The Dream Machine

The Dream Machine announce third album Fort Perch Rock, with New York via Berlin radio rock single, Flowers On The Razor Wire.

Travelling casually through time as across borders, The Dream Machine return to announce their third album with their new single, Flowers On The Razor Wire, a Ramones-referencing, Berlin-written rush of radio-ready new wave rock.

Following up two underground long-players with their most uncompromising and ambitious collection of songs yet, the five-strong band from the windswept Wirral peninsula announce that their new album, Fort Perch Rock, for release on Fri 27 February 2026 via Run On Records.

The reveal comes as the band sets out on a eight-date UK Tour, opening at Cardiff’s Clwb Ifor Bach on Fri 14 November and stopping at The Moth Club, London on Thu 20 November.

Having made their return with the release of the album’s title track last month, Fort Perch Rock, a wheeling and wailing sprint through Jim Hension-inspired, organ-fired MC5 rapid punk/psych, Flowers OnThe Razor Wire sees the band deliver an infectious brand of drivetime melody to introduce the follow up to2024’s Small Time Monsters album.

Pounding in on a slick of keys and climbing steadily to meet a gilt-finished chorus, easily mistaken fora Blondie heyday single, the band’s starting point was found in the pages of a mysterious second-hand comic. Songwriter and lead vocalist, Zak McDonnell says:

“’Flowers On The Razor wire’ was about a comic book I found in an antique shop. I was sitting with a guitar, and the lads were just shouting out lines and ideas from it. It wasn’t long before we realised it was some sort of erotic graphic novel.

I was in a Ramones phase around this time, so we went to Berlin during the writing of this album, intending to make a pilgrimage back to The Ramones Museum that we’d visited years ago,

only to find it was gone.

It’s as inspired by The Ramones as The Strokes, Television and The Walkmen.”

Recorded and self-produced between studios on the Wirral and in Liverpool, The Dream Machine’s 12-track Fort Perch Rock album is set to be released on multiple formats, including digital, CD and special edition, coloured vinyl editions. A limited ,band store-only butterfly effect vinyl version is to be released with a one-off, glow in the dark7”EP of covers that pays tribute to the Motown girl group, The Shirelles.

Whilst echoes of the past resound throughout the band’s growing catalogue of songs, The Dream Machine are as quick to quote Dr Dre, Mac DeMarco, Blossoms and King Gizzard and The Lizard Wizard amongst recent and current influences caught between the lines of their latest work.

Rising above all the musical, film and literary references is the imposing edifice of Fort Perch Rock itself, a sea-facing, historic point of defence as the Irish Sea and the River Mersey meet. A chief landmark in their hometown of New Brighton, it’s the band’s chosen totem to the salty air, dropped ice creams and lost arcades of coastal life.

Repeatedly taking the long road to bring their idiosyncratic vision to the people, The Dream Machine have expanded the numbers of faithful followers by supporting The Coral, The Charlatans and Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds amongst numerous, memorable trips around the UK.

For the remainder of November, The Dream Machine, uniting McDonnell with Matt Gouldson (guitars), Jack Inchboard (bass), Harrison Marsden (Keyboards) and Isaac Salisbury (drums), take to the road to perform at the following venues

Fri 14 November–Cardiff, Clwb Ifor Bach

Thu 20 November-London, The Moth Club

Fri 21 November-Norwich, Voodoo Daddy’s

Sat 22 November-Birkenhead, The Future Yard

Wed 26 November-Leeds, Brudenell Social Club

Thu 27 November-Glasgow, McChuills

Fri 28 November-Edinburgh, Sneaky Pete’s

Sat 29 November-North Shields, Three Tanners Bank