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Oct 10, 2023 By Dom Gourlay Web Exclusive

We’re big fans of Acid Klaus at Under the Radar, and his latest EP You’re A Freak is another fine slice of left field disco-centric pop. Released last month on Yard Act’s label Zen F.C, You’re A Freak follows on from his 2022 debut album Step on My Travelator: The Imagine Career Trajectory of Superstar DJ Dance & Pop Producer, Melvin Harris and features one new song (the title track) alongside remixes from label bosses Yard Act, Baba Ali, W. H. Lung and Pye Corner Audio’s alter ago Head Technician. Acid Klaus is the collaborative solo project from Sheffield based artist and producer, Adrian Flanagan, whose previous credits include being a founder member of The Moonlandingz,The Eccentronic Research Council and International Teachers Of Pop.

Currently on a UK tour including headline shows at The Social in London and Yellow Arch Studios in Sheffield alongside festival appearances at Sŵn Festival and Mutations, Under the Radar caught up with Adrian Flanagan to discuss the new EP, past twelve months and what the future holds for Acid Klaus.

The last year’s been a busy one for Acid Klaus. What stands out as your highlight?

There’s been loads of highlights really - starting the year at Rockaway Beach festival in Bognor Regis is always a lovely way to start the miserable month of January , a couple of days playing live and DJing whilst losing one’s mind with the ghost of Billy Butlin!!

Playing Amsterdam and Rotterdam with my Dutch album collaborator Lieselot Elzinga was lovely. The Amsterdam gig was dead sweet, Lieselot arranged for us to have a little warm up gig in an old blues bar in preparation for a big festival show in Rotterdam the next day. She Invited all her mates and family down and everyone was so welcoming and the bar owner poured Psychedelic shots down our necks every time we looked at him, so that was nice.

Obviously, playing The Royal Albert Hall was quite something. The show itself was a bit soft for my liking , we were on early doors and playing to a predominantly sober and seated audience but it was cool to tick the venue off the box of places you can only dream of playing - to follow and walk in the footsteps of all the legends that have played there and the counter cultural happenings that have occurred there - Sinatra crooning. Yoko Ono sitting in a bag. Emmeline Pankhurst provoking militant action from the stage in her fight for women’s rights. Alan Ginsberg reading ‘Howl’. Bob Dylan, the Mothers of Invention and many more heroes and villains have all tread that stage. People like me don’t normally ever get invited to play the Royal Albert Hall. People like me would normally be found spraying the landed gentry in the toilets with fancy cologne!! However - I’ve done that now and I’ll never do it again!!

The best show of the year hands down was just last week when we were invited to play the Andrew Weatherall founded Convananza Festival which is held inside a medieval castle in Carcassone, France. We got properly looked after, they put us in a lovely hotel, the soundsystem was brilliant, the food was very nice, all the acts and DJs on the bill were ace, the location was beautiful, the weather was hot, we had a great Saturday night slot and the big crowd were just so up for it . Everything about it was perfect and such a welcome break from the wet muddy miserable festivals in the U.K. this non summer . I think we really turned a lot of heads that night, OG Ravers , serious electronic music heads and good solid party people could see there’s a lot more depth, attitude, politics and humour than what you might first think on just casually hearing one random Acid Klaus track…It’s kind of irresistible & simultaneously a shock to the system is my live collective ..The fact is, Acid Klaus makes the Sex Pistols look like Showaddywaddy and we have better songs you can dance to!

The album Step On My Travelator: The Imagine Career Trajectory of Superstar DJ Dance & Pop Producer, Melvin Harris was well received by critics and fans alike. Did you expect such an overwhelmingly positive reception?

I really did yes, it’s a masterpiece. It should be hung in a gallery and stared at by curly tashed twats wearing monocles!!

New single “You’re A Freak” is your first new material since the album. What was the inspiration behind it? Is this is the first taster for album number two?

“You’re A Freak” is more of a stand alone single that’s neither related to the debut album or the album I’m currently working on!! I wrote the song based on a memory of being a teenager in a club in Manchester when some harmless middle aged fella walked in to the club dressed like Thriller era Michael Jackson and got straight on the dancefloor doing all the MJ moves. He was really enjoying himself and in no time at all there’s a circle of people stood around him clapping and cheering him on - all whilst gaggles of jealous twenty something lads are hissing and muttering under their breaths calling him a freak. Funnily, I’m now that middle aged man, unafraid to make a tit of myself, still feeling the life affirming joy of music, whilst moonwalking pathetically on a Zimmer frame across some stage with zero fucks given!!

You’ve also made a video for live favourite “Bad Drugs Bad Club Bad People” off the album. If you had to name one bad drug, a bad club and a bad person what, where, and who would it be and why?

Right now, the collective BAD person would be the Tory party. The Bad club would be every Conservative club up and down the country - and the BAD drugs would be whatever drugs those same heartless Cunts are on now, a mixture of coke and despicable greed I imagine !!

There’s some interesting remixes on the You’re A Freak EP from the likes of W.H. Lung, Baba Ali and Pye Corner Audio. How did they come about? Will you be returning the favour on their work?

They’re all pals and artists that I rate and they all did great remixes for me.. it’s always a joy to hear other artists reinterpret your songs - as by the time you’ve recorded a track - and listened to it over again, then you rehearse it over & over again - & then you play it live over & over again , you kind of become entranced by these little hooky monsters you’ve created. A good remix helps me momentarily break that trance. I have done a remix for W.H. Lung but it’s not out yet I don’t think!”

You’re currently on tour throughout the UK. What do you enjoy most about playing live? Do you prefer live shows to working in the studio?

The studio and playing live are two different beasts and should always be treated like two different kinds of listening experiences.. In the studio I’m considering concepts and thinking about the listeners sonic journey from track one to the end.The Live experience I like to try keep both the band a bit loose and the audience on their toes..I hate nothing more than slickness and every gig being the same. The good thing about the Acid Klaus live collective thing is that I’m able to switch the live singers up, swap their rolls, bring random guests in, so every show is slightly different from the last. In the main I love building things up from scratch and watching an audience grow organically. I also love seeing how audiences react to the music. I hate complacency of any kind - or some gobby fucker in the audience chatting through yer set when people are trying to enjoy themselves or trying to listen - which is why I sometimes just commit to being an almost ‘other character’ on stage and let my mouth/brain/heart/spleen run with the moment , which most of the time works and is funny and almost heroic but sometimes - I might miss the mark and go ‘too dark’!!.. Ultimately I’m an acutely sensitive and brutally self conscious guy - standing on a chair - demanding you listen to me and my friends gentle and mildly erotic voices - set to a pounding beat!!… and I’d be marginally less of a gobshite if my friends and I were shown a bit of fucking respect for the forty-five minutes we are on stage!! If not - my evil Twatty twin is gonna be gunning for yer!!! Tickets are on sale now, haha!!

You’re signed to Yard Act’s label, Zen F.C. What’s it like having them as label bosses?

They’ve been good to me , they paid to get my debut album out physically and all the stuff that needs to be paid for to let people know it exists without meddling with the art of what I wanted to do . They also chucked me a handful of gigs on their biggest U.K. tour so our first live shows were in front of a couple of thousand people every night which was loads of fun. It was great walking on stage offering two thousand Glaswegians out to a fight then winning them all over with the tunes and bit of fucking cheeky monkey spirit! I love it up in Glasgow they get me and I get them!!

Now 2023’s coming to an end, what will you be glad to see the back of? What can we expect from Acid Klaus in 2024?

We are living through unprecedented times, it would be great to see less war, less murdering of innocent clubbers, babies, children, mothers. less apartheid, more humanity and human rights, more gentle conversations & more tolerance to people who are different from you or who have different opinions or beliefs. We can’t all agree on everything - but we can all be civil!! .. you only learn anything by keeping both your heart and your mind open - but in turn you have to also accept that sometimes human beings get things wrong and the very nature of human evolution is that we constantly change are minds, our tastes, our looks, our loves, our interests & beliefs in order to grow in to the person we are destined to be! We just all need to get together and have a great big bloody conga. When yer in a conga we are just one big line of dickheads - but we are all at least heading in the same direction. I think I need to bring the conga back to live music !!

I’ll be finishing my second Acid Klaus album, another conceptual fictionalised musical record based on the Christian Acid house cult , The Nine O’Clock Service!! I Hope to get that finished over the coming months but I’ll probably put out another EP in the new year and the album later in 2024. I’ve also some other album projects that I need to finish over the next 6 months so even though I’m aiming for a quieter life in my personal life - my creative life might be pretty busy. By 2026 I hope to be putting on my “eternity slippers” , pulling out the colostomy bag and just be sat smoking opium till my dying day whilst shouting at seagulls in my piss stained underpants !!

You’ve been instrumental in giving a platform to several up and coming artists recently - Adult Entertainment, Wet Man and Good News being three that spring to mind. Are there any other acts Under the Radar and its readers should be checking out?

My friends Baby’s Berserk from Holland, who are fronted by my collaborator Lieselot Elzinga are really great - kind of a fresh take on post punk new wave electro, their debut Lp has just come out and they do their first U.K. shows later this month. Vanity Fairy who’s been doing the rounds in London for a little while - she’s great fun, a bit like Fox who did that song - “SSS Single Bed”! She’s opening for us in London this weekend. Adult DVD and Hang Linton are both really great new artists from Leeds - both will be playing with us at our Leeds, Headrow House show at the end of the month !!’ There’s loads of great new artists out there!! People just need to get out there and support their local independent promoters as it’s very likely a bit of musical magic is passing through your town or city in the back room of some pub or club tonight waiting for you to discover them!”

What advice would you give to a new artist or band just starting out? What would you tell them to avoid?

Be prepared to be shit for a bit. Be prepared to be laughed at and gossiped about. Be prepared to be broke. Be prepared to carve your own path and be prepared to get on one very long disheartening & character building hustle with no end - and then - and only then will you find your people, possibly people you never in a million years would have thought would be your people.. Embrace them - as they embrace you!!’ If yer not prepared to bleed and sweat for it just took yer shirt in and get a proper job !!

Acid Klaus live dates are as follows :-

14/10 - London, The Social

22/10 - Cardiff, Swn Festival

27/10 - Leeds, Headrow House

28/10 - Glasgow, Broadcast

03/11 - Ramsgate, Ramsgate Music Hall

04/11 - Brighton, The Hope & Ruin

30/11 - Sheffield, Yellow Arch

Tickets available HERE