“What started as a project to investigate the love of the sound and scenery while living in San Francisco quickly developed into a passionate search for interlocking melodies and driving rhythms.”
While Robert Yang is now based in Berlin, we would be negligent not to write about Valencia, a new six-track EP released under their Bézier alias. For one, Yang has been connected to SF for years, most notably with the party crew Honey Soundsystem. Second, the album is intentionally named after both the street in San Francisco and the city in Spain—each with ties to new wave, punk rock, space disco, and Hi-NRG. Third, the dark music within explores “themes of submission and catharsis with nods to SF’s gay leather bars of the 70s and 80s.” Fourth, the retro geometric grid pattern on the artwork is designed to evoke the city’s street maps. Fifth, the album was released by one of the best record labels in the city, Dark Entries. And last, but not least, it’s the music. For all its references and nostalgia, the music here is massively progressive, straddling the line between club music and headphone trips. A treat for the ears.
