Superlative: Most likable guy who transcends cliques and mixes with all types

Last seen: In the computer lab messing around with stuff he stole from the electrical shop and the music room

Clubs: French, German, and Japanese

Mission District guitarist, producer, painter, and sound designer Christopher Willits is the center cell of a rather complex indie rock-avant-garde-electronic art Venn diagram here in the Bay Area. A graduate of Mills College's prestigious music program, Willits gained a firm foothold in the academic musical community that's been built around the school's long-standing high-art tradition. But rather than take the insular, sometimes stuffy route many Mills students follow, Willits made a break for it and infected a host of other genres with his restless spirit and never-ending well of creative output.

As Flössin, Willits and bandmates Zach Hill (of Hella fame) and Miguel Depedro (a.k.a. Kid 606) release a bit of tension with their rackety take on post-rock. Their 2004 debut on Vancouver label Ache Records is cheekily titled Lead Singer, though there aren't any vocals. Instead it's a fury of tone generators, psychedelic feedback, and jazz-metal drumming that hardly seems the product of years spent behind a computer in composition class. His upcoming collaboration with Latrice Barnett, an as yet unnamed funk-R&B project, doesn't sound tame either – it points more in the direction of nihilistic genre fuckery than art-school wankery.

Willits's most notable partnership, however, was forged through a cross-country cross-pollination of tracks with Brooklyn's Taylor Deupree, head of CD-and-MP3-only label 12k and de facto poster boy for the glitchy laptop minimalism craze a couple years back. The pair have examined the minute processes of digital recording media on more than a few projects, including Audiosphere Series 08 (Sub Rosa) and the recent Mujo (Plot), which prompted a much ballyhooed tour of Japan, where they're apparently quite the superstars.

All told, Willits's fortitude propelled him to record eight releases in the past two years, and it's no surprise that zeitgeist-charting journals like the Wire and URB are singing his well-deserved praises; in fact, the latter named him to its "Next 100" list of up-and-coming noisemakers for 2004. Did I mention that on top of all this, and teaching sound design classes throughout the Bay Area, he also finds time for solo gigs. He's pretty prolific in that respect too, with ambient guitar-driven pieces on imprints like Northern Ireland's Fällt, Detroit techno powerhouse Ghostly International, and, naturally, 12k, on which he released 2002's somewhat poppy Folding, and the Tea – well, as poppy as this kind of stuff gets. (Taylor)

For more information on Christopher Willits, go to www.christopherwillits.com.