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By Dan Leone

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OLYMPIA, WASH .-based band the Intima make music with rigid, minimal, repetitive rhythms and bass lines shot through with restless, textured violin melodies. On the first listen they recall some combination of the Ex and the Thinking Fellers Union Local 282. More lasting impressions of their music, however, are dominated by the ambient space between the notes they play. The Intima have a wizardly command of the atmosphere in the structures of their songs. There is a palpable distraction in the band members' eyes, as if they see the music unfolding across wasted cities or primitive utopias as they play it. Indeed, their songs seem rooted in imagined locations, which they conjure with abstract lyrics and purposeful, spare melodies and drums-guitar trade-offs. This narrative aspect to their music reflects their politics: active voices against the paving of the earth, they seem to play the future they await. This may sound like jam band nonsense, but the effect is unquestionably rock, at once stimulating and hypnotic. Liar Bird opens. 10 p.m., 1131 Polk, S.F. $5. (415) 923-0923. (Elizabeth Lobsenz)