Strange Loops by AK/DK – If you’re on pharmaceuticals when you listen to this album, you may never come back! March 2025
I came across AK/DK purely by chance in the modern way. A Meta advert on Facebook gave some teaser description for their new Strange Loops album and I clicked it and within seconds I was hooked with a massive shit eating grin over my face. Let me tell you why in one paragraph.
Imagine a band that played new songs that referenced Can, Silver Apples, Hawkwind, Neu, The Normal Devo, Suicide, Kraftwerk, Bowie Low period and The Prodigy all in a synth rock dancy framework and for me you have AK/DK.
So with 48 hours of discovering them and playing nearly all their back catalogue I find myself interviewing them before a gig in Bristol. Lets just say it was a technology disaster. The Zoom wouldn’t work to start with. Then when finally it worked it didn’t record. I recorded the audio on laptop but the band were so quiet you couldn’t hear it so this is based on recollection.
Ed Chivers and Graham Sowerby are a Brighton based real drums and analogue synth combo. Over the some 15 years of their existence, they have managed four albums and a steady stream of live performances. Interestingly Ed & Graham came together way back in 2008. Having talked about doing something, a friend booked them to play. So while most bands form, develop songs then go on stage and present to an audience, they came together on stage in a form of reverse engineering to spontaneously create songs and liked it so much they continued.
Now the last time I came across an act with a similar set-up was the late Eighties excellent Swiss Young Gods who were more rock-oriented using Hendrix & Stooges samples with organic keyboard and drums. This pair both play drums and operate synths. The setup includes two drum kits and Roland synth SH101 from the eighties, Casiotone organ and a Rat distortion and delay pedal. ( see cover opposite)
The influences they mentioned were Can, Faust & Neu! and the echoey vocals of Suicide, but there are obviously loads more, as we’ll see.
In fact, AK/DK was Damo Suzuki of Can’s backing band at brighton’s Green Door Store in 2011. On each date, a different backing band was chosen playing off the cuff behind him improvising with no rehearsal and they were very honoured to do this ( when was this and how was the playing the gig with the legend?)
Playful with their name and t-shirts – a subtle alphabetical shift right from AC/DC – and still awaiting cease and desist orders from said giant rock band, it’s a suitably obtuse moniker.
Despite the technology/synth focus, the duo are very keen to emphasise that playing live is what they love and the nature of their songs and approach mean they can adapt it from more rocky to dancy based on how they perceive the audience is responding or what type of band they are supporting or festival attending. This ability to improvise with their audience and keep songs fresh is key to their approach and their start.
So the album. Fans of their past albums will be pleased to note that it’s more of the same but this time there is a loose concept to the new record which is side one are bangers and collaborations and side two contains some slower more introspective mood tracks. The band references Bowie’s late Seventies Berlin trilogy album Low whose side two contained tracks like Warszawa and Weeping Wall.
I obviously pointed out to the band that most people will come to this digitally which makes no distinction, but I love the way they unapologetically state “We still think in how albums work.”
And the bangers are certainly bangers! Very dancy psychedelic motorik paced slabs of densely layered synth, drum-driven goodness full of reference points for musical know-alls but still sounding fresh and relevant today. Square Root, Munch Machine that comes out all drums and synth firing sounding like a mash-up of Devo, The Normal and Suicide with its echoey vocals and snippet from Warm Leatherette.
AK/DK: We felt it was nodding towards The Normal’s Warm Leatherette so we added a little quote in the voice to sign post that and show our respects! The lyrical theme was just trying to sum up that slightly deranged feeling when you’re losing it on the dance floor… The actual German title of the Kraftwerk album is Die Mensch-Maschine, and there was a band who were called ‘Die Munch Machine’ – they were a side project of Part Chimp. We loved them and the track reminded us of them so we used it as a working-title which just stuck!
In the middle of “Side 1” are two tracks that seem slightly jarring with the rest of the album. First is Noone Shouts, featuring Manchester poet Thick Richard, who joined the band on stage during a tour and improvised this excellent, expletive-filled commentary on our times. It’s a track like this that could well garner them more exposure and looking at Spotify it has 4 x the amount of streams than other tracks. Think John Cooper Clarke (lazy reviewer comparison – that’s what happens if you happen to be another Manchester poet😊) or The Fall meets Chase & Status meets Hawkwind! Richard is also on tour with them at the mo doing his thang live!
The second one straight after really sticks out called Pull Up featuring I Am Fya has a Missy Elliot vibe which just by that you can see why it jars slightly. I Am Fya is an experimental artist, DJ, and radio presenter from Manchester, based in Brighton and produces dubby experimental music.
AK/DK: Pull Up was an improvised instrumental that we recorded live in the studio, and it initially was left out, however when we came up with the idea of the album being split in two halves, with mainly collaborations on one side and slower ambient tracks on the other then we realised it would be perfect for I Am Fya to collaborate with. She’s an amazing experimental artist/friend who was initially based in Brighton (Now based in Manchester), and we’ve always loved her stuff. She put the vocals down and we developed the track from there. It came out somewhere between Missy Elliot and Black Dice.
Side 2’s picks are the slowie Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost which slowly gathers momentum and layer upon layer of sound to a crescendo and a false end before picking up again. The album concludes with Casio Tony with an iconic Bossa nova Casio beat that concludes the album in fine washes of ambience.
We have differing views of Spotify and streaming incomes after I say I’ve played their back catalogue continuously. They see it as generating 0.0001p. I see it as a new gateway into their music and if I hadn’t gone there wouldn’t have bought the new album or wanted to see them live but I get the frustration.
They mention how important radio stations like 6 Music and X have been to their continuing progress and I agree because I’ve discovered so much good new music and even old music that I’ve missed from those stations.
Lastly, they give a big shout to the venues who put them on because their very flexibility in styles can make them hard to position and for a number of these venues what they do is for very little money beyond the reward of supporting music which has got to be applauded so SUPPORT your local venues or LOSE them!
Ultimately for the band itself, what they do is a labour of love (but rewarding obviously), because much as I’m sure they’d like it to be, this isn’t their living. Instead, they work and in their own time load up the car and travel to gigs, set up and perform, dismantle their stuff and drive to the next place or home. Recordings and releases are all done by themselves and self-funded so Bandcamp is a vital source of income ( with ltd edition coloured vinyls and t-shirts etc) as would be the merch table at gigs. They’d love to include a light/visuals experience but that would mean an extra body and engineer and margins are tight.
But onwards AK/DK go and godspeed to them! Last word to them and recommendations…
AK/DK: New bands we’ve been listening to recently: Kübler-Ross, Makeshift Art Bar, Joshua Idehen, Benefits, TVAM…
Warning! If you’re on pharmaceuticals when you listen to this album, you may never come back!
TalkPunk
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