Adrian Flanagan – of International Teachers Of Pop, The Moonlandingz, Eccentronic Research Council and a number of other projects – has shared full details of the first album from his new Acid Klaus moniker.
Out in November, Step On My Travelator: The Imagined Career Trajectory Of Superstar DJ & Dance-Pop Producer, Melvin Harris is a concept album which Flanagan devised with regular production partner Dean Honer. The collaboration-heavy album also features contributions from Maxine Peake, Richard Hawley, Charlotte Kemp Muhl, Hanna Hu and Sink Ya Teeth’s Maria Uzor, among others. You can listen to the newly unveiled single ‘Nightclub Marilyn (Room 1)’, which features the voice of Lieselot Elzinga from Amsterdam-based post-punk collective Baby’s Berserk, above.
Speaking about the track in a statement, Flanagan said: "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."
Speaking more widely about the album, Flanagan added: "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."
The new album’s release will be supported with a UK tour this November, taking in dates at Sheffield’s Yellow Arch (November 18), Night & Day in Manchester (November 19), and London’s The Lexington (November 21). Flanagan will also support Yard Act on a trio of shows in Glasgow, Newcastle and Leeds that same month.
Flanagan originally debuted the Acid Klaus moniker with the unveiling in May of the single ‘Party Sized Away Day’, featuring Maria Uzor. The track appears on Step On My Travelator: The Imagined Career Trajectory Of Superstar DJ & Dance-Pop Producer, Melvin Harris.
ZEN F.C. will release Step On My Travelator: The Imagined Career Trajectory Of Superstar DJ & Dance-Pop Producer, Melvin Harris on November 18, 2022.
