This week The Mekons, one of the longest-serving survivors of punk’s Class of ’77, released Horrorble – a dub deconstruction of their last album.

Horrorble is a new version of last year’s album Horror, (de)constructed in collaboration with Tony Maimone of Cleveland’s fellow punk outliers Pere Ubu.

It’s a typically eclectic effort from a band who describe themselves, memorably, as “postmodern, postpunk, post-human, past caring.”

Using the methods established by Jamaican producers like Lee Perry and King Tubby, the entire album is dismantled and reconstructed as a drifting dub landscape.

Songs are transformed into immersive echo-laden soundscapes, bringing my old school pal Lu Edmonds’ basslines to the fore and embroidering them with his slashes of electric guitar.

Having long ago evolved from their primitive punk roots (1978’s one-chord classic Where Were  You?) The Mekons sound of 2026 blends dub, country, noise, rock’n’roll, electronica, punk, music hall, polka and waltz.

I’ve previously posted one of Horror’s tunes, Mudcrawlers, and here is the album’s opening number, Before The Ice Age, in its original form.

Compare and contrast with the dub version here: