Dilettante Ultra Newsletter #39

Reverse Evolution Monthly: July 2026

Oi. The weekly newsletter that comes out monthly!

“What is the point of delaying decay and reinforcing rot when barbarism could replace all this misery with a sublime explosion of strength and energy? One must resolve to surpass decadence by embracing this apocalyptic phenomenon with enthusiasm...” - Emil Cioran

This line from an early work of Cioran hit me hard the other day.

It has the distinct smell of Nietzsche, the odour of Marinetti, but I’ve read these words carved into train seats, burnt into the ceilings of pub green rooms with cigarette lighters, I’ve heard them in the guitar feedback of hardcore punk bands playing demolition parties or rendered into morse code kick patterns of psycho techno through nightclub walls as I’m attempting to find my way out of a toilet stall, it’s in some sense the creed of Australian crudity and vulgarity as prized aesthetic, the barbarian, the caveman, the brute. Reverse evolution.

This year has been a manic blur. For weeks there I slept less than 4 hours a night between band practise and shows and punching out work on a script, laying on Distort, travelling interstate every week. Wrote and recorded some songs with Straightjacket Nation, read 4 books by James Lee Burke, chipped away at Adam Lehrer’s fantastic book Communions (writing it up now), a bunch of Simenon as usual. The best book I read was a collection of 4 stories by Conrad called Typhoon. Every night I chip away at a collection of all of Maugham’s short stories, absolutely fantastic mean-spirited cunt lit.

I also got the plague, some variant of hog flu, bat AIDS, bird plague, I was out for a week straight, flat, watching the world cup. Not the worst place to be when you’re in a fever state. I back Australia and Croatia and have a place in my heart for Mexico because of the matador courage in Raul Jimenez, a man contemptuous of safety and death.

Short one this month. After July week, my schedule will calm down a little and I can finish a couple projects that have been put on the burner. I’m currently laying out the chapters for a new Mongrel Matter publication called Nietzsche On The Horse, more on that next month.

JEAN-PIERRE PONNELLE

I’m not sure how these videos go in substack newsletters but if you search Carl Orff Carmina Burana Jean-Pierre Ponelle you can find this.

I discover Ponnelle through trawling youtube for productions of Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, his name stuck with me as most beautiful costumes and set. When I was laying flat with hog flu I had the urge to listen to the plague hymnals of Carmina Burana and found this 1975 video production.

From the costume designs to the elaborate sets, this is fantastic viewing. I’m certain you’re familiar with ‘O Fortuna’, but listen to the second movement ‘Fortune Plango Vulnera’, this is one of my favourite pieces of music, devastating, manic bliss.

STATION MODEL VIOLENCE

I’ve been mashing away at some kind of tour diary for the past couple months of shows with Station Model Violence, we have a run of four shows next week in Victoria and then I can catch you up.

REVERSE EVOLUTION SHIRTS

New REVERSE EVOLUTION shirts. Claret on blue. Blue on claret. Sport ball exploitation. Buy here. Substack subscribers use code POSTMANE at checkout for free postage.

PROP RECORDS

Prop Records celebrated our 3rd year anniversary last weekend. It is not an easy time to run a brick and mortar record store so I wanted to thank everyone who has patronised and supported what we’re doing.

This year I’ve focused on trying to support more writers from this platform and have stocked books from poets, fiction writers and artists here, please check it out.

HOUSEKEEEPING

Introduction and interview from 2013. It’s a bit of a laugh, ineptitude on my part and a staunch incapacity to indulge in the experience from Verlaine. I was a lot nicer in the introduction than I should have been, I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, but he made an awkward situation much more awkward than it needed to be and my impression was he was a real prick. Good on him though, who wants to be interviewed over Skype? Originally published on some Melbourne music website, I can’t remember.

Please refer to this mix I made, Distort X 23 Cult Hardcore Songs for introduction.

This week the Negative Approach Straightjacket Nation etc show got announced so let’s celebrate.

A follow up to this mix of psychedelic music, this time I focus more on the bad trip, the bummer bitch, against the hippie.

Why would you chase this feel? Walking in winter rain, rattled by a deep and persistent cough, nothing bright, nothing radiant… you have to find the magic in spite of everything, the smell of poisoned bloated rats rotting in the gutter is the incense, the way the streetlights strike the oil on the road is the visuals, this is the soundtrack.

Til next month,

DX

Buy Me A Grape

When I started posting describing myself as a Dilettante Ultra, this was most apt way of conveying I respond to the manic passion of other dilettantes, against the measured and sober professional, so this is what I look for in writing about writing, art, cinema, food, wine, football and music… breadth of obsessions… contrasted against shallow credentials and dubious expertise, contrasted against the striver for whom a snide and pedantic retention of lexicon and trivialities is traded for status amongst other ambitious strivers…

This is why the spontaneous brilliance of the young and hungry and radical perennially acts as wildfire to regenerate forms and reconnect them with their vital essence… a ritual cleansing of the careerists, the aged and comfortable and conservative, a ritual purification against the encroachment of strivers, priests and nerds…

I would like to offer a weekly newsletter offering some brief insight into some of my own attempts to feed this fire and to share with you the writing, art, cinema, food, wine, football and music that I delight in. :)

More Dilettante Ultra:

#38 (June 2026) The drowned Buddha smiles at you

#37 (April 2026) music for donating blood to random strangers on the street

#36 - (April 2026) Learn 2 Hate

#35 (March 2026) end nerd tyranny

#34 (February 2026) STATION MODEL VIOLENCE, Udith Dematagoda ON AESTHETICS AND SPORT, Andrew Groves ON C.P. COMPANY, Sam McPheeters ON ENSHITTIFICATION, Ryan Pitchford ON RICK RUBIN, OUTLAWS & HIGHWAYS ON BOURDAIN

#33 (January 2026) On Bela Tarr’s Turin Horse. Plus substack holiday reads with deep cuts , Amphetamine Sulphate , Méditations Nietzschéennes , Bend Dexter , Ned Bajic , MORE PLATES by Patrick Lumes and the Mishima Delusion Delusion

#32 (January 2026) Substack holiday reads with Jake Hanrahan, Benjamin Aitken, Cosmic Louche , Justin Isis / Neo-Passéism , Matt Korvette (Yellow Green Red), Beautiful Monsters , Real Japanese Aesthetics

#31 (December 2025) Itchy Bugger in the grass, SpiderXDeath and the Return of the Mont Grand Cru

#30 (November 2025) catching up

#29 (November 2025) On Muro, on Shaun Daniel Allen (Shal), on crime novels, on unreleased Misfits...

#28 (October 2025) Endless Joy, imperishable hatred, the hardcore of the future, Distort #62

#27 (October 2025) On London Clay & Industrial Music & JG Ballard, on Nabokov & Russian lit, on Yukio Mishima & Tadanori Yokoo, on the new album from DEN

#26 (October 2025) On Nabokov, poshlost, Vivaldi / Darkthrone, suburban violence, butterfly collectors, irrational prejudices and redemption.

#25 (September 2025) On Charles Bukowski, Straightjacket Nation, Lester Bangs... and an epilogue to Blood Meridian in Kings Cross

#24 (September 2025) Eurypides' The Bacchae, Jim Harrison, Nicolas Cage in Joe, Nature and Organisation

#23 (August 2025) SOME MUSIC FOR YOU: WAGNER. ROBBER. RMFC.

#22 (August 2025) BOOKSTORE CREEPY CRAWL, SLEEP (THE BAND), SCI-FI FANZINE APPRECIATION

#21 (July 2025) 21 years of Straightjacket Nation, Iron Lung and Extortion, Blood Meridian, Electric Eels, Poison Idea

#20 (July 2025) John Maus & 28 Years Later

#19 (July 2025) On writers and their desks, on recent printed matter & on punks and politics

#18 (June 2025) Hectic comedown

#17 (June 2025) Catching up

#16 (May 2025) Housekeeping, an introduction to Against the Nerd

#15 (May 2025) On Harry Crews & Takeshi Kitano

#14 (May 2025) KEANU NELSON / TASTE (AND TARKOVSKY) / GOLDIE'S JUNGLE MIX / MARTIN NEWELL / AGATHA CHRISTIE

#13 (May 2025) ENO'S OBSCURE RECORDS / JAPANESE CRIME NOVELS

#12 (April 2025) EASTER EVERYWHERE

#11 (April 2025) ERNST JUNGER / SEX PISTOLS / MCA SPOKEN WORD FAILURE

#10 (April 2025) THE KINKS / STATION MODEL VIOLENCE

#9 (April 2025) HOUSEKEEPING

#8 (March 2025) DEBUSSY / ADAM CURTIS' TRAUMAZONE / NEW ORDER / JOY DIVISION / HENRY DE MONTHERLANT / NAG NAG NAG / PROP RECORDS

#7 (March 2025) ISAO TOMITA / WENDY CARLOS / JIM HARRISON / PATRICK LUMES / JAMES LEE BURKE / MARK N & BLOODY FIST

#6 (March 2025) LOGIC SYSTEM / MAHMOOD FAZAL & 550BC / THE ZIZIANS / STENDHAL X ROSSINI

#5 (March 2025) MONGREL MATTER / DARBY CRASH / EXEK & DJ SPANISH FLY / THE ZIZIANS / YUKIHIRO TAKAHASHI

#4 (February 2025) RAPID DYE / G2g / DJ SPANISH FLY / VOICE IMITATOR

#3 (February 2025) SCOTT WALKER / YUKIO MISHIMA / INFINITY POOL / RAPID DYE / DJ SPANISH FLY / ROBERT MUSIL / LULU’S LAST WARNING / THE GREEN CHILD

#2 (February 2025) GRAHAM GREENE / GEORGE V. HIGGINS / ADULT DREAMS / APARTMENT 7A / KIRIN J CALLINAN / LULU’S

#1 (January 2025) THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE AND HER LOVER / STATION MODEL VIOLENCE / HOUELLEBECQ’S PLATFORM / THE PACT / DAVID LYNCH & BLUE VELVET