Rich Thair’s distinctive sound featuring young emerging vocalists from South Wales.
Queer The Pitch is the second Dicky Continental album, and the first for Ramrock Red Records. Written, produced and recorded at Buntys Studio in Swansea by Rich Thair.
The first two singles feature South Wales based young MCs/spoken word artists Tia Zakura and Ioan Omar.
Singer/songwriter Jo Sims features once again, having worked with Rich on the first album ‘UN’.
Vocalists Laila Woodward and Asher Carroll both attend Rich’s youth music development project, ‘Future Blood’.
The album also features vocals from Steve Balsamo (ChimanA/The Storys) and bass from the greatly missed Andrew ‘Wal’ Coughlan, to whom the album is dedicated.
The album embraces the imperfection and creativity of learning and development, both my own and that of these amazing young artists. Boundary crossing and experimental, it’s a soundtrack that reflects the music that I grew up with and new sounds that constantly inspire me.
Andrew ‘Wal’ Coughlan, bass on Big Red Button and Sweat Equity
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News
Releases, studio news and what’s coming next.
New single
Big Red Button ft. Ioan Omar
The second single from Queer The Pitch arrives as a three-track EP on Ramrock Red: dub, vocal and instrumental, in that order. Putting the dub first was a deliberate call, and one listen explains why.
It is a soulful head nodder built on Rich’s live drums and warm melodic textures, with cut-ins from a 1980s pirate radio show found on an old C90. On the mic is Ioan Omar, a young Welsh/Jamaican MC from Swansea, whose voice you may already know from Dicky Continental’s remix of The Secret Garden’s ‘Weekend Away’, playable further down this page.
The song came together more or less in the studio on the day of recording, and it is about exactly that moment: pressing the big red record button and saying what you think. Andrew ‘Wal’ Coughlan, the Swansea producer and session bassist who played with Gary Numan for years, was there for the drum session, loved the track and jumped in on bass. The line on the record is one live take. Wal passed away in 2025, and Big Red Button is dedicated to him.
Pre-order the EP and the vocal version is yours to stream and download straight away. The full EP follows on release day.
Ramrock have opened the pre-order for the second Dicky Continental album. The digital release lands on 2 October 2026; a super limited vinyl pressing follows, which the label expects to ship in late January 2027.
The night before release, Rich hosts a Bandcamp listening party (Thursday 1 October, 7pm BST), playing the record through and talking about the collaborations behind it. RSVP is free.
Label founder Jo Wallace reports that ‘Hostile Environment’ has taken more BBC 6 Music play than any Ramrock release so far. One caveat on the vinyl: Ramrock post records to UK addresses only.
Hostile Environment is the first single from the forthcoming Dicky Continental album Queer The Pitch on Ramrock Red Records. Following the release of the first Dicky Continental album UN on Acid Jazz in 2023, Rich Thair returns with his new LP that’s more lyrical, featuring various guest vocalists but still maintaining his experimental approach to beats, textures, melody and musical emotion.
Musically, ‘Hostile Environment’ builds live congas and djembe over a Pirate Radio sample found on a dusty cassette which got Rich thinking about the Abyssinians and the Last Poets when he put the instrumental together, prior to transforming the track with Tia’s emotive voice and lyrics. The instrumental is more of a breakbeat head nodder with Rich’s characteristic dub tomfoolery.
Tia Zakura is a writer and spoken-word poet from Cardiff, known for her distinctive ‘flowetry’ rhythmic vocal delivery. Blending wordplay with musicality, Tia captivates audiences on iconic stages including the Southbank Centre and the Jazz Cafe. She most recently took the stage at the Roundhouse, competing in the final of the UK’s largest poetry slam. As a branch of her poetic career, Tia’s debut spoken-word theatre production, Girl-Coded, opened at the Wales Millennium Centre in April.
At the time of recording, I felt swarmed with political corruption, drowning in the constant media and news on my screen and TV. Everything was moving so fast that I felt stagnant, like I was just existing on this earth, not truly living. The music inspired me to write lyrics that give a true reflection of our current state, but also reclaim the power of creativity, and the ways in which art can save us.
Tia ZakuraOn writing Hostile Environment
“After performing professionally as a spoken-word artist across the UK, often with improvised music by a live band, I was keen to lay down my lyrics to some interesting and dynamic music by Dicky Continental,” Tia says. “The majority of my writing spans themes of politics and intersectionality. I am particularly interested in connecting the ‘big P’ in ‘People’ to the ‘small p’ in person.”
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Video
Nothing loads from YouTube until you press play.
Hostile Environment
Dicky Continental featuring Tia Zakura
Video premiere · via Ransom Note
Bitten To The Quick
Dicky Continental
Official video
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Remixes & Reworks
Other people’s records, taken apart and put back together at Buntys Studio.
Ariadne & New Street Adventure
Didn’t I
Dicky Continental Rework
Doktorhokashi
It’s Still Boogie
Dicky Continental Rework Vocal Mix
The Secret Garden
Weekend Away
Dicky Continental Vocal Remix · ft. Ioan Omar
Nimbus Sextet
High Time
Dicky Continental Remix
Velvett
Lay Down
Dicky Continental Rework · official video
Gloria Scott
All Of The Time, You’re On My Mind
Dicky Continental Rework
Ma
Ma vs Dicky Continental
Dicky Continental Remix
Red Snapper
Loveboat
Dicky Continental Remix
Moist
Hold On
Dicky Continental Remix
Moist
Me And You
Dicky Continental Remix
Radioactive Man
Engineroom
Dicky Continental Remix · Wang Trax
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Press Photos
Photographs by Maya Brooks, free to use for press and promotion with a credit. Click a photo to see it large, or download the full-resolution file. All three are 300 dpi, print ready, and carry the credit in their metadata.
Rich Thair is the co-founder and drummer of Red Snapper and Number. As Dicky Continental he recently contributed ‘Large Bongos’ to the Andrew Weatherall charity album ‘The Flightpath Estate 2’.
He continues to remix and reshape releases by other artists, with all his musical projects recorded and produced in Buntys Studio, Swansea. The debut Dicky Continental album ‘UN’ came out on Acid Jazz in 2023; the follow-up, ‘Queer The Pitch’, arrives on Ramrock Red Records.
