Yang Boi - Kief Marroquino EP (DSRPTV)

Another storming release from this Brazilian label, who've been so productive during 2026. Yang Boi's merging of urban Brazilian and Moroccan influences results in a vibrant, unpredictable listening experience.

The EP is mastered by the excellent DJ Rotundo and its five tracks take us through a whole range of influences from funk to carioca and back again. I'm playing Patience Kontroll from the EP in my FSK show this month. Kief Marroquino comes out today and you can get it here. While you're getting it, I'd recommend checking out the following:

Yu ft Klyn - Flawless

Golden Kong - Simply Happy

Shelf Life: Anders Bodelsen - Freezing Point (1969)

It's a pattern: striving to achieve something, the exhilaration of achievement followed by the restlessness that comes with having achieved then the urgent need to discover a new challenge. Freezing Point takes that desire and places it in a scenario where eternity has suddenly become a human possibility. Yet patterns are, by their nature, recurrent: a life of promised freedom becomes one of constantly recurring disappointment.

In Anders Bodelsen's novel, the protagonist Bruno, a man with incurable cancer, is frozen down until a cure is discovered. Just before entering his frozen state, he meets and falls in love with Jenny Hollander, a ballet dancer. The desire to see her again lies at the route of a quest that can only end in disappoint and, because scientists have now discovered a way to unlock eternity, it's a disappointment he must endure again and again.

It's a nightmarish novel, populated by characters all enduring crises unearthed by these new possibilities. Hollander herself desires to be frozen down until her spine can be fixed and she can dance again, only to encounter despair in the repetition of exhilarating pirouettes that turn immediately to failure. Dr Ackerman, who oversees Bruno's freezing, is reduced constantly repeating the same line about candles. The son Bruno and Jenny has brought into the world exists in a state of perpetual depression.

The magnificence of Bodelsen's writing is underpinned by the recurring images Bruno recounts through the book: from the seeing hole he prods through the ice at the beginning of the novel to the metaphor of a skating rink that cracks a little more each time you skate, in whichever direction that ends it. It takes the book beyond its dystopian message and imbues it with a kind of beauty that, we must understand, has value only because it is temporary.

This is a thought-provoking work of rare brilliance whose message, you feel, has only gathered further weight with the passing of time.

Peel Back September 2026: June Tabor/Half Man Half Biscuit/PJ Harvey

This month's Peel Back... selection in my Dandelion Radio show takes us first back 50 years ago, to the September 1976 session broadcast by June Tabor. Soon after, the punk bands would begin to barge through the doors of Maida Vale - more on that next month - but Peel never lost his appreciation of those artists who continued to offer vibrant and innovative music of whatever genre or no identifiable genre at all.

Tabor is a case in point. This was the second of six sessions she recorded for John Peel, the latest of which was a collection of cover versions in 1990. That's also well worth revisiting when the time comes but this Pull Down Lads, which features John Gillespie on keyboards, is as good an introduction as any to Tabor's bewitching vocal style. The version featured in the show is the one from her Airs & Graces LP.

The second featured track comes from that worrying period during which it seemed Half Man Half Biscuit might be about to quit for good, the demands of a working band impinging too much on Nigel Blackwell's schedule of long walks, football matches and daytime TV. Fortunately they would eventually decide to return but there's a treasured brilliance to tracks like The Best Things In Life made all the pertinent for the threat that hung over a band who Andy Kershaw once labelled 'the greatest English folk band since The Clash'. Recording in 1986. this is from their fourth session for the show: the fifth would come following their reformation more than three years later.

Finally, we feature a track from PJ Harvey's fourth session for the show, a track that would later appear as a Harvey/John Parish release. That Was My Veil was from the 1996 session recorded at Peel Acres and marks the period when Harvey's recordings were beginning to outgrow the Peel environs: not by choice but because, as Peel later commented, it became much more difficult to secure approval from the bigwigs who began to oversee her recording career at this point. Like HMHB, she's remained consistently interesting and innovative ever since, of course and, for Polly herself, Peel remained a valued mentor until the end.

Periodolia Paranoia/VX/Charlie is Girlie/Bloodstained Blondes/Weak Ends at Commune, Liverpool

Sometimes it's good to immerse yourself in other people's obsessions. No, I'll rephrase that: it's always good to immerse yourself in other people's obsessions. And that's exactly why I was at the tiny Commune venue in Liverpool last night.

Admittedly, I was primarily there to see VX, who of course have been featured numerous times in my Dandelion Radio show and did a session for us earlier in the year which you can still hear here. But VX (kit below) was one of six acts (sadly, I got there too late to see Fledgling Swift), all of whom work in the idiom of electronic and industrial noise, or in fact any noise. The result was a skull-splitting delight.

I got there just as Weak Ends were on the floor (literally), producing a mesmerising racket from keyboards and laptops, before Bloodstained Blondes took the stage, a harsh noise extravaganza gradually fading into a news report on Kennedy's Assassination. Charlie Is Girlie (below right) was a sensation, a backdrop of a melted Frank Sinatra LP almost blending into shocking (in the best sense of the word) noise intrusions.

Then came the mighty VX, blending pitch alterations with white noise which somehow managed to crank up the noise levels still further. Then he got the drill out. Finally, Periodolia Paranoia added discordant sax and the evening, somehow, seemed complete. And yet, heading into the backstreets that Commune calls home, you knew that any future exposure to these astonishing practitioners of the art of noise will take us into still more spheres of sonic exploration and greater levels of noise terrorism.

All worth checking out. Use these links as a starting point:

https://charlieisgirlie.bandcamp.com/

https://vxmusic2.bandcamp.com/

Google is telling me the others don't appear to exist, but I can assure you they do.

The Ale Trail: The Pocket (Islington)

Another trip into London for footballing reasons allowed me to spend a few hours in what has recently entered my shortlist of favourite pubs in the capital. This is not surprising as another pub on that shortlist is the Southampton Arms in Kentish Town and the Pocket was designed to resemble the former with almost eerie precision when it opened on the site of the old Four Sisters pub.

There are eight hand-pulls and the ale selection prioritises independent breweries, so the place is immediately ticking all the right boxes as soon as you enter. It's also dog-friendly (tick) and the service is first class (double tick). Having chosen an intriguing stout, the barman advised me it was nearing the end of its run and, aware it may not be at its best, offered it me for nothing if I chose to risk it.

Instead, I went for the Tring Mansion Mild, at 3.7% a steady option for afternoon drinking, followed by the Howling Hops Saddle Up and Kirkstall's Abbey Ale followed by a return to the Mild. We had a game of chess in there with a few pieces missing so, fuelled by the ale, it quickly began to resemble that scene from Bottom, before chatting with fans from the opposition, many of whom congratulated us on our choice of boozer given the wide range of options available in that part of town.

I can only advise that, if you're a stranger to London, you turn right out of Highbury & Islington station and keep going until you turn left on Canonbury Road when you'll see the pub standing unobtrusively before you. Go in. You won't be disappointed.

How Du - Metal Will Reign (Pressure Dome)

Don't be put off by the title - Metal Will Reign is not a celebration of long-haired anodyne stadium rock and doesn't feature anything definable as a guitar solo, or even a guitar. How Du is a Bristol-based producer whose work is rooted in dub techno but moves from dark vibes to melodic flourishes taking in broken beats and moody textures and rhythms along the way.

How Du has appeared on a couple of Pressure Dome compilations but this is his debut full-length and it's a corker. You can hear C Gate in my FSK show this month, but Metal Will Reign is one of those releases you really can't judge with a single fragment. Immerse yourself in the whole thing and, if possible get hold of the cassette version, which has an exclusive B-side not available in the download.

You can pick up either format here. 

Drift - Violence For Your Furs (God Unknown)

The God Unknown label has put out so many good releases in recent years I made room in my shows whenever I get wind of a new one. This mini-album from Drift, which is out tomorrow, is certainly no exception. I now find that this London-based four piece have been active for over ten years and am once again in that wonderful position of being able to check out the back catalogue of a truly outstanding band of whom I was previously unaware. It's not the first time God Unknown have provided me with this opportunity and I fully expect it won't be the last.

Their Rough Rider track features in my Dandelion Radio show this month: it's a thrilling cacophony based around a wonky synth riff that vocalist Nathalia Bruno overlays with the kind of understated delivery which adds to the mood rather than wrecking it with the kind of performative singing that destroys too many promising intros. If I still went in for those music polls that were such a feature of my youth, Nathalia would be on a shortlist for 'favourite female vocalist', no question, but that's certainly not to undervalue what the rest of the band do, producing the kind of motorik chug I'll be in my cold, cold grave before I ever tire of.

Get the album here and join me in checking out the rest of the band's releases after you've done it.