Bongo Boy Rock ‘n’ Roll TV Episode – Ep3 Season 11 – “Jumping in Geometric Heat” (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

I’ve said it before but it is worth repeating, Bongo Boy take the effort out of finding the coolest new music for you. Most new music enters our consciousness by word of mouth, through media promotion or, increasingly, through online algorithms and if-you-like-that-you’ll-like-this functions. Bongo Boy’s TV shows dispense with that, they cut to the chase and bring, potentially, your next favourite right to your front room.

Bongo Boy Rock ‘n’ Roll TV goes beyond the usual video compilations and is instead a cutting edge TV show in its own right. The series has been on National TV in prime time slots on terrestrial TV channels since 2011 and each episode brings the best of new music from around the world and across all genres.

This TV episode premiered on the 3rd of January this year on Channel 29 in Portland, Oregon, USA, and later saw heavy rotation Nationwide on more than 72 TV channels in the USA in the month of March 2022. 

See the TV Guide for TV channel listings at bongoboytv.com

This episode kicks off with Kulikovsky’s Burning Up, a cool R&B-infused alt-pop track built from dance energy and dark grooves and accompanied by a sleek, sophisticated and sultry video. A great place to start and a great benchmark for the quality control at work at Bongo Boy. It’s a great record on its own but, as is always the way with great videos, the audio/visual playoff makes the whole package more than the sum of its parts, as if both feed off each other. Indeed they do.

Indigenous Geometry, Antagonista’s inclusion is a quirky and slightly angular indie-pop offering, a great blend of the quirky and fractious energy that inhabited the post-punk and New Wave scenes but with plenty of modern pop chops and likeability by the ton. Imagine if XTC got back together and made music with an eye on the modern indie and dance audiences. Not likely to happen but until they do, Antagonista has it covered.

Dici’s u.n.i (as in you and I and nothing to do with graduate degree courses) blends dance energy with cascades of classical guitar to fantastic effect, juxtaposition at its finest and most effective and Dwight and Nicole’s bluesy and soulful The Next Go Round is another example of a great song really taking on new dimensions because of the powerful, poignant and heartwrenching video.

Tell Me Why sees Estani Frizzell offer up a sassy slice of funky pop, infectious and endearing in both sound and vision and although The High Plains Drifters is a name that suggests perhaps a country or Americana sound actually delivers a beat-driven dance-pop groover par excellence with The One That Got Away.

Fizzgigs tick the boxes for all things pop-punk and upbeat alt-rock with Destiny and a performance video with a twist and Goldthread wraps things up with Tiffany Skylight, a song which starts in lo-fi pop territory, and expands into quirky indie, before adding alt-rock weight to power the song over the line. A perfect, if wonderfully unexpected, slow-burn arc.

Remember when music television cut to the chase and just delivered the goods? Bongo Boy Rock and Roll TV does!