themoonlandingz

No Rocket Required
The Moonlandingz have returned, seven long years after their debut. When they first emerged from Valhalla Dale they were a semi-fictional band bringing us sticky squelchy pop songs to offer solace and punishment in the months following the Brexit vote and Trump’s first victory. Adrian Flanagan, Dean Honer and Lias Saoudi aka The Moonlandingz conspired with Yoko Ono, Rebecca Taylor, Phil Oakey and the Cowboy from The Village People to make one of the great albums of 2017, and we needed it. Interplanetary Class Classics was a dose of unreality equal to the unhinged times we were stumbling into.

The Moonlandingz have finally returned – not when we wanted them but now that we need them – galloping in on their four horses, bareback and howling, with their eagerly awaited forthcoming album No Rocket Required.

No Rocket Required delivers brassy squawks, motorik convulsions and sinister soothing vocals from a righteous line-up of guest singers and ranters: Nadine Shah, Iggy Pop, Jessica Winter and Ewen Bremner. Plus, of course, there’s The Moonlandingz’ own front man, Johnny Rocket aka Lias Saoudi, who has the wobbly-horny voice of R Whites’ secret lemonade drinker on Give Me More and then becomes basically Kris Kristofferson of the Pennines in the middle of epic Krack Drought Suite, imparting gnomic sawdust saloon wisdom from a barstool in Huddersfield. Mostly though he’s the man we know from Fat White Family with gravelly crooning (to especially great effect in Roustabout, his duet with Nadine Shah) and camp Working Men’s Club lead singer, Syd Minsky-Sargeant.

What to do, as we potter and fret, as we watch bodies, homes and lives destroyed every day while our elected leaders, so forensic and so sensible, use their weasel words, shrug their coward shoulders and saunter off to raise our bus fares. Dancing of course and togetherness, looking out for each other, and that’s not enough. What kind of fight are we bringing? We will always need to organise, to fight, to collaborate, to connect and to dance dance dance. And that is what The Moonlandingz do.

Interplanetary Class Classics
The Moonlandingz’s Interplanetary Class Classics reissue is pressed exclusively on green transparent vinyl, limited to 500 copies.

They began as a fictional band from a fictional town featured on the Eccentronic Research Council’s 2015 concept album Johnny Rocket, Narcissist And Music Machine… I’m Your Biggest Fan. Now The Moonlandingz have lurched, sticky and bleeding, into the real world and are releasing the first great album of 2017. Interplanetary Class Classics, released on Transgressive Records, is a feast of swirling juddering synths, wailing guitars, motorik stomp and extraordinary songwriting. The Moonlandingz have proven themselves to be one of the best live bands in the UK (“Magnificent, cosmic and batshit!” said The Quietus. “Feral antics and louche anarchy!” said The Guardian) and now they’ve produced an album of proper weird

catchy glorious filthy pop. The Moonlandingz is Eccentronic Research Council’s Adrian Flanagan and Dean Honer in cahoots with Fat White Family’s Lias Saoudi (aka frontman Johnny Rocket) and Saul Adamczewski. They recorded the album with Sean Lennon at his studio in upstate New York. Also on the record: Randy Jones the Cowboy from The Village People, Rebecca Taylor from Slow Club, drummer Ross Orton, bassist Mairead O’Connor, Phil Oakey and YOKO fucking ONO, who sings and yowls on epic closer This Cities Undone.