Klaxons

Mercury award winners

The hype has already started and Jamie from The Klaxons has decided he needs a little break. It is only a little break of course because he has to pick up the phone to me and talk all about his wonderful band and how they are doing. The Klaxons you see have only been going properly since last November and already they are on the verge of making it big time.

Speaking through a decidedly crackly mobile phone line, vocalist and bass player Jamie has simply spent a day “chilling out and listening to loads of new reggae records” in his home in New Cross, south London. He claims it is his first break since the band started but he doesn’t seem too annoyed that I’ve interrupted it. In fact he sounds rather cheery.

This is no surprise really when we consider that it was only the previous week when his band signed a major four album record deal whilst at the same time setting up their own record label. It’s a bit like a dream come true and I think young Jamie knows it.

After recruiting guitarist Simon from university and Simon’s school friend James on keyboard, Jamie and his fellow Klaxons set about creating a sound that is as full of in-your-spotty-face aggression as you could want. They even have a real life drummer, in the form of Steffan, to ‘fill-in’ the space left by their once lauded drum machine. This music is loud and your mum probably won’t like it.

And of course this is a mighty good thing. Already generating a reputation for originality, The Klaxons are closely associated with the dancier side of indie rock and this is reflected in the their choice of producer for the album, James Ford. “He helps out a lot,” admits Jamie, but the final sounds produced are a far cry from dance music. In fact although Jamie describes the songs as having “typical dance structures” you could never actually dance to The Klaxons in the way you can to a more typical dance/rock crossover band like, say, The Music. The dance music nature of the songs is simply evident in the multitude of old-school dance influences that don’t actually make the songs, they just add to the fascinating sound.

They’ve simply added lashings of acid house style sounds to compliment the driving bass and the multitude of vocal lines.

In fact, the songs are pretty traditional in structure and harmony. What The Klaxons seem to have found is a place in-between Primal Scream’s ‘XTRMNTR’ and all that is great in traditional guitar rock. They’ve simply added lashings of acid house style sounds to compliment the driving bass and the multitude of vocal lines.

Speaking of vocals, it’s rare for a band who aren’t Led Zeppelin to describe their lyrical approach as “ a pastiche of ideas based on sci-fi and literary references”, but that is what Jamie tells me they sing about. He could have said anything though really, because trying to decipher a Klaxon lyric is harder than successfully cracking the Crystal Maze. It doesn’t matter though. Like Richard O’Brien, the Klaxons are damn good fun to listen to.

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