Imipolex G was a rock band based out of Grand Forks, ND. They played music, toured, and made albums from 1998-2002, getting to much of the continental United States on their travels.

No one from the band lives in North Dakota now, but it’s still a big part of their consciousness, for better or worse.

Most of these songs were recorded and mixed by Dan Mohr at various home studios in Seattle, WA and Grand Forks, ND. Kinda always considered him the fourth member of the band, if I’m being honest. The 5 song tour ep was recorded by Cory Prough in Minot, ND sometime in 2001. I have zero memory of this recording session. Four songs were done by ourselves on my shitty 3-track recorder at the 12th House, I wanna say in late 1999. The live set from 2000 at the Midtowner in Mandan, ND was recorded by Ryan Schweitzer, and we thank him dearly for that. Not a lot of live recordings of us in action.

We stopped playing 20 years ago, right around this time of year, actually. This was a time of great change for us all (moving out of ND, starting new relationships, becoming what we would become as adults), and I’m happy to say we’re all still pretty tight to this day (relative to geography and normal growing pains). Nate and Chris played in a band called The Bismarck for the better part of 15 years. Chris and Ike play in Something Tough. I think that means our instincts were pretty good way back when we first started hanging out and attempting to learn how to play punk rock music.

I don’t know why we chose the path we did for our band, but I’m thankful. We toured a lot. I don’t recall sounding like many other bands we played with which was shitty for our tour coffers and, you know, actually making people FEEL good, but I DO remember being proud that we were kinda on our own trip. We cleared a LOT of rooms. A few we didn’t! We never got Romulan haircuts or had one person who screamed while the other sang off-key, so that’s a plus.

So much of what I learned with Chris and Nate I take with me to every band practice, every show, every recording session to this day. I hold them dearly in my heart, as I do the music we made together.

Thanks to Dan Mohr, Eric Fundinglsand, Paul and Marilyn Fundingsland, Missy Mertz, Kelly Mertz (who is so dearly, dearly missed), Jason Lay, Brian Schill, St. Mary’s Church, Odin’s Belmont, Farmer P and Fresh Cow Pie, BJ Moore, Carl Saff, Cory Prough, Cafe Cosmos, and our parents for the support and love along the way. Special thanks to Franki Hand for the help with digital transfers here and to Eric Fundingsland (again!) for both naming this collection and taking the cover photo. A few others who we’d like to thank but will fail to name here. Not sure they want to be thanked, but they had a hand in this, too.

This one is for Chris’s mom who once asked if we got paid more if the holes in Chris’s jeans were bigger. She was a saint and a lovely human and is always missed.

I HEAR WHAT YOU’RE SAYING, I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU MEAN, WE’RE MOVING ON MUSIC.