The post-production was patchy in places and the holes in the sound could have let in a very big rat. That, however, didn’t stop Bee Thousand from becoming a monumental pop masterpiece. With its moonshine-induced splendor, pell-mell ramblings and back to basics songwriting it quickly became ground zero for the lo-fi movement.

Guided By Voices, Sebadoh, Pavement and a host of others that followed in Pollard’s stead saw the definition of beauty in a three-chord acoustic pop song. After all, the original credo of indie rock is: sincerity will carry the day even in the face of financial strife.

This has since become the armor and zen of people like Iman Leonardo.

Iman, you see, is Prank Sinatra. A one-man band who’s debut The F Defect is proof that the lo-fi revolution can still yield rough jewels and produce music whose heart is as big as its ambition is modest: to move you.

Though you may think of Iman as more of a curbside prophet than a doom sayer, he did carry the bass for primo goth forerunners Dominion for the longest time.

So before he was able to indulge his lo-fi dreams he was lugging around his instrument, hesitantly changing into black clothes and making up his face for gigs. And he was getting into fights at places like Cafe Romeo and Club Dredd.

"In the early days of Dominion we’d get into fights a lot," explains Iman in a pastel shirt and jeans get-up with no hint of eyeliner in sight. "Mostly because of the androgynous look, I think."

It was the mid 1990s with grunge at its zenith. Here, it was totally weird to see a bunch of tall, lanky guys dressed up in buckles and black, their faces all Kabuki singing about bats and bell towers. The hipsters never knew what to make of Dominion early on.

"Medyo pa-sosyal kami," continues Iman. "They probably thought we were really weak or effeminate. But we’d always win. Then they learned along the way: hindi pala mga bading tong mga ito. We were always ready, though. We had baseball bats in our cars and we liked to see them run when we got them out!"

When Iman quit Dominion he had nothing to show for it except a three-track EP and eight years of gigging scars. Before that however, his main listening fare was ‘50s and ‘60s pop music.

"I grew up in the new wave era but I was listening to the ‘50s and ‘60s music like The Zombies, The Rolling Stones. I asked the tambay at our area to teach me guitar," shrugs Iman.

In fact, when he met Dominion’s drummer Doi Porras they both made a deal. That Iman was to play bass for Dominion and Doi was going to play drums for Iman’s two other bands; Tambalang Guy en Pip and Andres Bonifacio Jr.

In the interim after he quit the band, Iman focused on his duties as a father to his newborn son, being a breadwinner and downloading every piece of music he could onto his PC. This lasted for two years.

"Then I came across a song by The Flaming Lips called `Do You Realize?’ exclaims Iman. "That totally just inspired me to pick up a guitar again."

With some money saved over from a big project Iman, a television and commercial line-producer by trade, realized he had enough to do a record. He then recruited his friends like Czandro Pollack, Erwin Flores and Ady Baysa to record his debut.

So they put out a demo of three songs and then submitted it to major labels, trying to get funding for the rest of the album. All he got for his trouble was rejection slips. Some label executives even completely missed the point and said it would be best if Iman focused his energies on writing novelty hits, all the rage back then, like "Bulaklak" or "Basketball."

Iman shakes his head in odium, "So wag na lang."

His friend from way back though was now the A&R executive of Alpha Records. Though he got Iman’s whole lo-fi gist he saw that his own label would never green light its recording.

So he told Iman he wanted to record the songs at his home studio at a discount price. Through their discussions however, he found out that Iman had downloaded the whole discography of Guided By Voices. This just blew him away. He told Iman: that’ll be your payment. To this day Iman will tell you proudly that the whole discography of GBV was all it took to finance his recording sessions. All 30 CD-Rs of them.

The rest of the money went to mixing, mastering and CD pressing and voila! Prank Sinatra’s The F Defect hit the record shelves in October 2005 under Iman’s own D-Chord Records and I Did It My Way Music.

The F Defect is, of course, a play on the Pinoy faux pas for transposing our Ps for Fs. Think of Prank as the comically witty counterpart of people like Dashboard Confessional and Damien Rice.

"I just wanted to have something recorded for my son," says Iman. "Something concrete to show him that I had done something creative when I was still young."

The F Defect lays bare our idiosyncrasies and awkwardness, obsessions and irrationalities with a dry wit that’s genuinely funny. It’s an encapsulation and depiction of Pinoy life from an every man’s point of view. An every man who’s sense of humor is to get his kicks from jokes, pranks, foolish trips of fancy. This prompts Iman to tell me the various mischievous things he’d previously done at gigs to get his kicks. He confesses, "I was the clown of Dominion."

He hasn’t stopped yet. Take his CD for example. It’s priced at P277.85 at Tower Records. Sales girls would routinely curse him because they found it hard to look for 15 centavos of required change. This sends Iman into a fit of sniggers.

Laughter, melancholy and fury all share space in this shambolic record by Prank Sinatra. Never mind the spotty production, just add a tinge of goth, a smidgen of lounge pop and a wallop of sardonic Pinoy grit and you’ll get the genre-exploring, sonically base-jumping Prank sound.

There’s the novelty punk of "Sigaw!", the tongue in cheek love ballad of "Juice" and the egregious alt-rock of "Supapandakot (Sandata ng Bayan)." A track like the gorgeous, sweeping "Stargazing" is proof that Iman has not completely abandoned his dark, ethereal roots.

All in all, pop melodies are given fresh reworking here, but the sincere indie rock of "Kamang Pinaghigaan" makes the most of its down in the doldrums theme while the arrangement is a burst of two chord genius. Moping after a one night stand has never quite been so stirring.

Nowadays Iman is busy rehearsing with a newly recruited live band for his performances. A slew of music videos is also in the works as is a second album due to be recorded by the middle of this year. So keep an eye out for the Prank wagon at your favorite music spots.

The F Defect is now available at all Tower Records outlets.