‘Tis truly a red letter day now that we’ve heard this news: the Eccentronic Research Council, tQ’s favourite South Yorkshire-based council of research that is eccentronic, are back with a fourth album. Johnny Rocket, Narcissist And Music Machine… I’m Your Biggest Fan will be out on May 18, as the first release on the Fat White Family’s Without Consent label. Why are the Fat Whites involved? As they explained to us last year, after seeing that the ERC’s Adrian Flanagan had picked the band’s debut Champagne Holocaust for his tQ Baker’s Dozen, the Fat Whites’ Lias Saoudi and Saul Adamczewski got together with Flanagan and bandmate Dean Honer and started making some tunes. The result of all this was both the album and the fictional band The Moonlandingz around which the album is based. As the record’s title – Johnny Rocket, Narcissist And Music Machine… I’m Your Biggest Fan – suggests, it follows an obsessive-turned-stalker fan – voiced by The ERC’s third member, Maxine Peake – of The Moonlandingz, who, we’re told, are the finest South Yorkshire band never to have existed, gigging "where a malign presence stalks the darkness at the edge of Sheffield". As for the album itself, the press release tells us: "Like a Chaucerian epic retold by David Peace for a music hall located in Hell, it looks at obsessional behaviour and how this is fuelled by our need to document every passing moment on social media."
Before the full-length comes out though, there’ll be an EP from The Moonlandingz (adeptly realised by Flanagan and co) themselves, released digitally on March 16 (with a vinyl 12" to be included with the first pressings of the album), and we’ve now got a taste of this with Steven Shiel’s video for lead track ‘Sweet Saturn Mine’ – take a look at that above.
