large impact on my music. ... If you go to my set and you hear the different parts, it makes a lot of sense. There's a lot of weird melodies and a lot of arpeggiated stuff, and a lot of the stuff that I played in my symphony and sang in my choir does influence the way that my music sounds."

Despite my pleas, Lobsana will not be incorporating oboe into the music any time soon. The good news about that is that the field is wide open to be taken by storm by your symphonic electro-oboe act. Now that's a super-specific subgenre that I'd be happy to get behind.

LOBSANA, w/ Field Trip, Hana and the Goose, 8 p.m., Friday, Dec. 27, Metronome Coffee, 3518 Sixth Ave., Tacoma, cover tba, 253.301.2375