The Eccentronic Research Council - Johnny Rocket, Narcissist & Music Machine…I'm Your Biggest Fan (2015)

The Eccentronic Research Council’s fabulous fourth album, Johnny Rocket, Narcissist And Music Machine…I’m Your Biggest Fan, released on the Fat White Family’s Without Consent label, is written from the persuasive point of view of an obsessional fan of a local band - The Moonlandingz, who gig around the fictional South Yorkshire district of Valhalla Dale - and how this fan’s behaviour tips over into stalking and then plummets dramatically into something far worse.

ERC are the mysterious Dean Honer (All Seeing I), the manic Adrian Flanagan (Kings Have Long Arms) and the magnificent Maxine Peake (Shameless, Silk) and together have created something which will target your head, your heart, your hips and the medial epicondyle of your humerus (or your funny bone) in equal measures.

It’s a record for our times: a swirling, brightly lit, adrenaline surging, fairground carousel ride of gleaming synth pop, narcotic psych rock, bewitching spoken word and demented avant garde electronics. Like a Chaucerian epic retold by David Peace for a music hall located in Hell, it looks at obsessional behaviour and how this is fueled by our need to document every passing moment on social media. It also deals with the legacy of Thatcher, which is stronger now that she is dead than it was when she was alive. And it also reaffirms the fact that music is one of the only obsessions in life worth having.
The album also sees ERC team up with Lias Saoudi & Saul Adamczewski of South London's The Fat White Family, who ably play the role of the The Moonlandingz, the fictional band at the heart of the story.