It's Where I'm From

The Moonlandingz are Lias Soudi, Adrian Flanagan and Dean Honer. All three have a rich history of music in other projects including Decius and Fat White Family for Lias, Acid Klaus for Adrian, and I Monster for Dean but currently The Moonlandingz is where it's at for them- their second album, No Rocket Required, is lined up for release later this month. Ahead of it, released yesterday, is It's Where I'm From, a single with Iggy Pop singing on it (released a day after Iggy's 78th birthday). 

It's Where I'm At is a beautiful, heartfelt, melancholic number, a ballad for the 21st century, a jazzy lullaby with Iggy at his most rueful, 78 years of hard won wisdom, staring down the barrel of the gun of mortality. Adrian wrote the song fifteen years ago, sitting at home whacked up on morphine following a bike accident that left him with two broken arms and sticking two metaphorical fingers up at the doctor who told him he might never regain the full use of his arms- home studio, one finger and a thumb on the Mellotron and a drum machine. Filled out with live drums and some Gallic sax, Adrian approached Iggy for vox and thankfully, he said yes. 

Iggy likes to dip out of rock and into chanson and jazz from time to time. In 2019 he recorded Free, a sombre, contemplative album of ambient jazz with nods to Lou Reed and Dylan Thomas. In 1999 he recorded Avenue B, a reflective, post- divorce album with several acoustic, jazz inflected, spoken word songs, including the title track...

Avenue B

The Sign Of A Man And The Birth Of A Smirk

The Moonlandingz have returned with their first single in eight years. The Moonlandingz are a trio- Lias Saoudi (Fat White Family, Decius), Adrian Flanagan (Acid Klaus) and Dean Honer (All Seeing I, Add N To X)- and have cooked up The Sign Of A Man, with Lias in fine form on vocals over hyperactive Europop (not far musically from last year's Acid Klaus single on GLS). The video looks like New Order's True Faith crossed with Bauhaus (the design school not the goth band). It's all good fun and an album is promised later this year. There won't be many songs this year dissecting modern masculinity while containing the line 'if you take out the bins'. 

Lias is busy with Decius as well. Birth Of A Smirk is the second single ahead of their second album out this Friday, a housed up song with with more 80s vibes, this time Visage but spliced with bleep techno. Everything Lias is involved with is gold- last year's Fat White Family album for a recent example, not mention last autumn's Decius single Walking In The Heat, in which Lias had fun cleaning the car. 

Put Your Money In My Box

Acid Klaus played The Golden Lion, Todmorden, on Friday night, a launch party for a five track EP P.T.S.D. By Proxy that came out on Golden Lion Sounds last month, with a DJ set afterwards by Maxine Peake. Acid Klaus came on stage under the Lion's mirror ball and red lights to a busy and excitable crowd, the pub filled with people young and middle aged determined to have a party from the moment the first note was played. The recent EP was played in full, Adrian with hat pulled right down and collar of coat pulled right up and dark glasses too, on keys/ synth and vocoder, a poncho'd and behatted stand up drummer and twin vocalists who gave it all, Cat Rin stage left, singing in Welsh and English and Amelia Lace, centre stage, wearing a helmet. They powered their way through the songs from P.T.S.D. By Proxy, from the revved up synth pop call for revolution The Solution, to the Detroit techno sounds of Aerodromes, Amelia singing of cruising the council estates and having to get it right. Pour Some Wood On The Fire mixes Hi NRG and blurry acid house with Adrian on robotic vocals, and then abandoning the synth completely, leaving the stage and entering the heaving throng on the floor with microphone firmly clenched for Losing Our Way, his north Manchester vowels and the 303 ricocheting round the stone floor and walls. Adrian says the EP is 'dance music you can cry to', electronic sounds to frug around to while the world goes up in smoke. The last song is a riot, the twin vocalists chanting 'put your money in my box' while Adrian counters with the robotic 'heaven's for sale' and the crowd dance like no one's watching. Or cares about anyone who is. 

The EP is still available at Golden Lion Sounds, 10" on yellow vinyl. If you buy the vinyl you get a digital only remix of Aerodromes by David Holmes with a video filmed in the Golden Lion

Maxine Peake played records afterwards, the self described 'leftie luvvie' spinning Northern Soul 7" singles and floor fillers, psyche, indie, guitar bands, Motorhead and more. I had to run for the 11.36 train back to Manchester and found myself sitting on the train with a group of twenty- somethings who, on finding out I teach history for a living, asked me to tell them some history. There followed a long, rambling and probably incoherent monologue about the Spanish Civil War with multiple digressions. If you're reading this kids, thanks for humouring me/ looking after me. 

Aerodromes

The latest release on Golden Lion Sounds is an EP by Acid Klaus, available digitally and on 10" vinyl at the GLS Bandcamp page. P.T.S.D. By Proxy is five tracks of electronic mayhem, 'dance music you can cry to', according to Klaus mainman Adrian Flanagan (who comes to Acid Klaus via The Moonlandingz and The Eccentronic Research Council). Opening track The Solution doesn't pull any punches or warm you up gently- it pumps in immediately, electronic bump and grind with a robotic voice intoning, 'The solution/ Is revolution'. Philly Piper guests on track two, Aerodromes, pulsing bass, dancing synth toplines and Philly's FXed voice talking about the death of conversation and class struggle while returning to the chorus of, 'You gotta get it/ Get get get it right', a Hi NRG/ acid house collision, arpeggiators firing off all over the place. 

Pour Some Wood On The Fire brings vocals from Welsh singer/ songwriter Cat Rin. There's no let up in energy, the frenetic beats and sci fi synths blasting away. Losing Our Way has Roland 808 and the spoken word, Maxine Peake and Rosey PM despairing at the state of the world while the electronics bleep and bloop and the machine drums power ever forwards.  Hell Below features Lias Saoudi from Fat White Family on vocals, a slightly slower, mellower track, some minor chord melancholy futurism. 

There's a David Holmes remix of Aerodromes, exclusive to the digital package, with a video filmed in The Golden Lion (with some familiar faces in it), Homer fully on it with eight minutes of synapse twisting sounds, thumping drums, and not a little drama, the last song at the end of the night as the world burns.