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My friend Aaron put me onto Badvril, the best band presently crawling out of San Franciscoâthe cesspool from whence we all came. And they sound like it, in all the most perfect, sludgy, narcotic, dreamy, total-eclipsing sort of ways. If you like shoegaze, Catherine Wheel, early Pumpkins, '90s alt revival, or melodic punk that pre-dates the Hot Topic era, you will die and go to heaven listening to their I AM GOD EP. that came out in February.
The desirous thing about becoming a fan before there is too much noise is that it's easy to catch up on their back catalogue. And then Becket becomes your Instagram friend and sends you the new unreleased album and it's the best music you've ever heard in your life. One wrong move and they could be too huge to handle. I wish them all the money in the world.
Dec 9, 2024
Related Recs
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Californian post-punk band that I have been listening to constantly these last few months. They got their start as a solo project scoring soundtracks for fake horror movies and it eventually evolved into its current form.
Personal favorite songs by them:
Valley Ghoul
Itâs in my head
Blue Sheen
Feb 9, 2024
Bay Area shoegaze/dreampop band from the early 90s that had their demo uploaded online in the mid 2010s. Great listen
Feb 9, 2024
discovered ââŠAnd You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead todayâ and so should you
Apr 10, 2024
Top Recs from @patrik-sandberg
Whenever I mention Night Flight Plus, no one knows what Iâm talking about. Itâs a streaming service named after (and featuring) the USA Network late-night cult series from the 1980s. It also includes a ton of films of the cult, horror, obscure music documentary, and exploitation variety. If youâre looking for Paul Morrissey, Troma Films, Vinegar Syndrome, or outdated TV specials about Minor Threat and Kate Bush, its curation is like a return to Kimâs Video⊠or my favorite VHS store from San Francisco, Le Video. The other night I watched an English-language Italian fashion giallo from 1988 called Too Beautiful To Die. Itâs a totally outrageous masterpiece. Itâs my favorite subscription. Feast your eyes.
Feb 21, 2025
I was born in San Francisco and raised in Marin and Sonoma (specifically a town called Petaluma) and now that enough decades have past, I have a new appreciation for the beauty of the regionâparticularly as depicted by Hollywood's great genre filmmakers of the '70s, '80s, and '90s. Of course, this includes great San Francisco movies like Vertigo (Hitchcock), Bullitt (Yates) and The Game (Fincher), but there are so many others that venture out to Monterey, Bodega Bay, and all the way up to Humboldt County. Some of my friends keep a running tally of "NorCal Noir" movies. Some favorites:
Salem's Lot (Miniseries, 1979), The Fog (1980), Play Misty For Me (1971), The Birds (1963), The Final Terror (1983), Firefox (1982), Dead and Buried (1981), Murder She Wrote (TV episodes, various), Cujo (1983), Point Blank (1967).
There are probably many others but between the midcentury architecture, west coast hippie/yuppie dialectic, atmospheric coastal fog, and rolling hills, it's a distinct vibe that always feels incredibly indulgent and tasteful even when it's lent in service of schlock.
Nov 24, 2024
Combining punk sensibility with pop simplicity and deceptively sweet but eviscerating production⊠When âElevationâ by The Dare comes on, without fail, I get asked who the artist is. When I answer, theyâre always a little surprised. Nothing against Harrison and his perfectly calibrated image of sex and partyingâsex and partying are really importantâbut I love when artists catch their skeptics off guard and show another dimension. âElevationâ is a brilliant love song, so catchy it hooks into your brain like a good hit should. When you listen to it on a proper system, the buzzsaw synths rattle your cage. It builds to an overwhelming euphoria that emulates the feeling it describes. Itâs going to age well⊠he understands.Â
Dec 30, 2024