Bongo Boy TV – Season 14 Episode 9 “Fall Into Space” (reviewed by Dave Franklin)

I’m afraid to say that I have fallen a bit behind with the recent releases from Bongo Boy, such is the volume of the music that they put out, but I’m here to put things right, catch up, and delve into the latest batch of movers and shakers, rising stars, and established artists that make up their roster’s recent releases.

This choice selection first aired on Tuesday, September 2, 2025, on Ch. 29 in Portland, Oregon, before being broadcast across numerous Terrestrial TV channels. But I want to make sure that you haven’t missed any of these great new releases. This is music that you need in your life.

Things kick off with something down and dirty courtesy of The Ex-Bombers and “He’s A Bad, Bad Man,” a grungy, groovy, gnarly rock onslaught, harking back to alternative ’60s garage rock bands as filtered through the likes of The Cramps and further channeled into the present by bands such as Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. Part rock and roll, part sheer attitude, all essential listening and a song fashioned only out of deft bass lines, bombastic beats and singalong vocals… what a great way to start.

By contrast, Meresha gets us into her own brand of “Trouble” via some slick and minimal pop. Well, “pop” isn’t quite the correct term; although it’s slick, sleek, and sophisticated, and it ticks all the right boxes for that genre, it also plays with a shimmering slow-dance groove, spacious R&B moves, and sits somewhere between balladry and a sultry, end-of-night anthem. A song that is perfect for today’s mainstream, but which is more about predicting where things might go next.

Staying on the dance floor, Stonks Bros bring us a scintillating blend of nu-disco meets hyper-pop in the form of the instrumental “We Choose To Go To The Moon.” A track fashioned out of digital beats and sonic euphoria, a clubland floor filler if ever there was one, just the sound of which conjures thoughts of warm summer nights and beachfront venues, so much so that just writing about it has made the temperature of the room I’m in go up by about 5 degrees!

Scott McDonald is an artist that I am becoming familiar with via Bongo Boy’s promotion of his music. “One Mistake I Can’t Repeat” is a perfect example of why he is catching people’s attention: a song that rises out of an acoustic pop place and heads into more rock-and-roll climes. The result is a song that uses the infectiousness of pop to temper rock’s rawer sound, while rock’s impetus and drive take pop music into the stratosphere. It’s what he does. And he does it so well.

The Winter Sounds is also an act that takes more mainstream sounds into interesting places. “Heartbeats” pushes pop through a more dance-infused filter; the beats are contagious, the groove unmissable, but it is a song that plays with some extraordinary dynamic rise and fall. It also sets itself apart from most pop and dance music with the clever, creative textures it cloaks itself in—lush sonics, brass salvos, cinematic scope, and anthemic scale. Not your usual pop song. Anything but.

Matt LeGrand brings us “All Good,” perhaps the most positive breakup anthem you’ve ever heard. Writing from the point of view of someone who has accepted that a relationship is over and that they did the best they could whilst they were together, it takes the form of a lush and luxurious song, wandering from traditional pop sounds to futuristic dancefloor experimentation, it both redefines the post-relationship single and perhaps even where pop music goes next.

With “Let it Grow,” Van Gordon Martin delivers something that sits at the sharp end of where traditional reggae sound is today. It blends the familiar and the fresh brilliantly—cool guitar licks, driving bass melodies, off-beat rhythms, and that positivity that the genre does so well —but also a feeling of space and stepping into a bright future, for Van Gordon Martin, for reggae, for the world.

LBM rounds things off with “Stranded,” a skittering, pop-infused R&B piece, about as cutting-edge as it gets musically yet thematically, as old as love itself…well, as old as the first difficult breakup at least. If we came in with the sound of a mutant strain of rock and roll traditions, we end on the most bang up-to-date pop piece.

So there you go, plenty to check out, and even for someone like myself who is, by now, fairly familiar with Bongo Boy’s artists, there was only one name I had already written about at length. That’s how fast things move in their world.

Right on queue, credits roll, and The Swinging Iggies play us out. Another batch of brilliant music has been mainlined straight into that part of the brain that keeps you cool and on the case when it comes to staying ahead of all the other pop pickers and rock explorers, discerning record fans, and new music aficionados!