BATANG FRISCO - s/t LP

Limited to 500 copies.

Remastered from the original analog tapes.

Includes booklet with liner notes, reviews, photos.

Founded by Bill DiMichele, the lifespan of San Francisco based project Batang Frisco (‘San Francisco Kids’ in the Filipino dialect Tagalog) is inimitably distilled on this solitary self-titled record, an outlandish private press pearl of homespun minimal synth music.

Although Batang Frisco may partly evoke the lurid, mutated preset punk of mid-period Chrome / early Damon Edge, as well as perhaps the playful, infectious Dadaism of Zru Vogue – something must have been in the water in San Francisco at the time – they remain an original proposition with a legacy that has only been belatedly acknowledged in recent years. ‘Power’ was featured on the Dark Entries retrospective compilation ‘Bay Area Retrograde Volume 1’, and ‘Sewing Machine’ has become a familiar favourite in the DJ sets of Nosedrip (Stroom) and Interstellar Funk, who featured the track on the Artificial Dance compilation ‘Interstellar Funk Presents: Artificial Dancers - Waves of Synth’.

Yet, back in their own milieu and left to their own devices, the album Batang Frisco threw together for an unsuspecting audience is still the definitive portal into the singular world of these unconventional sons from SF.

Batang Frisco (Independent Minimal Synth) has an unusual place in the San Francisco music scene - we were gigging in coffee shops and nasty clubs as Batang Frisco while at the same time performing as the Outpatients (Noise Rock) and The False Gods (Cyberpunk), our other outlets for ridiculously unhinged sounds. We actually opened for ourselves once; we recruited a few friends, and we all went at it. There was a tight bond among the synth minimalists; the crew was MX80, Modmach, Tuxedomoon, The Residents and Throbbing Gristle among many others, talented and not so talented. – Bill DiMichele