Welcome to Unlit, a personal nocturnal music blog that tunes into the best in darkwave, goth rock, dark ambient, post-punk, EBM, neofolk, cold wave, experimental, ancient revival, synth pop and darker flavors of other genres that you’d want to be listening to at 3am. As someone that has always been drawn to the dark, the sad, and the strange, I’d been on the lookout for a resource that celebrated a wider variety of unlit sounds rather than focusing on just one specific niche. Having spent a few decades in and out of the goth and industrial club scene as well, something I’ve learned in my independent, casual, random surveys over the years is that while we may all have a darker genre drug of choice, as it were, it’s extremely rare to find anyone that partakes of just one niche exclusively anyway.
This idea for Unlit began percolating on August 2, 2019, at a Covenant concert at Catch One in Los Angeles. Bad sound and an out of control fog machine that left the band hidden, potentially at their own request, left the night better spent in a rather captivating conversation on this very topic. A few months later, with extra thanks to a global pandemic for providing more than enough free time and solitude to build this site, Unlit made it’s debut on March 1, 2021, casting it’s wider net of darker somber sounds.
The Vogue, Seattle, WA
Who am I? My name is Philo Hagen and I live in Los Angeles. As something of an elder goth that doesn’t love the term because it makes one sound old, the truth is I have been enjoying most of these genres since their inception. On rainy Seattle nights in the 1980’s I could be found at the Monastery, the Batcave and The Vogue. On foggy San Francisco nights in the 1990s and 2000s Monday nights were reserved for Death Guild. Since the 2010s I’ve been living in sunny Los Angeles and love catching live bands and making the occasional appearance at Das Bunker events and such. I do, however, spend more time at home writing and listening to and exploring new music – which, dear reader, is hopefully to your advantage.
Death Guild, San Francisco
As a former Tower Records staffer as well, both in Seattle and in San Francisco, I always loved turning people on to new music and artists they might otherwise have missed. I’m looking forward to doing more of that here and if you discover something great here – or elsewhere, you’re always welcome to tell me about it. If you’d like to submit something – comment on something I said – chat about music (or cryptids, or the paranormal) – or perhaps even join me on this shadowy quest to turn off the lights (unlit movies? books?) email me at unlit.net@gmail.com or DM me over on the Instagrim.
