Dez Dare Album Launch

About

Join The Party! Dez Dare Launches CHERYL! w/ Lunar Dirt [AUS] + LIPWORMS @ The Hope & Ruin

Dez Dare launches into 2025 with his 5th album, CHERYL! Your Love Shines Down Like A Supernova's Death'. Blending his unique mix of existential wordplay and experimental riffage to create an album that is at arms with itself while cohesive; cheeky and upbeat, simultaneously breaking our hearts.

How often do we think about what we miss when we are distracted by shiny things While fencing with social media, long winded stories, dreams of other lives, unnecessary toys, and irrelevant social experiments with happiness, we miss the things that make up our world.

This album looks at those morsels of time and the bits that fill them, soaking existence as well as manspreaders. Those people should be added to the 7th circle of hell or suburbia. Either is probably a similar commute!

Dez Dare (AKA Darren Smallman of labels God Unknown, BATTLE WORLDWIDE, Low Transit Industries, and bands Thee Vinyl Creatures, The Sound Platform, Warped) grew up in Geelong, Australia, where he became involved in the local punk and rock scene in 1990. Sharing stages with the likes of 5678s, Cosmic Psychos, Fugazi, The Dirty Three and the Hard-ons, before shifting his focus to running record labels.

In the 2020s we see Dez Dare take form in a spare room in Brighton, UK, where Dez starts building his own studio and producing music and videos that have been described as "sounds like MONSTER MAGNET and DEVO caught in a drug bust highly unique and highly recommended" by MAXIMUM ROCKNROLL [Nick Odorizzi] to The Wire's Edwin Pouncey "dynamically armed with a ten-pronged set of lyrical barbs and musical hooks that, once heard, sink deep and hold fast" to Crossfire Metal "minimalistic, electronic psychedelic hippie poop that is only bearable with a hell of a lot of acid, angel dust and LSD".

On this album Dez was joined by Laura Loriga on backing vocals and Jonny Halifax on backing vocals and lap steel, expanding on the sound of previous records and adding a new dimension to his trademark weird-n-roll.

Never too far from the creative edge of rock music, Dez has intertwined pretty and odd melodies, with synth leads and guitar riffs, big beats and sing-along choruses, that will make you feel like dancing moodily in the corner of your living room all day and night.

To celebrate the release of the album there is a party at The Hope & Ruin with Australian sci-fi motorik beasts Lunar Dirt and Portsmouth's techno-psych mutants, LIPWORMS.

Wednesday, 24th September 2025
The Hope & Ruin, Brighton
W/ Dez Dare + Lunar Dirt + LIPWORMS
Presented x God Unknown Records + Sonic Masala

"At a time when much of indie rock is drifting toward reverb-drenched melancholy or algorithm-friendly mush, Dez Dare is a welcome jolt of clarity. His music points out that punk rock music can still be smart, noise can still be meaningful, and absurdity can still be art. He makes records that feel like manifestos written in neon, sung through a bullhorn, blasted through fuzz pedals and synth wires... Dez Dare proves once again that he is one of the most interesting, inventive, and important voices in underground rock today." Thoughts Words Action

"Dare raves his way through his latest batch of 11 new brain tilting songs - each pumping with frantic Casio keyboard induced rhythm and burning psychedelic guitar soloing. Completely nuts boy pop from a true master that has been nurtured over the years from overdosing on Devo, The Tubes and perhaps a shot of R Stevie Moore... From the opening four second synthesized trill of "CHERYL! [Loading...]" to the guitar shredding onslaught ripping through "Blistered Eyeballs", Dez Dare's ambition to "not be like everyone else" takes a step closer to being fulfilled." The Wire [Edwin Pouncey]

Lunar Dirt

Lunar Dirt takes the controls with their new soundtrack to the Japanese sci-fi cult classic.

Released in late 2023, Chapter One reanimates six of the film's most memorable scenes - the narrow escapes and near misses - with all the tension, terror and undying hope of the mission beyond. Live drums. Analog synths. It's a retrofuturist exploration of space and time, from the depths of the cosmos to the centre of the dance floor.

"There's a definitive krautrock energy with the hypnotic electronic components matching the very tight and pocket-centric drumming. Layers are incrementally introduced with care and they have a potent effect even if the melodies or arpeggiations are simple, there's a considered, in-the-moment feel to each sound, producing an atmosphere far greater than the sum of their parts." Stew Magazine

LIPWORMS

Portsmouth's finest purveyors of mutant techno-psych, LIPWORMS, return with a writhing, club-drenched monster of a single. "Teeth" is a snarling, industrial acid-house epicequal parts basement rave and blown-out livewire punk performance. It's the sound of machines overheating, vocals breaking apart at the seams, and every dial on the desk pushed gleefully into the red.

Formed in a sweaty loft and forged through sheer chaos, "Teeth" feels like it's constantly threatening to cave in on itselfand that's exactly where its brilliance lies. There are no clean lines here, only jagged acid squelches, glitched-out drum loops, and vocals delivered like corrupted commands from some ghost in the hardware.

Imagine Underworld reprogrammed by a noise band and dropped into the back room at Berghain, with a little SCALER, PVA, and Factory Floor in its DNA. LIPWORMS have never sounded more confident or more unhinged. After last year's snarling debut "Handshake", "Teeth" ups the antelonger, darker, heavier, and wired straight into your nervous system. It's dance music for the end of the world, and one of the year's most thrilling underground statements so far.

industrial techno-psych, aligning with recent experimental dance sounds from the likes of SCALER and PVA whilst echoing the legacy of giants such as Underworld. So Young Magazine

a throbbing hypnotic monster Louder Than War