So Klaxons are kind of the band of the moment in indie circles, but what’s fashionable, and thusly, popular, changes weekly round’ these parts. If you want to stick around, then you best do something to supersede your ‘Nu-sub-genre’, or else you’ll fade off into the ether with your contemporaries amidst a wash of over-indulgent, over-funded second albums.
This industry is a fickle one, particularly when you’re tapping the hipster market like Klaxons have done for the last year. But really, there is an awful lot to like about the Klaxons, and though they’re really too new a band to be able to prove their longevity, one suspects they won’t be consigned to relative obscurity any time soon, unlike the many of the over-hyped fad-bands that have come out of England since the turn of the century.
The band’s trajectory from basements and warehouse parties to the indie stratospheres has been nothing if not rapid. In actual fact, Simon Taylor-Davis, Klaxons’ softly spoken, exceedingly articulate guitarist/backing vocalist, speaking (with tea in hand) from his abode in London, says he and the band are “in the middle of our longest period off since we formed the band, we’ve got two and a half weeks.”
The band was formed just over a year and a half ago, when Simon, a recent graduate in Fine Arts at Nottingham, was “twiddling [his] thumbs at what to do,” and elected to move to London and start a band with long time friend, Jamie. “Me and Jamie had always talked about making music together, and I moved to London, we formed a band, and within a week we were playing shows.” Not long after, Simon convinced James, who had been in the year level below Simon at school, to join Klaxons.
With the line-up formed, the band pooled their dole money together each week and survived on essentials. Music, effectively, became their full time preoccupation; “We had access to the rehearsal room from 9 o’clock at night until whatever time we wanted in the morning. Our body clocks became completely polar to what they are now. We used to wake up at 5o’lock in the afternoon and practice until 6 in the morning.”
Then the Myspace page started up, and took off, and the band excitedly sat around the computer reading emails from labels and management types. “It was a really exciting time in our lives…It’s kind of weird looking back. I mean it’s only a year ago when we put on a big warehouse party and play in people’s basements. I suppose it’s strange that an element of that kind of excitement is gone now, because we’re playing to big crowds. But it’s weird that you sacrifice one thing to do another, now it’s a different kind of excitement. Playing to huge crowds every night is beyond expectation and that’s a whole new level of achievement, that’s really amazing.”
Indeed, with the release of the Xan Valleys EP, the wildly successful Myths Of The Near Future LP, and a tour that lasted from January until early June this year, Klaxons have achieved an awful lot in a very short time. Interestingly though, having coined the phrase ‘Nu-Rave’ to describe their sound, and consequently become the iconic band of the genre, Klaxons now distance themselves from this bizarre, hybrid term of reference. “I’m sure that there are bands in England aspiring to be like that. I don’t think it has anything to do with us…If you look at what that whole aesthetic stands for it doesn’t really have anything to do with us. We don’t really wear neon clothes or play foot to the floor dance music, we’re just a kind of weird pop band.”
Aesthetics and genre claptrap aside, what can one expect from this weird pop band’s universally lauded live show; rave, rock, what? “It’s kind of a foot to floor rock show.” Simon wants audiences to feel like “they’ve been part of something, that they’ve witnessed something. That’s why touring absolutely just drains us. I hate people that whine about it, I’m not whining about, it I’m just trying to describe it – touring is the most incredibly thing in the world. I genuinely, genuinely miss it when we’re not on tour. It’s an experience which, if you’ve never been a band on tour you’re never going to fully understand what it’s like. Waking up in a different country or city every day and playing this kind of repeated show every day, it’s kind of like Groundhog Day or Disneyland or something – it’s completely bizarre and alien, and for me the best part of being in a band is touring. We give it our all every night. Physically we really go for it. We’ve just been on the road for the first five months of the year, and your body…you feel like you’ve been a fight every night. We all really go for it and play like it’s the last show we’re ever going to play.”
So, if you’re keen for sirens, falsettos, and lots of sweat, hit up Splendour or one of their side shows around the country.
