Klaxons - "Myths Of The Near Future" era

[oscillations.]

I personally feel that RS review is way off the mark (to put it politely), but mark my words: they will be licking Klaxons' boots within 6 weeks.

[jaxxalude]

Video for "Gravity's Rainbow" right here. Are we very late-70's music video or what?

[oscillations.]

The ATI video is the best.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufMPWeaj5J8
Neon argyle? Fuck yeah!

[zago]

great album,great band!
someone knows when they release it in USA??

[reception]

Reviewed by Edna Gundersen
USA Today

Klaxons, Myths of the Near Future: (* * * out of four) Rock/dance infusion

Lumped into the U.K.’s “new rave” movement, Klaxons are less a product of that trance/neon fad than a genre-defying force to undermine it. The trio, determined to fuse guitar rock to dance music, churns out 35 minutes of electro-fied eccentricities infused with hipster literary references. The bent pop of Gorillaz echoes throughout, yet Klaxons manage to carve new turf with a visionary mix of magic, mania and massive beats.

[zago]

as i know today is out in USA!!

council to all!!

[oscillations.]

Sales predictions?

I say something like the Fratellis, maybe a bit less. Or maybe a bit more.
Things have been performing better than I expected lately.
Let's say 12-20k, Top 50 debut.

[joker]

Top 50 sounds good. I'm gonna guess ~15k. Good luck to 'em.

[zago]

if we will selle 15k will be an incredible result..i hope it.

fratellis done good for Itunes spot i think..

[oscillations.]

Any word from HITS? Are major retailers giving this the enviable new artist price of $7.99?!

[oscillations.]

I feel your pain. :'(

[busyboy]

Klaxons vs glow-sticks

Klaxons want glow-sticks banned from their gigs and have completely dismissed the "new-rave" scene in a new interview.

The electro-pop icons are currently touring Europe and have found journalists across the continent eager to learn about their music and the genre they apparently pioneered.

However, Jamie Reynolds has insisted the scene is an invention of the British music media, which they encouraged "for our own amusement".

Speaking from the tour, Reynolds complained about the line of questioning: "We kept getting asked to explain it.

"And it's like, 'Look, the whole idea of new rave was to take the piss out of the media by making them talk about something that didn't exist, just for our own amusement.'

"And they'd say, 'I appreciate that, but can you tell me more about new rave?'" he explained.

Meanwhile, on the subject of glow-sticks, which are a constant feature at Klaxons' shows in the UK, Reynolds said he was pleased they're not jet a feature at Euro gigs.

"There's a general lack of glow-sticks (in Europe). It's nice to prove it's possible to have excitement without them", he said.

In the interview with Popworld, Reynolds even appealed for evidence of the danger of glow-sticks, commenting: "We're considering trying to find someone with an injury.

"If anyone's been injured by a glow-stick they can get in contact with us and help our cause to get them banned from our gigs."

[busyboy]

Pitchfork...

Klaxons
Myths of the Near Future
[Geffen/Polydor; 2007]
Rating: 7.5

At this time last year, London three-piece Klaxons had barely finished self-decorating their first 7", "Gravity's Rainbow". By June, they were at the HMV buying their second single, the William Burroughs-invoking "Atlantis to Interzone". Soon the band found themselves headlining the NME's Indie Rave tour in support of a UK #2 album, the day-glo lit-geek princelings of a ginned-up "movement" they swiftly disavowed. A little backlash was to be expected, sorry.

And yet Klaxons are only the most recent manifestation of the British rock press's perennial compulsion to rediscover the very stuff it stereotypically ignores, dance music. Screeching production courtesy of Simian Mobile Disco's James Ford distinguishes the group's full-length debut, Myths of the Near Future, from British indie's recent trad blokeness. However, Klaxons singer/bassist Jamie Reynolds & co. aren't reviving the house and rave music actually heard during the UK's 1988 "Second Summer of Love", though Myths definitely owes a debt to the bands who translated that sound for guitars: the baggy-trousered likes of the Stone Roses, Primal Scream, and Happy Mondays. Instead, the strength of a few stellar songs in this 12-track set establishes Klaxons primarily as...one more catchy English guitar-pop group. Glowsticks, like last week's "angular" guitars, be damned.

The singles that built Klaxons' rep overseas-- re-recorded here in slightly more cluttered form-- make no shortage of dancefloor gestures. Then again, neither did fellow NME-proclaimed rock saviors Arctic Monkeys, at least lyrically, with 2005's "I Bet You Look Good on a Dancefloor"; on the Arctics' forthcoming album they, too, opt for the Ford production treatment. Though Alex Turner's dancefloor exhortations were essentially confined to words, Klaxons turn for their frantic pulse to the clattering rock rhythm sections of guitar-based New York club-dabblers from ESG to the Rapture. Klaxons' two-part, falsetto-sweetened "Gravity's Rainbow" chorus belies its high Pynchon brow, popping pills that !!! forgot to leave in Giuliani's schoolhouse for Bloc Party to pick up after their recent Washington Heights stop.

On "Atlantis to Interzone", the literal "klaxon" warning bleats that give the song its "nu-rave" cachet-- among provincial English teens, anyway-- basically deflect attention from soused guitar scribbles that wouldn't be out of place on the latest Arctics single. Anyway the Rakes, Franz Ferdinand, and Hard Fi all know those same disco hi hats. Meanwhile, the electropunk scream'n'stomp of Aleister Crowley paean "Magick" is less memorable than its accompanying hypestorm, in retrospect. "Golden Skans", which alludes to the album's eponymous story collection by late British author J.G. Ballard, floats on keyboards not at all ill-suited for Paris's Ed Banger Records-- which also released the track. Or another French label, Kitsuné, which released a totally great Van She remix of "Gravity's Rainbow".

So, nevertheless, looking for a sequel to Daft Punk's Discovery? Seek elsewhere, fellow pilgrims. With a magnificent wordless vocal hook, "Skans" comes closer to guitar pop like the fatalistic Smiths of "A Rush and a Push and the Land Is Ours" than the filter disco of Ed Banger phenoms Justice. Wobbly B-movie lead guitar on "As Above, So Below" recalls Graham Coxon's buggiest glam-rock updates, and the macabre harmonies and bouncy groove of "Forgotten Works" aren't all that disparate from 13-era Blur, down to the deep-background howls-- Americans tend to forget Blur started as fundamentally a clever indie-dance band. Fact is, Klaxons are turning techno cognoscenti onto UK indie rock much more than vice versa. Many natural Klaxons listeners probably wouldn't recognize the Eurodance roots of "It's Not Over", a 90s hit on multiple occasions for various Paul Oakenfold projects. The Myths dance-rockers reshape the song as dreamy post-Stone Roses indie dance, shrill siren noises the biggest hint at its origins.

Klaxons' lyrical pretensions, alas, can be a reminder why the best house and trance music often emphasizes atmosphere over meaning. Where the Arctics focus on quotidian English life, Reynolds prefers to sing of Cyclopes, unicorns, and seven-volume Marcel Proust masterpiece À la recherche du temps perdu, in addition to the litany of literary references already mentioned above. At least jagged closer "Four Horsemen of 2012" finds humor in its snobbery, with its slogan of "Klaxons, not centaurs!" Elsewhere, for every evocative line about whippoorwills "turn[ing] east toward Westphalia" there's a "Serebella sitting on the totum timeline" while "hangmen also die, in famagusta's hive" (amid the DFA-like dance-punk of "Totem on the Timeline"). I thought we were supposed to be having fun?

Most of the time, we are. And we do: Klaxons' full-throttle racket can be very convincing on that point. Myths is a reminder that, though the UK rock press's relationship with dance music can be Byzantine, hyberbolic, and endlessly offputting, plenty of young UK bands continue to record fine pop songs-- whatever their subgenre affiliation. Klaxons are just a band, the English sage/emcee Scroobius Pip would surely remind us. Shit, yeah, and they're one well worth hearing.

-Marc Hogan, April 18, 2007

[zago]

incredible pitchfork give a 7,5 to a succesful album??

[busyboy]

^ Sometimes they have to submit themselves to the hype, LOL...

[busyboy]

Already?!

Klaxons begin work on second album
Forget new rave, the trio are set to go 'prog'

Klaxons have begun work on their second album.

The band, who are currently on tour in the US, have said they have started writing new material for the follow-up to debut LP 'Myths Of The Near Future', which came out in January.

Bandmember Simon Taylor said: "We've written the opener of the next album. We're thinking of making a prog album - like a huge tribal prog album.

"We've all been listening to bands in England like Caravan, so we're defintely going to make a big, prog album."

Meanwhile, the group are giving fans a chance to direct the video for new single 'Totem On The Timeline'.

The band will pick the best idea from submissions via community site Qoob.tv.

Klaxons are currently on tour in the US but come back to the UK in May.

They will play:

Glasgow Academy (May 6)
Birmingham Academy (7)
Nottingham Rock City (8)
Leeds Met University (9)
Northumbria University (11)
Liverpool Academy (12)
Manchester Ritz (12,13)
Bristol Academy (14)
Norwich UEA (16)
Portsmouth Pyramids (17)
London Shepherds Bush Empire (18, 19)

[jaxxalude]

That thing about Pitchfork only giving high remarks to indier-than-thou acts is the classic example of a lie which becomes truth simply by saying it too many times and out loud.

[busyboy]

Guest List: Klaxons"]http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/feature/42465-guest-list-klaxons]Guest List: Klaxons
by Simon Taylor-Davis

Welcome to the latest edition of Pitchfork's Guest List. Each week, we ask one of our favorite artists to fill us in on what they've been up to lately: which tracks they can't stop spinning, what books they can't put down, and what new bands they've caught on tour. This week it's the Klaxons' Simon Taylor-Davis, who tells us about an American cartoon that's surprisingly popular in Europe, a magical shaving cream that's changed his life, and former tourmates CSS' favorite reality show.

>> Favorite New Songs of the Past Year

WZT Hearts: "1"
This blew my mind into fireworks…It's all I listened to when we toured Europe. It was just abstract being completely obsessed with this, to this then going onstage and playing three minute pop songs, then going back to this crystal neverland.

Deerhunter: "Wash Off"

Soft Circle: "Untitled"

Indian Jewelry: "Lesser Snake"

Electrelane: "To the East"

>> Favorite Older Songs at the Moment

Blue Orchids: "No Looking Back"
It reminds me of finishing college and slowly dissolving into the real world... That whole album [The Greatest Hit (Money Mountain)] was my best friend in the winter. I love the lyric "Eyes that shine through the sparkling whine, baby alone, there's nobody home."

90 Day Men: "We Blame Chicago"
I'd never been there so I played this when I was on the plane there. We loved Chicago!

The Go-Betweens: "One Thing Can Hold Us"

Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons: "The Night"

Magazine: "Permafrost"
From the Rockpalast WRD live session (the YouTube clips of this are ridiculous).

>> Favorite New Band

Sleeping States
It's one man, Markland Starkie, from London; he makes these beautiful songs over detuned guitars, they're recorded on a four track and possess this impromptu one take charm to them. You read a lot about people making records about what London sounds like, but his songs are the only thing that ever reminds me what its like to be there...

>> Favorite Song Ever

Chris De Burgh: "Lady in Red"
This is pretty much the soundtrack to every moment of my childhood. I went to this place called *Birdland* as a child. I was so excited to be there I ran and slit my hand open on the electric doors as you walk in. I never made it inside, and I remember my parents playing this while driving me to the hospital...

>> Best Recent Concert

These New Puritans
In Liverpool, in this bar called Korova. They played an aftershow when we were on tour. They're out on tour with us in May.

>> Favorite Piece of Musical Equipment

I've got one of those Line-6 MM4 Modulation Modeler ring modulators for our track isle of her I tuned all the guitar strings to one note then tuned the modulator to the note... it's got this really warm metallic droney sound to it...

>> Last Great Film I Saw

Werner Herzog: The Wild Blue Yonder
It has all this unused footage from, I think, the Galileo space mission, and then loads of footage from the film is shot underwater, under the ice, giving the illusion that the sky is frozen and this ship is exploring this new aquatic planet.

>> Last Great Book I Read

Ray Bradbury: The Illustrated Man
I just finished this collection of tales from the future that are all engraved like movies on the body of man. There are these incredible stories of children in holographic playrooms projecting walls of their imagination and trapping the parents inside these *playrooms.*

>> Favorite Record Store

I really liked Reckless Records in Chicago. We just visited there and I got D.A.F. Fur Immer there, and Sounds of the Indian Snake Charmer. It reminds me of our favorite restaurant in Dalston that just got burnt down.

>> Best Purchase of the Past Year

It was a gift from my girlfriend, so it wasn't technically mine, but Kiehl's shaving foam. It makes my face feel like I'm 10 years old again. It's changed everything.

>> Best Thing I Did This Year

August...doing August. Did August...We played some great shows in Southend and Bristol and then ended up at the Reading and Leeds Festivals which was a big deal for us. We all went there every year since we were nippers...Watching people dance in the silent disco without the music was a whole new window on the world. Straight after, we got into a van and recorded our record, hiding away in the shadows of the battle of Hastings and making myths with James Ford and Jimmy Robertson.

>> Favorite Music Venue

I really liked the Atomic Cafe in Hamburg. German crowds are my favorite. They just got onstage after ten seconds of the first track. We must have restarted the set three times. There's this incredible spiral staircase that must go up ten floors or so; it's like Babel's Library, without books. Actually its nothing like that. It's an old bunker. It's like playing in Alcatraz, except surrounding it is this massive fun fair, like playing in Alcatraz inside Disneyland. All the rides are a couple of euros, and you can watch the support acts from the top of the Wild Maus rollercoaster. The only prize to win is SpongeBob. SpongeBob popped up everywhere in Europe. I got a demented SpongeBob fingerpuppet in France.

>> Favorite TV Show at the Moment

When we were on tour with CSS, they introduced me to "Top Chef". I'm not very patient with TV, so I prefer to wait till something's on box set so I can watch all of it at once. I just did that with "The Prisoner", but "Top Chef" has so much drama. It's the most epic thing I've ever seen.

[oscillations.]

I got free Klaxons stickers yesterday! (Along with a free Blonde Redhead CD!)

[oscillations.]

ATI on the album is so much more powerful than the single version.

I've been listening to this album & the new AM albums constantly the past few days. I wrote an 11 page term paper on Sunday (staying up til 5am yesterday morning to complete it), and when I turned it in, I found out it wasn't even due til Wednesday (at noon via email). This anecdote sums up the way my life generally flows. Other things to be noted: I took a special bus trip to meet with my psych professor on my least favorite campus & when I got there, he was nowhere to be found (and the room where I was supposed to meet him was a grad conference room, wtf?). I returned to my general campus, but didn't get a chance to eat lunch (I actually didn't ever get a chance). I used this time period to purchase a semester worth of notes for a class I've frequently missed, which took about 35 minutes. Went to the Romantic Movement course (late), found out about the paper mishaps, TURNED IT IN ANYWAY, RESISTING THE IDEA OF 'BETTERING' IT FOR TWO DAYS, found out I need to read Balzac's Père Goriot, because there will be an obligatory question on it for the final (no one in the class read it, so he was pissed). After this, I figured "I'll just go to the final psych lecture, talk to the professor, and leave, eat lunch, go home, and go to bed", but I ended up having to stay for the full lecture, which was not even a review session as much as a celebration of humanity ("What a piece of work is man", and all that). SO...finally, at 3:30 or so, I managed to talk to my professor about an exam I had missed & it turns out, because I'm such a wonderful person & high-achiever, he waived the exam for me. SCORE! I then headed home via train, with an empty stomach but lifted spirits. When I got home, I drank tomato juice & went to bed. I didn't wake up until 9 this morning, so I haven't eaten for 24 hours.

This all relates to Klaxons, because basically their album helped me survive yesterday.

Also, I think everyone here should read about how much I suffer in my daily existence.

[Chromeozone]

Why has this topic been dormant for 2 and a half months? Blasphemy.

[jaxxalude]

^ Maybe because, months later, most of us realized that the album is good, but not really - never - great. But I'm still putting some money for them for the second album. Maybe they'll fool us all and not perish at second go, just like so many before them (yes, Kaiser Chiefs, I'm talking to you!).