L.S. Diezel & Launch DAT - Aliens (Digidub)

There's been a whole load of great dub reissues recently and, with this, Digidub have unearthed one of the best. As the label says, the original 12" is 'rare as rocking horse shit' so this 10" release is something to get your hands on while you can.

L.S. Diezel's experimental approach sees them merge breaks with dub that, despite the release's vintage, still sounds fresh and innovative even now. On two of the tracks they're joined by Launch DAT - actually the alias of label owner Lee Berwick - which adds yet more layers to an already multi-layered approach. Things get just a little funky, especially on the Poor Man's Glory track which you can hear in my Dandelion Radio show this month: get it on-demand here.

Look out for something from Digidub's recently released Julian Fairshare tribute in my August show.

Yard Act - You're Gonna Need A Little Music (Island)

No cliched talk of difficult third albums here or half-hearted reviews from other sources. Let's get straight to the point: You're Gonna Need A Little Music takes Yard Act into new musical territories without completely sacrificing what I love about them. 

That word 'completely' is doing a bit of work in there to ensure I'm being honest and sufficiently nuanced in my appraisal of his new work. The highlight for me remains the already previewed Redeemer: I love the new darkness the band finds here, while finding some appreciation for the many other textures that accompany it across the album. Talky Talky People, which follows, is downright playful in places while album opener Empty Pledges seems to use the idea of artistic sincerity too archly to be taken entirely seriously, something which the introduction of traffic noises and heavy breathing facilitates.

If Yard Act seem to be asking us not to take them too seriously here, that doesn't mean they're telling us the world is just a playground and nothing more: the sparse bass on Tall Tales and sub-anthemic undertones supplement that darker edge of Redeemer. I come away from the album pondering its sometimes confusing changes of direction but, it seems to me, it's a collection set on making us think rather than providing all the answers. Perhaps a good indicator of where Jamie Smith's head is at too.

You can hear standout track Redeemer in my Dandelion Radio show, now available on-demand here.

Manwel T meets Messian Dread

Manwel T's bandcamp site has become a rich source of reggae and dub productions and remixes and I've discovered a number of great dub tunes and artists after being introduced to them here. This came out in the spring and finds the Maltese producer in a meeting of minds with prolific dub artist Messian Dread, whose vast output covers around 30 years and can be found here.

The results is a dub/roots collision that acts as a superb showcase for anyone unfamiliar with either artist. I'm playing Dub Culture in my FSK show this month: now available to stream on-demand here. Consider it an introduction to the work of the two artists. While you're at the Manwel T site, check out his recent excellent Unidentified Flying Cymbals release too.

Shelf Life: Benjamin Wood: A Station on the Path to Somewhere Better (2018)

The character of Fran Hardesty fills Wood's third novel to such a degree that all other characters exist in his shadow, most notably his son Dan who ends the novel unable to escape not just the memory of his father's brutal actions but the long-dead man himself, whose persona offers a rich and destructive cocktail combining rampant self-assurance with self-pity.

I've always found Wood's use of dialogue one of the most appealing facets of his writing and Fran offers a fascinating vehicle for this: one moment seducing a young folk singer, the next weaving a horrifyingly convincing rationale for those set to die at his hands. Yet bound up with the attributes of a an abusive character is the meticulous and careful craftsman and lover of the Cocteau Twins. An easier option, you feel, would to have Fran driving around to a soundtrack of classic rock and heavy metal: instead, he puts on Blue Bell Knoll and Treasure - enigmatic selections that, to the reader as well as to other characters, are part of his strange appeal.

In loving Fran's complexity in spite of myself and what I know of his brutality, I find myself negotiating the same difficult path as Dan, who somehow has to forge a future for himself away from his father's shadow, something both crucial and impossible. The scene where Dan is beaten and has his laptop stolen against the cacophony of free jazz in an East Village bar is a metaphor for the brutal chaos in which he is forced to exist, as is the way he later gets it back. If he can't escape his father's influence, you sense he would find it difficult to survive without it also. There's something of the world about Fran: taking him out of the world doesn't make its complexities go away.

A Station on the Path to Somewhere Better is a work dressed up as a dark thriller that really denies easy categorisation, much like Fran's character.

Osees - Off Course (Deathgod Corp.)

It's hard to overstate my feelings about Osees, John Dwyer's musical vehicle that's been churning out great tunes since the late 1990s and barely threatened any periods of inactivity ever since. Even when Dwyer switched home from San Francisco to LA, leaving his old line-up behind, there was barely a pause before he turned up with a new one.

Over the last dozen years of so, Osees (currently the preferred variation following Thee Oh Sees and Oh Sees) have shifted from a garage rock sound underpinned by Dwyer's erstwhile collaborator Peter Dammit!'s unique bass sound achieved by using a modified six-string guitar.

If Osees' style since then has become heavy, aided by the double drum attack of Dan Rincon and Paul Quattrone, recently it's veered into something close to freakout territory, a move which these ears have been happy to approve. Off Course is this year's second release, following on the heels of spring's Cara Maluco EP and finds the deepening continuing. I'm playing the title track in my Dandelion show this month, while my FSK show features the extraordinary Hecate's Reflection is a Trick.

The idea of a year with an Osees release always feels wrong. This year we get two. Dive in here.

Zen Baseballbat - There's Nothing Worth Stealing

One of the tracks on Zen Baseballbat's latest album, released earlier this year, is called Destination Normal. I imagine the track carrying an invisible question mark: is the semi-legendary re-formed 'techno reggae and disgruntled rhyme' (to use their own words) band finally heading in the direction of normality after years in the awkward corner of the cult-band backwaters?

ZBB have now dropped the horns that adorned their earlier releases on the Moon Ska label but that doesn't mean they've gone back to their origins as beat-up rude boy/post-punk underclass visionaries. Watching them live (as you should when you get the chance), they're a solid outfit these days, dispatching tight, rhythmic gems that found their way into the recording studio and, inevitably, appear here.

The visionary tag is certainly still well-applied though: Angry Man is a fitting anthem for current times and it's perhaps a measure of how things have gone into an awkward full circle that it might just as easily hearken back to the midst of the punk/oi culture wars (although of course no one called them that back then). The title track brings irony off the bench before the colours are firmly nailed to the mast in The Curse of Capitalism before returning as a laid-back reprise in the album-closer Caught Stealing.

Destination normal? Nah, they come across as a band still soaked in influences of yore who've been liberated by their experiences to end up somewhere like that hinterland where it all started. If a wish of those afflicted by the curse of middle age is 'I wish I'd known then what I know now', There's Nothing Worth Stealing is the work of band who are able to take that knowledge, return to their former stamping ground and put it to good, if thankfully not conventional, use.

Get it here.

Dubmission

It's becoming rare nowadays that I don't play a Dubmission release in one of my monthly shows. There are two obvious reasons for that: they put out a lot of stuff and that stuff is invariably worth checking out.

This year alone the London-based label has already brought us Makyo's wonderful rendition of Talisman's Things Ah Get Tuff, Ashtech's Walkin' Dubs and Drew Id's Interstellar Dub. Last year they brought us the marvellous Freqs in Flux anthology from Pitch Black and Alpha & Omega's Only Jah Children, among a whole load of great releases you can find at their bandcamp site.

In my Dandelion Radio show this month, I'm playing the International Observer remix of Isaac Chambers and Dub Princess's Let Me In, a monster of a track that first saw the light of day a few years back and is more than worthy of a reissue, especially as the release not only includes the featured track but an excellent Deep Fried Dub mix.

All of which is just scratching the top of the iceberg. Dubmission aren't just worth checking out in themselves: they open the door to a massive range of essential dub releases.

Shelf Life: Lee Fowler - Say Hello Wave Goodbye

Lee Fowler is better known, to me at least, as the founder of the Thomas Imposter label which brought so many great Japanese bands - Dead Bambies, Astro-B, Goofy18, to name a few - to wider attention. No surprise, then, that his novel is rooted in his cultural experiences in the far east, where he's lived for many years. There are even nods to his 'other' self: the main character's name is Thomas Impey and a Dead Bambies t-shirt even makes an appearance at one point. 

If Impey is in some respects - though certainly not in others - an 'innocent abroad' thrust out of necessity into a hostile world of drug-trafficking, the characters governing his fate appear to have left their innocence way behind in the past, if they ever had it in the first place: the sleazy Phil, whose 'body defied science', the intoxicatingly dangerous Yuki, who dangles the thread on which his increasingly precarious fate hangs, plus an array of gangsters whose terrifying clutches he is forced to dodge as he makes his way from Japan to Thailand and, he hopes, back again.

And yet it's those characters who display at least a vestige of innocence that Impey - and Fowler - seem most inclined to preserve. If Impey himself has antihero tendencies, his character is redeemed by his increasingly honest reflections on his treatment of the young student Kumiko: the trajectory of his character development sees him arriving at the realisation that he cannot see her as the architect of his failed teaching career but as someone he treated in much the same way as those loathsome forces surrounding him would, given the chance. The treatment of the Thai transsexual, abused by her London businessman boyfriend, is similarly pivotal, as is the warning contained in the sticky end the Londoner comes to.

What's most impressive about the novel is its pace, which carries the reader through Thomas' breathless quest giving us little option but to find ourselves similarly propelled. The destructive tsunami that is both the greatest threat to Thomas' life and the means for his escape feels like the key metaphor around which the novel is wrapped. The main character constantly has the wave at his back but it is, ultimately, a wave that can envelope others too, whatever their moral compass or lack thereof.

Get the paperback version here. 

Jon Spencer - Songs of Personal Loss & Protest (Shove)

As a huge fan of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, I approached this one with the same trepidation I have for all his subsequent releases. A fear of abandonment always seeps into my consciousness when it comes to my favourite artists. I'd never been disappointed yet but, having encountered some reviews that suggested he's toned down his abrasive style for this one, I pressed play for the first time with something approaching dread.

It was totally unwarranted: Spencer has produced one of the albums of the year. If the style is really less abrasive, I'm not hearing it or, at least, any melodic interludes are no different than what this master of the fretboard has produced before. Besides which, Spencer is hardly a stranger to adventures into new musical territories: it underpins his work from Pussy Galore, through the Blues Explosion years, his R.L. Burnside collaboration all the way to the celebrated Sick of Being Sick! in 2024.

But it's all underpinned by that trademark blues-punk collision and that's still the overriding influence here. Sometimes you want your favourite artists to move into new areas and sometimes you just want them to stay the same. Jon Spencer, over more than forty years, has always managed to do both.

You can hear tracks from the album in my latest Dandelion Radio and FSK shows.

Get it here. 

Soft Science - Spinning (Spinout Nuggets)

Sometimes genre labels just get in the way. Soft Science are a case in point. Although I can see the label 'dream pop' is useful as general description of what they do, there's so much more to this Sacramento-based band, both an emotional and musical depth for starters. 

If you're unfamiliar Spinning is a good starting point, its mood of frustration and tension clashing with the wash of guitars and synths to produced something which, it could be said, is far more rooted in earthy reality than dreams. Then again, I suppose it depends on the dreams.

It's from their album Sand, which will be out in September on Spinning Nuggets in my neck of the woods and the proficient Shelflife in the US. I played the track in my FSK show last Friday and you can now hear the show on-demand now here.

You can get the single and pre-order the album from the band's bandcamp. There's also a video of the single which can be found here. 

Bureau De Change - The Gammon's Lament (Alcopop!)

This Bath outfit certainly add a new vibrancy to the Alcopop! label. Nominally an indiepop platofrm, Bureau De Change power into the roster, channeling a fistful of anger to come out sounding something like a fight between Amyl & The Sniffers and Idles, giving the eponymous gammon a deserved roughing up in the process.

It's another release that encouraged me to check out the rest of the band's roster which I duly did, including the frantic Marriage, released last autumn, another Amyl-like vocal performance and, as the band describe it as 'an ode to being single in your late 20s'. To these ears it manages to make an existential crisis sound enjoyable. Hopefully they'll be around into their forties to deal with their collective mid-life crisis in the same way.

I played The Gammon's Lament in my FSK show this month, which you can now hear on-demand here.

V/A: Hard Philippines (Akenat)

I love the way Pinoy Rock became one of those genres that pretty much subsumed every other guitar genre and, in a sense, disappear. All genres should follow this pattern and, in doing so, render the word 'genre' completely meaningless in music.

Its origins can be traced back to the 1960s when instrumental Filipino bands, inspired inevitably by The Beatles and other English combos, began adding vocals. Although much of this resulted in easy listening abominations - as happens everywhere - some bands went in more interesting directions and a collection of this music is featured here, all of which appeared in the the Philippines between 1971 and 1978.

Much of what's collected on Hard Philippines exemplifies what happens when guitarists who know how to use them begin to defy convention and lose control of their instruments to enter freakout territory. There's musicianship to admire here but more worthy of your attention is that submission to the freakout and where it takes you.

The album is my featured compilation in this month's Dandelion Radio show. Bathe in it.

Golden Kong - Simply Happy (DSRPTV)

Having played something from this three-track EP in my FSK show last month, naturally I'm following it up with the other two tracks in my Dandelion and FSK shows this month. This Sao Paolo-based producer whips up an intoxicating mix of techno and funk to produce one of the most irresistible dance releases of the year.

On Dandelion, you can hear the EP's closing track A Dream Unfolds, which features a contribution from Jovelli, while the FSK show has Frutiger Aqua, featuring Rylie. The mix of styles doesn't lend itself to easy description: you'll find everything in there from jungle, to D&B, to experimental rhythms which could be from anywhere, or nowhere.

And if that intoxicating mix whets your appetite for more, check out his Copa 2002 single, released earlier in the summer, which chucks some acid in for good measure. You get the impression Kong's styles could go anywhere at all and I look forward to following them to wherever that turns out to be.

Get it directly from the artist's bandcamp or from DSRPTV.

The Sea Shall Not Have Them

I've become captivated by this duo from the Australian Gold Coast of late. Their recent release is a gorgeous multi-textured two-track extravaganza of layered noise that seems to linger longer than its 12 minutes+ combined duration, in the best kind of way. 'Glorious noise that you can swim in' is what they claim to offer and that's a pretty good description of what they deliver.

I played their No Breathing in Dreams track in last month's FSK show and this month my Dandelion show features the other track, The Dive, the latter featuring a vocal/keyboard contribution from Madeleine Cocolas, while the other track is a collaboration with The Orphaned Bee.

It was more than enough to encourage me to check out the rest of what's on their bandcamp site, including last year's four-track EP The Flare, which by turns broods and soars. If you're under the misguided impression that nothing original can be done with guitars any more, you need the corrective influence of The Sea Shall Not Have Them in your life.

The Ale Trail: Beer Engin, Whiston

I'm a great lover of Micropubs and had been meaning to visit this one for a while, hindered by the fact that it only opens up at 4pm between Thursdays and Sundays. The Beer Engin won its CAMRA branch's pub of the year in 2022, a one-room, cash-only bar that has the added benefit of being dog-friendly so ours received her usual warm greeting.

One of the great things about small boozers like this is you really can't avoid entering conversation with the rest of the clientele - especially when you've got a friendly dog in tow - and the discussion soon moves onto the World Cup, with the landlady flatly refusing to change her opening hours to fit in with England's game in Mexico next week. It's like sitting in someone's front room, only with six handpumps all operational.

Highlight of the visit is the excellent Blackedge Best Bitter, from a brewery based in Horwich near Bolton. It's a rich, 4.5% ABV pint, sturdy and nourishing, the kind of beer that's a pleasant struggle rather than an easy drink but the best beers all deserve to be fought with and I submit quickly to its immense charms.

My Best Unbeaten Brother: Forgotten Folk Song

This Croydon band did a session for my show in June 2024, their Pessimistic Pizza album of that year a firm favourite released by the Audio Antihero label. This year they've been putting out a single a month through their in the manner of The Wedding Present's Hit Parade and it's been an intoxicating ride so far.

The June 2026 offering, Forgotten Folk Song, is the latest of a series of indie masterpieces that, in any decently ordered world, would be getting onto radio playlists all over the country. It's in mine anyway in a two hour show that you can now hear on-demand at the Dandelion Radio Mixcloud as well as streaming as part of this July schedule here. 

Forgotten Folk Song finds them in reflective mood, sorting through the debris of the past against a backdrop of a manic strum while knowing this debris is the very foundation of life:

And when we cling to this stuff/it feels like going home.

While you wait to collect the rest of the series, check out what's gone before on their bandcamp:

January: Sometimes Life's Too Short for Jazz

February: Trying to Take Pictures of Ghosts

March: Psychic Night at the Croydon Toby Carvery

April: The All Encompassing Need to Say Goodbye

May: The Cracks and the Creases and the Mistakes

The Ale Trail: Cottage Beer Project

I stumbled on this Devon-based brewery while searching on the internet for bottle conditioned ales. Admittedly, if I were seeking just any bottle conditioned ales this would not be difficult (although it would be great if there were more) but finding new ales produced in this way has something of a quest about it. In the case of this brewery, the quest turned out to be a hugely productive one.

As a lover of dark beers, I inevitably reached for the Mild Boar mild and the Rambler dark ale, both of which turned out to be good selections, the former a chestnut mild with a nutty texture, the latter deep, sweet and strong (5.9% ABV).

However, it was the third choice that surpassed expectations: The Gatherings, an amber ale, is far more robust than other ambers: as the picture on their website had already suggested, it's closer to brown in colour hinting at the richness of its texture. Taste-wise, it more than surpassed expectations: for a 3.4% ABV ale, it's packed with flavour, delicately spiced with the depth of a winter ale. If you're looking for something that's not too strong but tastes like it is, this is worth trying.

I'll be going back for more, certainly, The Old English Goat bitter also looks a good bet while the Black Pheasant stout would certainly have been a pick first time round had it been in stock. There's also a Black IPA called Panther: in my experience these things can go either way but the selection sampled so far makes me positive about giving it a go. It was the Society of Independent Brewers' south-west champion in December. 

If you're looking for a lighter ale, appropriate for these summer evenings, you might want to try the Bespoke blonde ale, the Doodle Beer EPA or IPAs Red Deer and Hit For Six.