Meet ‘Em – Acid Klaus

Earning a reputation as one of the most exciting driving forces in alternative electronic music, Acid Klaus bring their euphoric live set to our place on the 8th November, so we got to meet ’em!

Hey Adrian, how are you feeling about hitting the road? These are the last Acid Klaus shows for a while right?

Probably not the last acid klaus shows completely, I’ll still be up for doing the odd sporadic show once in a while or festival if someone asks. I am excited to be doing another lap around the block before winding things down for a while. I’ve just released a brand new 5 track EP so they’ll be that and an additional 3 unreleased tracks, plus debut album to pool in to the set list. The new material has been going down really well at recent festival appearances . Im Looking forward to doing some new cities on this tour too. For instance we’ve never played Nottingham before as Acid Klaus – I’ve done a few sell out shows there before with my other projects but this’ll be the first time in Notts for this! I like Nottingham its always been a good music city, I remember playing a Franz Ferdinand after party with one of my first solo projects many years ago for Liars Club at The Social and a slightly worse for wear drummer from Franz Ferdinand made the mistake of jumping onstage and grabbing my hat. I just grabbed him , picked him up by his balls and launched him back in to the crowd to the laughter and delight of his band mates!

You’ve said you’re working on another concept album, how does the general theme of a conceptual album tend to come about?

I’ve been writing the narrative and music for spoken word electronic avant guard concept albums with my other project ‘Eccentronic Research Council’ that I do with the actress Maxine Peake & my co-producer/writer Dean Honer for over 12 years so I’m quite a dab hand at them. I can’t really explain where themes come from. I usually write about stuff people don’t like being confronted with or stuff I’m absolutely furious about – or if I feel there’s some kind of injustice or creepiness within a subject matter to sink my teeth In too..I gravitate naturally towards that kind of thing. I then do as little research as humanly possible, (if it’s about a historic factual event ) and then kind of fictionalise the story. Often you get closer to the truth using this style of almost ‘psychic writing’! The past 18 months has been pretty full on for me, I’ve probably done over 80 shows and festivals whilst writing & recording a new album for The Moonlandingz & and album for another side project too – plus I wrote , recorded and just released a 5 track acid klaus EP . The other projects albums are all nearing completion so once that’s done and this years Acid Klaus tour is completed early December I just want to take a break for a month or two. I’ve not had a holiday in years, even in lockdown I release 2 albums (one of those was a double album) & also wrote the debut acid klaus album. So I could just do with a bit of time to sleep, eat healthily, cleanse and massage the kidneys and just look after myself a bit!! After that and all being well, I’ll be touring the other album projects in 2025 and whilst that’s touring I’m gonna be writing and recording a Acid Klaus/ part ERC concept thing that I’m wanting to do as a big multimedia theatre effort. I’m a broken and broke middle aged man who wears his heart on his sleeve and who’s insides are hanging out of his arse… However, I still have ambition and a fire in my belly that won’t be settled purely by taking Imodium and a life in front of the Telly!

What can you tell us about the inception of the Acid Klaus project?

Like many people who do this music game , lock down completely decimated our industry. We couldn’t work and our live venues and the people who work within them suffered greatly, the repercussions of which still hang heavy in the smaller independent and grass roots venues across the country! Anyway, I digress – Acid Klaus came out of the mess that was lockdown – I was more creative than ever and was just writing almost every day new songs or instrumentals, so I just reached out via email or socials to new artists I liked or knew and asked if they wanted to lend me their vocals or to collaborate and as everyone else was on their arse and bored with not much to do other than stretch their legs for 20 minutes most people got back to me and were up for it. So I’d just send a song or an instrumental via email to them and they’d send me back their vocal. I’d then send it on to my mate Dean Honer and he’d mix it for me and add a bit of synth and production and quite quickly I had an albums worth of music. I then spoke to my mates , the band Yard Act who had just set up a little indie label and they liked the tunes and agreed to put it out for me, which they did! Then they took me on tour with them for a week at some of their big shows and from that I got loads of great press,bits of national radio, got a great live agent that I get on with and toured everywhere from the Andrew Weatherhall founded Convenanza festival in Carcassonne, France to The Royal Albert Hall with Roisin Murphy and everywhere inbetween. It’s been quite the journey in a very short space of time!!

Do you find that being on the road fuels creative ideas or do you prefer to focus more on the setlist instead of trying to write whilst you’re away?

I’m always writing, or singing or typing little ideas in to my phone or conversations or phrases I’ve overheard when travelling around. Service stations are weird places, you get this whole microcosm of society passing through them , everyone on a different journey but with the same reason to be there….a piss break and a cold Ginsters pasty! But in general I do most my writing and recording at home – Live I treat very differently to my at home ‘creative process’..I never see recorded songs as the definitive version of its existence. Live I’m always pushing a songs evolution to the point of its absolute self destruction. The music and performance of it is always evolving and it never gets boring as I’ve got a collective of incredible singers and front people I can pool from so I’m able to keep swapping the front line around and bring different people in for different shows, so yer never getting the same show twice really!

Your music fits both festivals and intimate venues so well, do you have a preference to in terms of setting when it comes to performing?

You can’t really beat getting on a big stage at a festival and playing to a few thousand people who don’t know you and turning that in to a stupid soup of mass dancing. But equally you can’t beat a small basement show where the sweats dripping off the ceiling and yer nose to nose with the crowd and it becomes like this unified hot wet heart beat in a skanky black box.

Are there any backstage routines that you swear by when you’re on tour?

No talking! No fun! Painful yet passionate solitude that’s enshrined in a soupçon of crippling shyness, self doubt and self loathing… Then come show time watch us unravel – like a glorious , verging on furious , throbbing Party snake!

Lastly if there was one album you could listen to across the whole tour what would it be?

Music is banned in the tour bus, as are egg mayo sarnies and any other obnoxious smelling edibles.. If we listen to anything it’s Lou Reeds Metal Machine Music on continuous loop, maybe a bit of late night Mozart! I’m not saying I’m a tyrant or owt!

Acid Klaus plays The Bodega on the 8th November. Tickets available here.