Acid Klaus on David Holmes mix and Palestine: “It’s haunted my dreams”
Proceeds from the new EP and remix will go to Palestinian medical aid
Acid Klaus has shared a video of the David Holmes remix of his ‘Aerodromes’ track and explained his decision to donate proceeds from the digital release to Medical Aid for Palestinians.
‘Aerodromes’ features on the Salford-born, Sheffield-based synth maverick’s new vinyl since his Juno Daily album of the year in 2022, the five track ‘P.T.S.D. By Proxy’ EP coming out through the Golden Lion at Todmorden’s Golden Lion Sounds on vinyl on September 6, with digital formats now available.
“I’ve been a big fan of David’s work for years – from his production work, remixes, soundtracks, radio shows and DJ sets,” Klaus, better known as Adrian Flanagan, told us. “He’s got taste and ears you can trust. I really loved his latest album Blind on a Galloping Horse, it’s a real modern psychedelic stew of a record with a political curve.”
“ I think politically and as ‘part humans’ we are cut from a similar cloth. That tireless passion to keep creating , always with a million different projects on the go at the same time – but more importantly people from Belfast and people from Salford have a similar brutal piss taking sense of humour.
Flanagan told us he met David for the first time at Convenanza Festival (festival founded by Andrew Weatherhall) in Carcassonne in France. “I’d literally just walked off stage after playing possibly the best gig of my life to a couple of thousand people on the main stage there and got pounced on by this big crew of people who had come over from Belfast who were drunkenly shouting in my face ‘we FUCKEN love you, yer big FUCKEN cunt!!’ (laughs) and shaking my hand and giving me a hug, it took me about ten minutes to get away from em, but they were proper salt of the earth people – sweet as fuck, it really meant a lot to me at that moment as an hour before going onstage. I felt like a piece of shit, like I didn’t belong anywhere…
“After that I continued walking through the crowd towards the bar – when these two young trendy French women saw me and booed me in that snotty French way whilst holding their noses as they walked past me, which brought me back down to earth (laughs) – I then bumped in to Mr Holmes who was dead sweet and complimentary about the show – and almost immediately those French girls were utter dust!!”
“After that David and I kept in touch – then a month ago he did this amazing remix for me – and as we both aren’t particularly big fans of seeing displaced people carrying what’s left of their babies in a carrier bag – it felt like the right thing to donate proceeds from the digital EP and remix towards medical aid for Palestine. If it means just one poor fucker gets a box of plasters and a bottle of water, then it’s better than just being passive, doing nothing, saying nothing and hoping it goes away. I can’t unsee what I’ve seen over the past nine months and 76 years. It’s haunted my dreams and it should be allowed to be talked about openly, it’s beyond evil. It’s like 14 years of Tory rule has made people desensitised to adverse human suffering!! It’s just fucking disgusting!!”
The five track ‘P.T.S.D. By Proxy’ EP sees him joined by actor Maxine Peake – who also featured on that debut album Step On My Travelator and is a member of his Eccentronic Research Council outfit with Dean Honer – and Lias Saoudi, singer with Fat White Family, Decius and another Flanagan project The Moonlandingz. Philly Piper of his live band – who voiced his previous single ‘You’re A Freak’ – provides vocals on the lead track.