daniel albrigo will tat your ass and paint your canvas

In order to sonically lay it down sideways for you, Lars Finberg, the lo-fi dandy of West Seattle, locked his front door and pressed the record button on his favorite eight-track machine and made ten songs that could be either ecclesiastic alien probes, Hank Williams going electro-slash, or John Lennon making friends with a video game. Finberg, you?ll probably want to know, is the Battlestar Galactica-esque drummer of the A-Frames, and while the programmed beats he?s employed herein are reminiscent of that band?s post-punk heroics, their digital drag and slur render them feathers of an entirely different bird. Lyrically, our post-pop sarcastic Snoop Dog-substitute slays us best on the album?s standout track, ?Telephone Wires,? rhyming ?telephone wires/connecting the liars/directly to fires/that never get tired? and on and on and on. And while it should be said that Finberg, in his sequestered 8-track sanctuary, teems with true talent, it simply has to be said that the band he has collected in the wake of these recordings are veritable toolboxes of the stuff. Members of A-Frames, Pyramids, and Thee Flying Dutchmen join Finberg in his live recitations of this stuff, and it only gets way, way better.. So now that you?ve had some time to floss your brain with the combo of our generation and simultaneously spin this little Ritz of a cracker in your Discman, we?re sure you?ll agree that terror is indeed boring and boredom is indeed terrifying. And the Intelligence are your new People magazine.

The debut e.p. by a brand new four-piece outfit from Sacramento. Post-punk meets mathmatical neu-prog meets pop, tipping their collective hat towards the sounds of Yes, Boys Life and The Smiths. In a nod to its prog-rock predecessors, Mister Metaphor artfully mixes harmonic vocals and instrumentation over rhythms that are unpredictable from one song to the next. With a handful of West Coast tours under their belt (including dates with Pretty Girls Make Graves, The Walkmen, Nada Surf, The Joggers and more), Mister Metaphor will be touring the U.S. from July to August 2004, and have plans to hit the road a few more times before the year is up

Northern California's noise-pop kings are back with seven blazing, feedback drenched new songs and an added video for the title-track. Thundering, distorted noise-pop complete with chattering guitars, buried organs & electronics and roaring drums. By far their best recordings yet, this follow up tops their highly touted debut “A New Pacifica”. Electro Group just finished recording a cover of Sonic Youth's "100%" with ex. Pavement drummer/engineer Gary Young for an upcoming release by his band Hospital. Ian (bass) is also recording a sideproject with Zach Hill (Hella, Crime In Choir).

Yes, that's the same legendary drummer/producer for all of Pavement's early stuff and the amazing "Slanted And Enchanted" album. Yes, that's the same guy who put out a solo record on Big Cat in the 90's that landed him a video on MTV for the song "Plantman" featuring Thurston Moore dressed as a tree, and Gary in an astro-turf suit. Gary recently reappeared at the 2004 SF Noise Pop festival (2 shows), will be playing SF's Mission Creek Festival, the Central Valley Indie Festival and will be touring throughout 2004. Gary and his Hospital recently recorded a cover of Sonic Youth's "100%" with Electro Group backing them up, and is working out additional recordings backed by Grandaddy, Thurston Moore and others, but we'll get into that later... The irony of Gary Young's career, which historians of Pavement's early years never fail to mention, was that Gary was a "Yes fan in an indie band." Truth be told, Gary never did have much exposure to indie rock prior to joining Pavement--it was uniquely different--Gary had a bona fide crash course in indie rock. "Slanted and Enchanted" defined a style for a decade and it wasn't until Gary left Pavement that he truly realized what he helped create. But the irony doesn't end there. In 1994, Gary released his first solo album. It was titled "Gary Young's Hospital." One might have expected it to be a return to his prog rock heritage. But no. Hospital was without a doubt indie rock. Perhaps the sound had seeped in through his pours. Perhaps Gary was an indie rocker all along. Who knows?

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