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Jul 22, 2024 By Dom Gourlay Web Exclusive

We’ve been huge fans of Acid Klaus here at Under the Radar ever since his debut single “Party Sized Away Day” landed just over two years ago. Since then, he’s put out a number of banging singles - if you know Acid Klaus (aka Adrian Flanagan), you’ll be aware that every song is a certified banger - and an album, Step On My Travelator: The Imagined Career Trajectory of Superstar DJ & Dance-Pop Producer, Melvin Harris. Having spent most of last year touring the album and playing festivals, he’s returned this summer with a new EP P.T.S.D. By Proxy which came out last Friday (15th July). The EP includes another new single “Losing Our Way” and a new David Holmes remix of “Aerodromes”.

There will also be a winter UK tour calling in at the following :-

Friday 27th September London, The Lexington

Saturday 28th September Brighton, The Hope & Ruin

Friday 11th October Todmorden, The Golden Lion

Saturday 19th October Manchester, Partisan

Saturday 2nd November Leeds, Dark Arts

Friday 8th November Nottingham, Bodega

Thursday 21st November Edinburgh, Sneaky Pete’s

Friday 22nd November Glasgow, Broadcast

Saturday 23rd November Newcastle, Zerox

Friday 6th December Hull, The Adelphi

Saturday 7th December Sheffield, Yellow Arch Studio

In the meantime, Acid Klaus has put together his 10 favourite protest songs exclusively for Under the Radar, with a short commentary about each selection.

The Style Council - Walls Come Tumbling Down

“I was too young to have seen The Jam but I loved The Style Council when I was kid. I always knocked about with older kids in school as I had almost nothing in common with anyone of my own age who were all Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet fans. All I cared about was cool music, bands and clothes, so as early as 11 years old I was already almost exclusively listening to The Style Council, The Specials, Madness and Adam & the Ants. I guess I was a pocket Mod with Dandy Rising! ..None of it was particularly underground as they’d all been regulars on Top of the Pops, but as hairs started to sprout from my genitalia I’d romantically fantasise about having a girlfriend whilst listening to The Style Council’s ‘A’ Paris EP’ but just after that I saw Paul Weller and the Council on some TV programme bemoaning the government etc and kicking in with this track with the opening line “You don’t have to Take this Crap!” and it ignited something in me - a youthful fire against the establishment, the lousy government, Margaret Thatcher, the miners strikes etc and immediately I signed up to become a young socialist and everyone laughed at me!! Coming from a working class family in Salford, I’d seen struggle, poverty , high unemployment and crime, but where I lived crime wasn’t looked down upon, it was almost an aspiration of what you might consider when you left school. If you had any big ideas of being something other than working in a shop or on a production line - say maybe something in the arts , or a doctor, a scientist or a bloody astronaut your career advisors at school would just laugh at you and send you out the door with a tiny bag of weed and say ‘stop getting ideas above yer station kid - maybe consider selling this !!’ ”

Junior Murvin - Police & Thieves

“Another absolute classic record - this time about Police Brutality and again another one of those records that will be an infinite soundtrack for the inner cities and its “grafters” - with Junior’s beautiful falsetto voice and with classic dubs, echos and effects from its record producer and absolute hero - Mr Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry. Aged 13 I used to think I was edgy wearing my ‘Help the Police - Beat Yourself Up’ badge on my school jacket..I was a strange lad - a very sensitive teenage boy with the brain of a 70 year old ex steel worker. My dad instilled a strong work ethic in me quite early on. From the age of 11 my school holidays were spent on building sites, up scaffoldings, mixing cement, stripping wallpaper, painting walls, doing up cold damp houses. All that dirty hard graft taught me exactly what I didn’t want to be when I left school !! ”

Nick the Chopper - Baris Manco

“This brilliant track from 1976 by the king of Anatolian Rock, Baris Manco is like an early environmental protest song about some bloke called Nick who’s going around with his chopper cutting down all the trees and the forests. I also find the chorus to this song hilarious with Baris proclaiming that Nick the Chopper is indeed a ‘dirty old man’!! Greta No-funberg should use this track as her intro tape for whenever she does her environmental chats!”

Robert Wyatt - Shipbuilding

“Elvis Costello’s response to the Falklands war and the irony that whilst Thatcher was sending these war ships filled with young navy kids and soldiers to their potential death to the Falklands to defend the “so called Empire” she simultaneously was shutting down all the shipyards that built them, sending thousands more people to the back of the ever increasing unemployment queue..This Robert Wyatt version of the Costello track is by far the best version - Robert’s voice always stops me in my tracks , there’s something deeply honest and human in its tonality. However I never really rated Costello’s voice, it’s like a nasal wheeze, like someone trying to blow up a punctured airbed with a foot pump! I blame Bob Dylan and all the other serious songwriters that sang from the face alone! “

The Specials - Ghost Town

“Not so much a protest song but a perfect lyrical and musical painting of Britain in the 80’s and still now , 40 years on, it very much describes Britain in 2024. Empty shops on the high street, clubs and pubs closing down left right and centre - divisive far right racist politics on the rise, no jobs, political corruption - it’s a shit show and it’s been an ever increasing shit show ever since and no one articulated that more clearly than The Specials. I met Terry Hall a couple of years before he died as he asked my other band Eccentronic Research Council to play a festival in Coventry that he was curating made up of his favourite bands and artists - So that was a real thrill to know he was a fan of what I was doing too. He was a very sweet man, with a super darkly dry sense of humour. I remember going for multiple cigarettes with him outside a hotel where I told him a story about a guy who would get on my late bus back to Salford every Friday night with a ghetto blaster and he would get himself sat down near the front of the bus and shout radio dj style ‘This one’s going out to Lisa!’ - then press play on his tape machine and sing Terry, Blair & Anoushkas’ “Ultra Modern Nursery Rhyme” track at the top of his voice whilst pulling back on fourth “passionately” on the seat in front of him - with no thought whatsoever for the terrified young couple sat in it. Terry laughed and said ‘all my fans are absolutely mad!’ right at that moment some pissed bloke crosses over the road shouting ‘Terry, TERRY!!! Terry Hall it’s You!??!’ - Terry looked at me, raised his eyebrows and said ‘just as I was blissfully forgetting who I am!’

Zeinab Shaath - The Urgent Call of Palestine

“This great song of resistance and film was recorded over 50 years ago by Palestinian singer songwriter Zeinab Shaath who was one of the first Middle Eastern artists to sing in English about the long time plight and ill treatment of the Palestinian people. It’s safe to say this song and artist are still very relevant 50 years later today. Or is it safe to say, you never can tell ?!”

Public Enemy - Fight the Power

“I like tracks that are explicitly saying what they mean. There’s no flowery poetry here - it’s a straight up - no fucking about - call for revolt, to riot, to kick against the pricks - but in this case racial segregation and economical inequality..My younger brother used to listen to nothing but rap and hip hop at home so I probably got in to Public enemy and NWA etc through him and his foul mouthed music. Years ago I did once spot Flavour Flav at Manchester Airport and I’m embarrassed to say - I did ask him ‘what time is it Flava Flav’? - I blame breakfast beers in the departure lounge!“

The Fall - Hey Student

“Mark E Smith didn’t so much write protest songs - not like say Dylan but he wrote songs that rallied against everything and in spite of everyone. He was the OG Cultural agitator . From hating the countryside - corrupt Popes, lazy truck drivers and a thousand other things and people he had in his target or little black book to complain about. Like this tune - ‘Hey Student’ which is a really funny track bemoaning Students. I knew Mark pretty well for around 10 years as we both lived in Sedgley Park in Prestwich, Manchester before I moved over to Sheffield at the arse end of the nineties. So I was pals with him and his family in my formative years when I was starting out and he’d give my rubbish teen bands occasional support slots with The Fall when I was 16 and into my 20’s . When I left home I moved into this little flat above a shop in Prestwich called Cosmos Stores and Mark came round a couple of times. One night, just after last orders had been called at the pub next door, there was a knock on my front door (which was the entrance to the shop) - I went downstairs and through the glass door I could see MES stood on my doorstep holding two pints of pilsner so I opened it. “I’ve brought you a pint cock - can I come in?!” he said as he stepped into the shop , gave me the European greeting of a peck on both cheeks, then straightened my shirt collars in the way your mum might do before a very important job interview. I shared my flat for a short while with a student kid. Mark didn’t really take to him, thought he was a poseur, as he’d constantly be flicking his long hair out of his eyes, saying the word ‘man’ a lot whilst walking about in his squeaky sneakers..So Mark finished his pint , took me out of my living room and discreetly invited me to go round to his house for drinks instead as he didn’t want to be sat listening to this kid banging on about the Rolling Stones whilst burning joss sticks.. There’s a line in this song that says something like ‘as you stare in your room at Shaun Ryder’s face’.. said student on moving in to my flat put a poster on the living room wall of a picture of Mr Ryder that came free in a copy of the NME or something so I’ve a sneak suspicion that this song was lightly inspired by my old flat mate… but then Ryder & the Mondays and Ian Brown and all that Madchester crew were on lots of working class Manchester kids walls at that time so it could have been about literally anyone . God bless Mark E Smith!!”

Gil Scott-Heron - The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

“I’ve always felt that passive peaceful protest is almost pointless in bringing about any real change, other than it being a slight inconvenience to working people who might be trying to drive their cars to or from work. When I was a kid during the Poll Tax riots people took to the streets all over the country - and after being provoked by the police they broke stuff which inconvenienced the politicians and the local councils and sent out a very clear messages to said politicians that they had enough of their bullshit and from that over 18 million good hard working people refused to pay their Poll Tax - which led to it getting scrapped.. only to be rebranded a few years later as “council tax”. I always appreciate the French way of protest like when the farmers got fucked over and they blocked off all the motorways with their tractors - or dumped 2 ton of cow shit on the steps of the French Parliament. Which is basically what Gil is saying here that in all protests you need to be an active not passive participant to make any real social or political change. Nothing changes by merely shouting “Oggi Oggi Oggi” with your like minded, long suffering friends!”

Acid Klaus featuring Philly Piper (David Holmes remix) - Aerodromes

“I wrote this track mid 2023 from the point of view of a working class lad coming back from war with PTSD and him being chastised by the so called educated classes as a thicko, gammon or whatever. We have a knack in this country of not engaging or addressing the problems within working class communities . People doing 3 jobs, cleaning toilets, working in supermarkets, working in hospitals, or in the army /services . These people are constantly Brushed under the carpet by politicians and the middle classes as being surplus meat - so you end up with millions of pissed off people not being heard or seen , their towns being turned in to shit with poor housing facilities , no proper jobs, no investment in to their areas and with nowhere for their kids to play and it’s all down to both the Tories or Labour city/town councilors doing literally nothing for these communities other than protecting their own greedy self interests . A lot of honest Joe working people haven’t got the time to be politically engaged, read The Guardian or stand outside the town hall with a placard demanding better pay. They can’t afford to take the time off, they’ve got zero hour contracts and can be dropped at any moment for taking a day off to look after their sick babies, so they end up gravitating to these divisive chummy charlatan Brit Nazi politicians like Farage that blame all the problems of the country on Immigration - albeit from his living room in Belgium that he shares with his French girlfriend. Which of course causes unnecessary racial tension and unsavoury behaviour !! Alas - The U.K. was built on immigration. My grandparents were immigrants who came from the old Yugoslavia and the Ukraine. They Worked hard all their lives here, couldn’t even get a proper pension as they had European passports after working jobs in the UK for 70+ years of their lives & contributing heavily into the system. Ultimately 14 years (and beyond) of Tory rule and Brexit is the real reason we are in the pickle we are in now - it’s one big big mess and we do indeed need to ‘GET IT RIGHT’.. with a unifying David Holmes remix!!”

The EP is available to download HERE including the bonus David Holmes remix. All proceeds from the digital download goes to the MAP Charity.