Acid Klaus: Step On My Travelator: The Imagined Career Trajectory Of Superstar DJ & Dance-Pop Producer, Melvin Harris – album review

Acid Klaus: Step On My Travelator: The Imagined Career Trajectory Of Superstar DJ & Dance-Pop Producer, Melvin Harris

Zen F.C.

Vinyl | CD | DL available here

Polish down your dancefloors! Acid Klaus is here to turn your Christmas into a 303 tinged smoke machine haze that harks back to the rave scene of the Nineties reckons Wayne AF Carey…

In his own words, Adrian says of 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 minstrel.” He continues, “conceptually and with great style and panache, there is a sub-narrative (see below) that plays out via the imagined career trajectory of fictional musician and DJ, Melvin Harris. It’s 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.”

Album sub narrative:

1. Step On My Travelator
“Melvin cordially invites you to step on his global travolator, to go where he goes and to see what he sees!”

2. Party Sized Away Day (ft Maria Uzor)
“In the early days, Melvin and his entourage would hit all the free festivals aboard a rusty old hire coach, armed with a couple of USB sticks, a dub box, a synth and a fist full of Garys. Simpler times, happier times!”

3. Bethlehem or Bust (ft Cat Rin)
“Whilst performing a hybrid DJ set at a free Pagan festival in South West Wales, Melvin meets a Welsh girl spreading heather across the stage who demands to be allowed to MC over one of his tunes… and MC she does! Being an ignorant English man, Melvin had no idea what she was banging on about, but it sounded cool!”

4. Blow Your Speakers (ft Soft Focus)
“Finally, things start taking off for our intrepid sonic explorer when he is invited on prime-time TV’s ‘Top of the Drops’ to perform his dance-pop crossover smash, ‘Blow Your Speakers’. It was a very lucrative time for all at the streaming services.”

5. Crashing Cars in Ibiza (ft Maria Uzor)
“With the success of the single, Melvin and his gang were in great demand and being in great demand brought great responsibility. Often a typical weekend would consist of flying from the UK to Berlin and then straight onto Ibiza. However, in reality, he was exhausted and just wanted his mum but whilst the big bucks and gigs were rolling in fast, the only way to keep going was by getting heroically mortal and writing off another hire car!”

7. Bad Club Bad Drugs Bad People
“Melvin’s life was no longer his own – he’d become a slave to his ego, a slave to his industry and a slave to narcotics. In every town, field or city a dark urban Lord known as the Night Czar would hand him parcels of downers for breakfast, uppers for tea and an ear-full of quality gobshittery.”

8. Elevate (ft Charlotte Kemp Muhl)
“The wheels of the lifestyle started to come off once Melvin hit LA… Once you were in vogue, nothing was out of bounds; everything was bigger, sexier and debauchery was a sign on every restroom door.”

9: The Three Rooms of Nightclub Marilyn (ft Lieselot Elzinga)
“Flying straight from LA to a place called Nightclub Marilyn in Amsterdam with a sleepless four-day hangover, an STD and a serious bout of drug psychosis, Melvin did one last DJ gig to a packed club. On finishing his set, he took a stroll around the three rooms of the club where in each room he heard three different versions of his own world beating B-Boy classic, ‘Move Move Move!’ He then cried like a baby for a solid three hours then woke up in a piss-wet hotel bed before getting a flight home, back to civilisation.”

10. I Used to be a DJ in a Club (Now I’m Just a DJ in My Bedroom)
“Sometimes God moves in mysterious ways, this time in the form of a global pandemic. Ironically, whilst everyone complained about not being able to go out it was probably the very thing that saved Melvin’s life. Though he missed the money and the fans, he didn’t miss anything else. For the first time in years he was sober, he was happy, he was creative and subsidised a substantial cash lull by selling tickets to a once-weekly Instagram live DJ set from his bedroom.”

11. Hats on Fire (ft Hannah Hu & Richard Hawley on lapsteel guitar)
“From Lockdown to Brexit, to another bunch of cancelled or rescheduled shows, a newer, nicer, fluffier, politically-engaged Melvin emerged from his bedroom. He was done with dance music and the toxic fragility of his chosen path, he wanted to do something meaningful that would engage with his community, give a little back. He was furious at the government and wanted to give a voice to the unheard and the disenfranchised. He wanted to produce ‘real’ protest music!”

12. Eulogy to a Quiet Life (ft Maxine Peake)
“After blanket cries of ‘Judas’ from Melvin’s contemporaries such as Damian Getta, Kev Cox and Armband Van Beethoven, Melvin decided he wanted a peaceful artisanal life, knitting yoghurt, baking bread and nurturing chickens. So without a thought, he bought a little house on the coast just down from Llandudno where he was never heard from again.”

As you can see from the narrative it’s a concept album based on real DJ’s with a cheeky twist to their names and it’s a blast from the past worming it’s way into your future. Opening track Step On My Travelator is a techno house classic that will revive your acid house moves on those hazy nights in a club you experienced back then. Funky trance shit that takes you back to the early Electro years. Party Sized Away Day ramps up the beats with that familiar 303 sounds blasting through the track like a pure acid hit to the synapses. Bethlehem Or Bust takes you back again to the early Electro collection and the rise of trance. Hypnotic beats and freakish effects let loose on a new audience with rising drumbeats and euphoric rises.

Blow Your Speakers goes for the dance pop jugular with it’s futuristic stylings that certainly give you a feel of a mental club scene that is threatening to emerge once again. “Please can you find me some water” We’ve heard that one before from the E generation! Crashing Cars In Ibiza continues the funked up beats on this journey through clubland and hits your feet like an electric shock to the ankles with that hypnotic trance bass that bounces around like a rubber ball be thrown around a police cell at speed. Bad Club Bad Drugs Bad People is the bad trip part of the album with sounds a bit like Evil Blizzard going techno. A dirty bit of grimy dance that is unsettling yet exhilarating.

Elevate is a techno trip that takes you on the seedy side of the seedier clubs in LA and gives you an insight into the character that our maestro Adrian Flanagan (AKA Acid Klaus) has created. Full of 303 madness that does the trick. The Three Rooms Of Nightclub Marilyn is a real eight minute headfuck of a tune. A proper club bouncer that takes me straight back to the mad nights I had at Sankeys that turned into days of debauchery and recovery. A real bite of club madness which is relentless and feels like it’ll never end. An exciting techno trip.

I Used To Be A DJ In A Club is the ultimate dance track. Still funky as fuck and an incite into the characters frazzled mind which still has a few cells that want to keep the party going in his bedroom. It stops, builds to a climax, bangs and spins around your head with swirls and shakes that hit the heights in style. Hats On Fire is a real comedown and features the excellent Richard Hawley on lapsteel guitar. It’s ethereal and calms your head down with soothing vocals and a warmth with envelopes your brain with a cocoon feeling that chills you the fuck out. Closing track Eulogy To A Quiet Life is another mellow number with spoken word from our very own Maxine Peak. Two minutes of chilled out piano and yearning for a quiet life hidden away from the craziness of the manic world of dance. Beautiful stuff.

A cracking concept album and an early Christmas present that takes you back on a nostalgic trip to the techno rave house scene that people of a certain age still reminisce about as they settle down into what is classed as a normal life. What is a normal life? Can anyone give me the answer? You can try…

Through the smoke machine of many a club night people often asked… whatever happened to Melvin Harris?

Tour dates
Nov 18 | Yellow Arch, Sheffield (Album Launch Party)
Nov 19 | Night & Day, Manchester
Nov 21 | The Lexington, London 
Nov 22 | Queen Margaret Union, Glasgow (w/ Yard Act)
Nov 23 | NUSU, Newcastle (w/ Yard Act)
Nov 24 | Academy, Leeds (w/ Yard Act)
Jan 06 | Rockaway Beach Festival

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Words by Wayne Carey, Reviews Editor for Louder Than War. His author profile is here

Source: louderthanwar.com