ACID KLAUS shares single + announces debut album

Acid Klaus

ACID KLAUS, the new collaborative solo project from songwriter-producer and Northern England cult leg-end, Adrian Flanagan (The Moonlandingz, International Teachers of Pop, Eccentronic Research Council & lots more) has announced his debut concept album co-produced with his music partner in the ERC, Dean Honer titled ‘Step On My Travelator: The Imagined Career Trajectory of Superstar DJ & Dance-Pop Producer, Melvin Harris’. The LP will be released on November 18 via Yard Act’s ZEN F.C.label. To coincide with the announcement, ACID KLAUS unfurls his next ‘uncertified’ dance floor smash hit in the shape of Nightclub Marilyn (Room 1) which features the voice of Lieselot Elzinga from Amsterdam based post-punk/no-wave/futurist music collective, Baby’s Berserk (Bongo Joe Records). 

Listen to Nightclub Marilyn (Room 1) here or watch the video clip via YouTube below.

About the single Nightclub Marilyn (Room 1), Adrian says: “During the first lockdown, when I was (unbeknownst) writing the music for this album, I was listening to a lot of old East Coast hip-hop and electro records that I loved as a kid like Afrika Baambatta and a load of them electro street sounds compilations… basically the kind of records I’d pathetically try to body-pop to on a street corner in Salford with my mates and a roll of lino. Also, around the start of the great plague, I’d been digging a new band from Amsterdam called Baby’s Berserk whose singer, Lieselot Elzinga, has this really cool (but fresh) post-punk/no-wave Lizzy Mercier Descloux vibe to her voice. So I approached her to see if she’d be mad enough to collaborate with me on the track and thankfully, she was, with a little additional contribution from her bandmate Mano Hollestelle (Mauskovich Dance Band)!” 

The album version of the single is an eight-and-a-half minute epic called The Three Rooms of Nightclub Marilyn where our hero Melvin, after finishing a DJ set in a club (and whilst suffering a full work/narcotic-induced breakdown), hears three completely different versions of his song in the three rooms of Nightclub Marilyn. It’s like the centerpiece of the album!”

Lieselot Elzinga continues to say: “I was really happy to work with Adrian. The track lyrics are based on the feeling of being in an all-girl group. You are backstage and you are all fussing over outfits, make-up, looks and everything else. Eat your eyeliner, break your lipstick, and kill for each other! That kind of thing.”

The album itself features contributions from Adrian’s long-time collaborators and friends including actress, Maxine Peake, US musician and video director, Charlotte Kemp Muhl (Ghost of a Sabertooth Tiger), Maria Uzor from Sink Ya Teeth and the Bradford-born pop-noir singer (currently singing in The Specials), Hannah Hu who is joined on lap steel guitar on a track by Richard Hawley. The album is completed by a whole host of fresh and exciting artists (as well as the aforementioned Lieselot Elzinga) – there’s the enigmatic Queen Bee of the Calder Valley, solo artist, Bianca Eddleston who goes under the name Soft Focus and finally from South Wales (and the current talk of the South London scene), the incredible welsh language singer-songwriter, Cat Rin.

Flanagan proclaims about the album: “I hereby herald in a masterclass of conceptual brilliance and sonic floor-shaking heroism. A record that is both mocking and hugging in its stance – a solid and weighty brick in the face to the horrid and cod sincere, brat histrionics of the easy-on-the-eye careerist indie minstrel. Where I, an invisible bruised and battered craftsman of high (and low) art for nigh on two decades is finally (and begrudgingly) held aloft like a prize-winning Champion Cock at a village fete whilst a demonically futurist/modernist B-Boy B-Girl group bring the gathered throng, deep, penetrative, body music!

He continues to say: “Conceptually and with great style and panache there is a sub-story that plays out via the imagined career trajectory of fictional musician and DJ, Melvin Harris. In many ways, I am Melvin where unwavering creativity and ambition, mental illness, and a persuasive addictive personality merge heartedly with the R&R (Rave & Roll) dream. A dream-cum-nightmare that is perpetuated and encouraged by an industry that reaps the benefits and feasts on the clotted blood of its fallen and broken troubadours and almost always – like an age-old cautionary tale – ends in cliche.”

Tour dates
Jul 22 | Standon Calling
Nov 18 | Yellow Arch, Sheffield (Album Launch Party)
Nov 19 | Night & Day, Manchester
Nov 21 | The Lexington, London 
Nov 22 | Queen Margaret Union, Glasgow (w/ Yard Act)
Nov 23 | NUSU, Newcastle (w/ Yard Act)
Nov 24 | Academy, Leeds (w/ Yard Act)
Jan 06 | Rockaway Beach Festival

Acid Klaus Step On My Travelator: The Imagined Career Trajectory of Superstar DJ & Dance-Pop Producer, Melvin Harris cover artwork

Step On My Travelator: The Imagined Career Trajectory of Superstar DJ & Dance-Pop Producer, Melvin Harris’ track listing

1. Step On My Travelator
2. Party Sized Away Day (ft. Maria Uzor)
3. Bethlehem or Bust (feat. Cat Rin)
4. Blow Your Speakers (feat. Soft Focus)
5. Crashing Cars in Ibiza (feat Maria Uzor)
6. Bad Club Bad Drugs Bad People
7. Elevate (feat. Charlotte Kemp Muhl)
8. The Three Rooms of Nightclub Marilyn (feat Lieselot Elzinga)
9. I Used to be a DJ in a Club (But Now I’m Just a DJ in My Bedroom)
10. My Hats On Fire (feat. Hannah Hu and Richard Hawley)
11. Eulogy to a Quiet Life (feat. Maxine Peake)

You can pre-order ACID KLAUS’s ‘Step on My Travelator: The Imagined Career Trajectory of Superstar DJ & Dance-Pop Producer, Melvin Harris’ here.

Be the first to comment

C'mon why don't you leave a comment here

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.