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."
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.”
Check out the album's tracklist and watch the video for "Nightclub Marilyn (Room 1)" below.
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)
Tags: ACID KLAUS
