Well, well, well. Here we go with the February show.
We start off with Scientist, an absolute genius (genius, I say!) of dub. Just listen to how clear each instrument is in the mix. I especially love the sound of the percussion in this track.
Cult Objects are new to me, but I am sold. I bet you thought the intro drums was “Janie Jones,” didn’t you? Come on, be honest.
Sick Thoughts really nails that trashy overlap between meat and potatoes classic rock and punk. It’s actually a sound that very few bands pull off. I bet this is killer live.
Full Flower Moon Band out of Australia have done a good job of changing up their approach with each release. This whole album is excellent.
Phelimuncasi & Metal Preyers- I have no idea what they are singing about, but the vocals are really striking. So much, in fact, that you need to go back and listen to this song carefully to hear all of the musical ideas going on. Those church bells? Amazing.
I know this is a radio show, but what in the actual hell is going on in the video for “Tamoo Trance?” I think the budget for the video was $350 and a jar of THC gummies. Great song, excellent album, music video weird as shit.
This new Xiu Xiu album of all covers is simply amazing. For this month I was really close to playing “Hamburger Lady” but in the end I could not stay away from this haunting version of “In Dreams.” Check out that vocal ache at the 2:45 mark; how stunning is that? The only good way to cover Roy Orbison is not to sound like him, but to demonstrate his influence on you. The album is amazing not only for how great the covers are, but also for the fascinating choice of songs.
I received an email message from somewhere, maybe the label Bass Agenda, about the Carebot$ various artists compilation. 141 songs! Given the amount of music that hits my attention each day, I´m not sure how long it will take before I can give all 141 songs a decent audition, but I did try a few and this track from g13ck did get my attention.
Syf Recordings out of Poland has been one of my go to labels for the past year or so. They have a really good stable of artists and the prices for the releases are quite reasonable, so expect me to stay on top of Syf Records releases for the indefinite future.
Rehash Neu Klang is new to me, and I love that late punk/early post-punk sound. I hear bits of Wire, Magazine, and definitely Gang of Four. Close your eyes and you might hear “Damaged Goods” in parallel to this song, but in a good way, not a cheap copycat way.
This Cochon Double track is so damn cool. I love songs where each instrument or sound is interesting on its own, but then when assembled together it gives your ears something to chew on over many repeated listens.
Club Coco, which is basically Coco Maria, is a focal point for cool, funky, late night chill Latin music. Imagine if St. Germain underwent a two-year intensive study of Latin music.
Room To Live was one of the last albums in The Fall’s catalog that I got on CD. I don’t think that fact is relevant to anything. I do have all of their studio albums on CD, many of them “deluxe” reissues, in case you are worried.
I remember in high school someone had this Kraut record. I hadn’t thought about in a really long time and something recently made me think of it. NYC didn’t have the strongest hardcore scene in the late 1970s/early 1980s, but Kraut was definitely one of the great bands from that city.
It's not very often that I am on social media, and it is even less often that I discover something new and interesting on those platforms, but I have to think Instagram for learning about John Q Irritated. Someone posted a picture of this album with a short but interesting description, and my Spidey sense told me to investigate. I hear bits of Gomez and Drums & Tuba in the songs, which is both interesting and a lot of fun.
Disoriented Ghost I read about somewhere on Bandcamp, and there is a really fascinating mix of hard rock arrangements, mid-Eastern tones, and pseudo Tuvan throat singing going on here. Those elements could be a recipe for a train wreck, but it really works on this record.
Can you believe there is no Wikipedia page for Günter Schickert? It’s not like the bar is very high regarding fame or talent to have a Wikipedia page. Someone should do something about that. Maybe that someone should be me.
I am fascinated by the blend of sounds in this song by The Deep Freeze Mice. The vocals sound like something out of the early 1980s Australian post-punk scene, but there is the almost Spanish sounding acoustic guitar. Interesting.
Itchy & The Nits reminds me of one of the original instructions for punk rock: here is how you play three chords. That’s all you need to construct a song. Go have fun.
Both Morwan and A Place To Bury Strangers have put out some really cool dramatic post-punk meets cinematic post-rock lately, and when you put the two together you just get some stunning music.
I heard this song by Hammell On Trial on a music podcast in the 2000s (I can’t remember the name of the podcast but it was in that time when music podcasts would spring up continually then suddenly disappear after a dozen or two episodes). It’s chilling how relevant the lyrics from this 2007 song are here in a so-far evil and bleak 2026.
New Earth Tongue! I love this band. Even though the price of records from the In The Red label are not cheap, I am still very happy that In The Red released this new album because the cost to get records from New Zealand shipped to my house is prohibitive.
I don’t know much about these next two bands, Plastique Pigs (Raleigh, North Carolina) and Hiraki (Denmark) other than the songs are new and I really like them (the songs and the bands).
1980s New York City was not a real hotbed of hardcore punk, but it was indeed a non-stop volcano of art punk and post-punk. Phantom Toolbooth is just one of many great examples of this.
I remember hearing this Silver Apples song on the radio, if you can believe that. It was late 1990s Detroit and I was driving somewhere, and I was listening to a very small community college station (Henry Ford Community College; the call letters might have been WHFC or WHFU). It was the first time I ever ran across a radio station that had very specific genre shows, such as death metal, rockabilly, etc. Anyway, I heard this song and was intrigued by the insane drumming with the various melodies layered on top.
What Glitterbeat, Awesome Tapes From Africa, Africassette, and other labels have done to rescue obscure African music the Vampisoul, Munster, and other labels are doing for lesser known Latin music, especially 1960s and 1970s music from Colombia, Venezuela, and Peru. Muchas gracias, Vampisoul.
I just love this Digital Leather track. The vocals- arrangement and performance- are real standouts for me.
The amazing Catalan label Dicos Macarras released some amazing records in the last couple of years, including Beyond The Void by The Sky Creepers. The Sky Creepers prove that heavy music doesn’t necessarily need drop-D tuning and Cookie Monster vocals.
I don’t know anything about this Polish artist Brenda I Funky. I do like the start of the song- it starts out with a bass line that sounds like classic rock, then picks up a kind of Suicide feel which stays with the rest of the song.
Kid Congo has one of the most interesting and impressive resumes in all of alternative music, and that continues with his recent collaborations. Here is with Draculina serving up a great Cramps-esque tune.
After you enjoy listening to this track by La Luz (it’s a great song no matter how you dissect it) a few times, go back and listen and concentrate on the drums. You will thank me.
I never thought about Réunion island much (except that I am a stamp collector and I have a few from there) until 2019, when I spent a whole day record shopping in Paris. Like London, Paris is great in that there are fantastic all-around stores, but also quite a few specialist record shops. I found one that was really focused on music from Tahiti, New Caledonia, and the south Pacific in general, and another shop that had an amazing collection of records from Réunion and Mayotte. So, I have tried to keep somewhat up to date with music from those French colonies, which brings me to Jako Maron, a Réunion artist who just happens to be on one of my favorite labels, Nyege Nyege Tapes.
Gróa is a really cool band from Iceland, and it is merely a coincidence that the singer sounds a lot like early Sugarcubes-era Björk?
This track from Дом Прекрасных Аустов (“The House of Beautiful Austs”) perfectly encapsulates all of the dark, wistful tendencies of Russian music, no matter the genre.
Institute, from Austin, is new to me but this new self-titled album by them is really good. I’m looking forward to what comes next.
The Höga Nord label out of Sweden has a lot of electronic music that I like (which is saying something, because I am very picky about electronic music that I like vs. do not). The beginning of this song reminds me so much of the theme song from The Sopranos.
I just received my new copy of the Maria BC album Marathon in the mail yesterday, and I am super excited. I had a difficult time deciding which song to play this month so guess what? I chose one, and I’ll play more songs in the months to come.
If you have any interest at all in forward-looking German alternative music, definitely keep up to date with the labels Bureau B and Pingipung. I missed this album by Das Kinn when it first came out in May of 2025 but I recently acquired it and you should too.
I first heard Machinations on a CD compilation called Notes From The Australian Underground, which by the way is well worth tracking down.
Here we have Mujeres Podridas, out of Austin, playing perfect blend of hardcore and fast punk. Drop your needle anywhere (or hit the ol’ random play button) and enjoy the ride.
I’ve only been to Lithuania once (sadly), and that was a long time ago (2001? 2002?). I did buy as many local CDs as I could, but I was there for a business trip and I did not have much time to shop for records or ask about the local scenes (jazz, punk, post-punk, etc.). I would love to go back with time and some money to take in all of the interesting things going on in Vilnius. As with the neighbors in Latvia, there is a lot of really cool post-punk going on in that country. Luckily for me, shipping from Latvia and Lithuania is on the cheaper end of the European spectrum (not cheap, mind you, but definitely cheaper than Spain and Italy, which has crazy shipping rates to the U.S., even for a single CD).
The new album from Robber Robber comes out in a few weeks, and I am looking forward to hearing all of it. As of now there are four out of eleven songs available on their Bandcamp page. There are elements of Die Spitz, Mandy Indiana, and other really cool bands in their sound. I’m confident that this band will show up in Dandelion Radio’s Festive Fifty.
Okay, this next item is really interesting. I’ve been interested in the Situationists and the Paris May 1968 student uprising since my college days. I know the Situationists had varying degrees of influence on Malcom McLaren, The Feederz, and others, but I didn’t know much about their more time and place influence on French music until I recently picked up a book titled Synths, Sax, & Situationist. That led me to get off my butt and look more into Situationist inspired music, especially from France. That led me to this 2022 album by V. Vale & La Mère, titled Situationist Music. This album is terrific, and it will not surprise you that this album (and much of the Situationist inspired music that I’ve had a chance to hear so far) would not be shunned by those music fans who have their Nurse With Wound list memorized. This could make for a good one or two hour special show sometime- stay tuned.
Ipek Gorgun’s late 2025 album Earthbound is tagged in Bandcamp as “electronic” and “experimental” and both terms do apply correctly. This is electronic music for people who like to listen rather than dance.
The show finishes with Terveet Kädet, the hardcore legends from Finland. I remember about the time (1983 or so) when American hardcore bands had just about hit their limits of speed and short songs, along came a small wave of Swedish and Finnish hardcore bands that kept the blistering speed and short song durations going. Terveet Kädet may have been the most notorious at the time, but there were other bands that I recall like Rattus, Headcleaners, and more.
