Batang Frisco by Batang Frisco

“Be insane—be divine!” the late Bill DiMichele sang to no one in particular. Taken with their city’s thriving Filipino community, the duo’s name roughly translates to San Francisco Kids, and evokes the creative energy that poured from the peninsula. Before the tech bro invasion, DiMichelle and Eric Jensen plied their synth and sequencer trades to create a singular document of misunderstood minimal wave. Recorded in fits and starts over the course of 1985, the self-released, eight-song Batang Frisco LP appeared the following year in a simple black and white sleeve accompanied by a D.I.Y. lyric sheet. Or did it? Most of the pressing never left their apartments, escaping via mail order over the course of three decades. Remastered from the original analog tapes, Batang Frisco’s lone LP is an atmospheric electronic tribute to San Francisco’s once-vibrant underground.

A visit to the Numero office makes it very clear that ‘the stacks’ is a literal description of our process: we accumulate stacks of records, master tapes, photos, flyers, and old newspapers while assembling a project. From The Stacks is our way of illuminating the experience: the selections here are presented without curation. While we’re digging for gold, these are the lesser minerals we find.