Recent British music has been almost completely engulfed by post-Libertines, indie copy-cat bands. Songs about London have littered the pop charts along with the usual R&B. But while this cardigan-and-Converse-clad army marches toward eternity, London-based band Klaxons takes a lit glow stick to the scene with 2007’s “Myths Of The Near Future,” and gives birth to the genre of “Nu-Rave.” Admittedly, this is a term that gets thrown at just about every new British band with a keyboard. However, it is the Klaxons’ combination of ’90s rave music and modern indie guitar pop that sets the band apart.
Helping Klaxons along the way has been the revival of ’80s fashion along British high streets. The band has amassed a cult-like following of teenagers dressed in fluorescent colors, skinny jeans and brandishing that all-important glow stick to complete the “Nu-Rave” image. Bassist Jamie Reynolds, who coined the phrase, once said, “It started as an in-joke and became a minor youth sub-culture.”
That said, Nu-Rave has been dismissed by the media as a trend rather than a legitimate music scene, claiming that kids’ interest in rave would last weeks at best. What no one expected was that Klaxons’ debut album would actually live up to the hype.
“Two Receivers” opens the record with distant drums building up until the synth line rises into the song. With lyrics like “Five fallible flags in hyper sonic/ Are told to stay nearly out of reach,” the listener is told right away that this album won’t make a break up any easier. The second track, “Atlantis to Interzone,” slides up the tempo and actually includes a klaxon as an instrument, which gives you an idea of just how noisy the record can be. “Golden Skans,” arguably the band’s most successful single, features pop vocals sweeter than a sugar coated cherry. However its psychedelic lyrics reference science fiction writer J.G Ballard (known for psychotic novels such as “Crash,” about car crash sexual fetishism). The album in fact takes its name from a collection of his short stories. “Totem On The Timeline,” is the song closest to standard guitar-driven indie rock. But standard indie doesn’t usually involve a story about meeting Julius Caesar at a British holiday complex, as this track describes.
Klaxons have been exciting people from the moment they formed. Within their first week as a band, they had written their first song and single “Gravity’s Rainbow,” taken from the title of the novel by Thomas Pynchon. The bass staggers in as if the Klaxons’ rocket ship is a bit low on fuel. However, the euphoric, glittering chorus keeps the journey driving straight for the sun. “Magick” is a song named after a term penned by writer Aleister Crowley. It opens with throbbing synthesizers and leads onto screeching yells of “Magick/ Without tears.” The song pounds onwards frantically as if the instruments and vocals are struggling to keep For the Record up, stopping just in time to take a breath.
The song that best embodies the Nu-Rave genre, however, is the penultimate “Its Not Over Yet,” a cover of the rave classic by Grace. Its electro-static synth line hypnotized British festival-goers all summer, and can only be from somewhere close to the ’80s yet far in the future—somewhere only Klaxons have access to.
The album comes to a climax on “Four Horsemen Of 2012,” with a sound closer to Drum and Bass or hardcore punk than anything else, with distorted vocals screaming of an apocalypse charging through the sky. The final line tells us this revelation is being brought by “Klaxons not centaurs,” before the album fizzles and dies—unless, of course, you can be bothered to wait through 15 minutes of silence for a tuneless hidden track, only worth hearing if your music device has a fast forward button.
Klaxons’ debut album has broken the music scene’s well-established mold to reveal the fluorescent goo on the inside. They may not be outstanding musicians, but their album is brimming with fresh ideas and youthful energy that can only be topped by the band’s live shows. It’s stopped music from getting stale, and the D.I.Y. quality sounds so doable that it has already inspired numerous Klaxons clones. “Myths Of The Near Future” takes the listener on a rainbow-colored, synth-and-ecstasy fuelled rave from the ’80s to the apocalypse, proving that while Nu-rave may just be a fad, Klaxons are not.
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