A GENRE-DEFYING band will return to Bridport this year for an electric show when the Dub Pistols come to town.

From their early singles for Concrete Records to their genre defying Six Million Ways To Live LP, the Dub Pistols have always added a much needed rock and roll swagger to the UK’s music scene.

Chewing up hip-hop, dub, techno, ska and punk before spitting them out in a renegade futuristic skank, they have consistently defied genres and exceeded the highest of expectations.

They are described as a reggae-breaks-jungle mash-up and gangster-swaggering festival stalwarts.

The Dub Pistols' genre-mashing abilities have led to remix work for the likes of Moby, Crystal Method, Limp Bizkit, Bono, Korn and Ian Brown. It has also seen them work with hip-hop legend Busta Rhymes on One, a track for the film Blade 2 and Molotov for the Y Tu Mama Tambien soundtrack.

In recent years the band has mutated from a studio-based duo into a fully fledged live act.

Now, the Dub Pistols are one of the few remaining working class bands who carry the flame of reggae-driven sound system music, the secret rhythm of Britain from ska and rocksteady through Soul II Soul to grime and dubstep and beyond.

The band is fronted by a dapper frontman and prime mover Barry Ashworth, a ducking, diving South London graduate of the Summer of Love generation – who started a band because he loved Happy Mondays and never looked back.

Barry said: “I always thought that being in a band wasn’t for people like me.

"It was more a middle-class thing. It was the Mondays that changed that. We’re part of street music, working class music that’s never going to go away.”

Their last concert was a sell out at the Electric Palace.

Kioko, an up and coming reggae band from Birmingham, will be supporting Dub Pistols on their tour. Deadly Roots, the lead track from the band’s debut LP, True What They Say, immediately picked up plays from Radio 1’s Huw Stephens along with reggae legend David Rodigan, who now regards himself as a fan. Kioko will release a new EP early this year.

n Dub Pistols, with support from Kioko, performing at Bridport Electric Palace on Friday, March 24 at 8pm.