Let us go then you and I… to where ugly farmers drown kittens in weighted down sacks but always go back afterwards to reclaim their bricks; to where lonely drunks die in pubs and no one notices until the corpses slump from their barstools; to where hipster nightclubs burn down to the ground mysteriously in the dead of night; to where court injunctions and restraining orders aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on… and to where a malign presence stalks the darkness at the edge of Sheffield.

Let us go then… to Valhalla Dale, South Yorkshire.

The Eccentronic Research Council’s fabulous fourth album, Johnny Rocket: Narcissist And Music Machine…I'm your biggest Fan!!! 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.

The 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 they 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.

Johnny Rocket - released on the Fat White Family’s Without Consent label in XXXX - is 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.

But, most importantly, the album will be one of the best things you hear all year.

Speaking from his adoptive home town of Sheffield, Salford-born Adrian Flanagan, the group’s chief lyricist, says: "I wanted to write something about people who hide behind the safety of their computers, making other people's lives a misery. I wanted to write about mental illness. I wanted to hold a mirror up to the listener themselves and write something for the music fan in us all.”

The album is both hilarious and horrifying; glib and ghastly; dead funny and deadly serious. And if Adrian’s lyrics sound ultra-convincing: that’s because he knows what he’s talking about from bitter first hand experience.

He explains: “It's all written from experience. I had a stalker who would email me these bizarre messages. She would follow me in the street; turning up at shows and places I might be performing across the country, ingratiating herself with my friends, being a nuisance, pretending to be someone she wasn’t and generally creeping me out majorly for about six years.

“You expect that kind of unwanted behavior, if you’re in a massive band but when you’re just a dickhead from Salford playing gigs to ten people in Liverpool (as I was back then), you tend to notice this kind of thing. It makes you feel really claustrophobic, unnerved, sick and vulnerable...

“It's nice when people are really in to what you do but please don't expect me to greet you at the door, or be courteous if you’re following me down the street, moving into the house round the corner from me and getting tattoos of badges I wear....

“I'm aware that I'm possibly putting myself in danger by doing this, or that the person may even be very flattered that their behavioral patterns have influenced this album; but I just needed to get it off my chest and address it.”

The album is a labour of love for the band and they have slaved over getting all of the details right - to the extent that they’ve actually recorded a full record as the fake band, The Moonlandingz. The four-track, self-titled EP comes out on Without Consent on XXXX, featuring lava hot guitar licks from Saul Adamczewski and torrid vocals from Lias Saoudi - Fat White Family’s frontmen.

Adrian explains: "Dean and I got some rough skeletons of tracks together. We then got Saul and Lias up to Sheffield for a couple of days to lay down some vocals and guitar. They left the songs with us to mess about with, whilst they caused mayhem at festivals over the Summer. The four songs that make up the Moonlandingz EP were done in two days… We’d be the best band in the world, if we weren’t fictional!”

Johnny Rocket: Narcissist And Music Machine is a really great album. It’s like nothing I’ve ever heard before. It is at once homely and exotic; an immediate pop fix and a slow burning avant psych oddity; both reassuring and disturbing.

It’s like Stephen King’s Misery set in Masham. It’s like JP Massiera recording in Middlethorpe. It’s like Pierre Henry performing live in Pontefract. It’s like Roman Polanski’s Repulsion set in Rotherham. It’s like Guy Peelaert’s Rock Dreams written in Goole. It’s like a Nick Cave murder ballad reimagined in Bingley. It’s like the Focus Group hauntologising Flamborough.

But don’t just take my word for it; you only have to listen to Johnny Rocket: Narcissist And Music Machine once and you too will become the Eccentronic Research Council’s number one fan.

John Doran, London, January 2015