Dance Dance Revolution
Klaxons' original synth stirs hearts and loins.
May 9, 2007
At Brooklyn's Studio B on April 13th, Klaxons, NME's Best New Band of 2007 aggressively played most of their debut album, Myths of the Near Future. Drenched dancers moved so fast they might have evaporated. I cozied up to interview bassist and vocalist Jamie Reynolds, twenty-six, on a black leather sofa backstage, before soundcheck. I was the last interview in a week when they'd DJed four times, played two shows and gotten free clothes for performing at Diesel. It wasn't just that the band got big fast, it was that they'd off-handedly coined a genre.
When Reynolds, James Righton and Simon Taylor started playing together in 2005, they wanted to make a pop album like they'd never heard before. They knew they didn't want to sound like: no arpeggios, sexual lyrics, choppy guitars or off-kilter hi-hats. Instead, Myths of the Near Future sounds like a storming robot army on speed. But it's pop, and the top layers are full of oohs and ahhs. The rhythm, bass and synth meet the fantastical lyrics and drive the music into something dark and untouchable. Clearly, I had a blast at the show and got a reporterly crush on Jamie while we talked about easy American girls. — Catrinel Bartolomeu
You've said your music is about creating something unreal. Why fantasy?
So many bands in England sing about having a relationship with reality and with England. They'll sing about a girl, or a car, about something you can see or touch in England. We didn't find those sorts of things exciting. We wanted to put things into pop music that generally haven't or shouldn't be there.
How do you write lyrics?
Simon and I write down a big list of ideas. Lots of imagery and descriptive words. Then we chop it up and fit it. We finish each other's sentences. He'll say something ridiculous and I'll say something ridiculous and it just comes together.
What's the process of compromise like?
There isn't much really. If something is shit one of us kicks it off. Complete veto. It's like, "No, that's no good, I don't want anything to have to do with it." And it's gone. I don't think there's anything on the record that all three of us aren't one-hundred percent happy with. You have to have somebody to tell you when you're shit. Otherwise you just get carried away.
Critics say both that your music is something new and something old.
We take from the old and chop it up. It's very, very difficult to make something new happen. I think the last new thing was fast electronic music. If we've managed to come up with something fresh, it's cause we've stolen so much, chopped it to make it unrecognizable and churned it back out. You get a glimpse of something you might recognize, and then it's like, that's gone.
James Murphy from LCD Soundsystem told me he likes making music that makes him uncomfortable.
Well, we've only got one song that's easy on the ear. Everything that we've got is a bit off and a bit odd and shouldn't work, but it does, and that makes us happy. It's in that unknown part, that difficult part. Those are the bits you put the magic in.
Do you or the guys in the band have girlfriends now?
Simon and I do, and the drummer, Steffan. James doesn't. He's looking for an American film actress.
Where's your girl?
She's back in the U.K. right now.
Is it hard for her with you here?
No, 'cause she's in a band too. We both have the same lifestyle, so she's not sitting at home, pining, doing a nine-to-five job, worrying about me traveling the world. She travels the world also. It's more annoying than anything else, because we're never in the same place for very long. I go on tour with her when I'm off and she comes with me sometimes.
Are you trying to be monogamous?
Absolutely. I've never cheated on a girl in my life.
Really?
Yeah. American girls are quite easy, aren't they?
Are they all over you?
Loads of them. You don't get that in the U.K. at all. If you want to pull a British girl, everyone's a bit coy and a bit weird. But American girls are straightforward. They make it clear they want to fuck you straight away.
I read something in Pop World about an Australian girl at a show. . .
Oh, when I was in Australia I saw this girl crowd surfing. For some reason I knew she was coming towards me. I was still playing and just watching her. She just pulled herself up on stage, stuck her tongue down my throat and dived back into the audience. I was like, brilliant. This what being in a band is all about! I'd only gotten together with my girlfriend like the day before that, so it was okay.
Do you think your music is sexual?
Yeah. I think we find our record unifying. Bringing people together, that's a really sexual thing isn't it? But I don't think they're sexy songs by any means.
Do you guys do a lot of substances on tour?
Yeah, all the time. We've been drinking quite a lot recently, but before that we drank and did drugs constantly for like a year. Then we stopped for our own benefit, because we literally hit a wall. So we stopped for six months. But the drinking carried on. We were saying today how we really need to get back on it. We feel like we're a bit boring. I think we could be to the point where we can't talk but can play a gig. But that's the exciting part and that's the creative part. It's always been that a lot of good music has come hand in hand with some sort of drug. That was how we wrote our first record, and now we think we've maybe become a bit boring.
You guys get pretty physical on stage, which is sexy, but, whoa, that video for "Golden Skans". . .
That's a very sexy video. I think our video director Sam is completely sex-obsessed. You know, that's what you put into a video to make people really want to watch it. He wants to have us floating in zero gravity and fucking for the next video.
Really? Fucking what?
Some unknown girl, a goddess figure. But I don't think it's appropriate. The next single in the U.K. is "It's Not Over Yet." Because the lyrics in that song have a personal touch, I don't want the video to have to do with a relationship. I want it to feature something that's unknown and not be about a human relationship.
Have you ever written a love song?
I think all our songs are love songs.
What's a love song then?
I don't know, all the songs have that they all got that sort of unknown, exciting, wanting to them. I think every single one of them. Maybe not "Forgotten Works." It's funny how we didn't want to make a record that's standard about relationships or about reality or love, but it just so happens that every track we've written is a love song. That's nice, isn't it? Really nice. n°
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