Australian born, Brighton based musical psychonaut Dez Dare is back with album number four ‘A Billion Goats. A Billion Sparks. Fin.’ This, his first long player for new label God Unknown Records (home to the likes of Duke Garwood and John J Presley) sees the garage rock renegade experimenting with wires, microchips and transistors and adding an element of electronica to his already trademark fuzzed out psychedelic stomp.

Fear not though diehard Dare fans, our musical anti-hero hasn’t gone full on Krautrock on us (well not just yet anyway) and produced an ambient drone record, as one listen to the excellent ‘Got A Fire In My Socket’ single/video will prove. Sounding not unlike John Du Cann covering ‘Kid’s In America’ it all comes together faultlessly to provide an inspiring auditory twist to the Dare sonic attack.

Bringing this new electronic tinged soundscape to full realisation three tracks into the album is ‘10,000 Monkeys + An Argument in Time’, a song that sounds like it’s been written over the soundtrack to a long lost ZX Spectrum game. It’s the near perfect antidote to the threat of AI enhanced music here in 2024 and whilst it shouldn’t really work it’s the best thing Dare’s written to date utilising 8 bit technology.

There’s still plenty of old school guitar driven head noise for us all to submerge ourselves in too, via the likes of ‘Matter v’s Matter’, ‘Call My City, Don’t Call My Telephone’, ‘Schrödinger’s Apocalypse’, and the album’s pulsating closer ‘A Billion Voices Screaming, Hello Void!’.

For me though, it’s when the metallic ping of ‘Gotta Cold Feeling’ and the pulsating throb of ‘Entangled Entropy’ unfurl themselves mid album to provide a creative high point and things move into almost Henrik Palm territory pushing ‘A Billion Goats. A Billion Sparks. Fin.’ into almost mainstream territory. Something I don’t think I’d ever thought I’d find myself writing about Dez Dare, but then with bands like King Gizzard and Osees (or whatever they are called this week) planning to take over the arena circuit here in the UK and Sleaford Mods already there, what the hell is considered mainstream these days anyway eh?

‘A Billion Goats. A Billion Sparks. Fin.’ Is released on March 1^st 2024, St Dez’s Day, on CD, download and deluxe vinyl, complete with a comic album.

Hit the link below to order your copy.

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Author: Johnny Hayward