"Anyone with GarageBand can make [that kind of] record now. What the future holds for me, is to make things that are not perfect and beautiful at the same time," Bates, 34, said. "Maybe overblowing the distortion a little bit because that's how it would sound if you were driving in a Camaro with the windows down at 80 miles per hour. You would have to turn [it] up and the speakers would invariably start crackling� I wanted to give that feeling of intensity."

The sound on "Put the Gun on the Floor" off Big Black Delta's new self-titled album or its lead single "Side of the Road" � currently making a serious run for airplay on Bates' native L.A. alternative radio station KROQ (a Radio.com station) � comes from a mix of digital and analog sound (about 75 percent analog, he said) often described broadly as synthpop or new wave.