Soft and crunchy: Drew Daniel of Matmos plays around with punk in his side project, the Soft Pink Truth.

Like all adolescents, gay or straight, Drew Daniel spent his teens establishing his identity. "Around the age of 13, I was a wannabe break-dancer, so I went through a tragic parachute pants-and-bandannas period," admits the San Francisco musician, 33, who grew up in Louisville, Ky.

Two years later a friend dragged him to his first punk show. Daniel instantly converted. "But because this was Kentucky, in 1985, all the signals about what you were supposed to be into were crossed. There were pregnant teenagers, with Mohawks, wearing New Order T-shirts. It wasn't quite right ... and I really liked that."

Daniel has come a long way since then. As one half of the experimental electronic duo Matmos (along with his boyfriend, M.C. Schmidt), he has released several critically acclaimed albums and toured internationally as part of Bjork's band. But for Do You Wont New Wave Or Do You Wont the Soft Pink Truth? (Tigerbeat6), his second solo outing under his Soft Pink Truth moniker, Daniel revisits his punk roots--and still gets his signals crossed, transforming classics by the hard-core-punk genre bands Crass and Minor Threat into herky-jerky synth-pop jams.

Alas, unlike for some kids, the punk underground didn't help Daniel come to terms with his sexuality; that had to wait until he shipped off to the University of California, Berkeley. "Punk rock kind of kept me in the closet," he confesses. "I felt like I had to choose between one or the other. I thought gay people liked Erasure, and since I didn't like Erasure, I must not be all that gay."

Reighley is the author of Looking for the Perfect Beat (MTV/Pocket Books).