Photo by Pegah Farahmand
STEPHEN SAYS: “This sounds like Rage Against The Machine, the start of it anyway. It’s all right. It sounds kind of like annoying students. My favourite lyricist is probably Bon Scott so this kind of stuff is not really my thing.” Inbetween the hordes of urchins parading around in Dick Van Dyke’s hand-me-downs, crowding new British music like Fagin’s gang, it’s easy to lose sight of one Britain’s most authentic musical institutions: rave. While new British guitar music is not short on homage right now, the world of rave has been overlooked—until now. So let’s hear it for Klaxons, four babyfaced indie scenesters performing an early-90s rave tribute act. Too young to have experienced shitty trance nights the first time round, for some reason these guys recreate the questionable thrill of dancing to Altern-8 in a carpark in Stoke with a bunch of skaggy crusties and their diseased dogs. In 12 months time, I guarantee Klaxons will have sold enough records to keep themselves feeling like rockstars for at least a year, nicked your bottle of poppers, and wiped their UV-splattered threads down your girlfriend’s curtains.
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Vice: You look like a complete bunch of tossers. What the fuck are you playing at?
Jamie: We’re doing it purely as a nostalgia thing. I can only hope that people who were into rave at the same time can get into our band. Hopefully everyone doesn’t think that it’s a complete load of bullshit.
James: People can ridicule us all they want. I’ve been listening to happy hardcore since I was 8 years old and for me that kind of music isn’t just a passing fad, it’s a way of life.
Simon: I remember going to the youth club, drinking Coca-Cola, listening to DJ Slipmatt tapes and feeling fucked out of my brains. I wasn’t old enough to go to raves. To me it was the most incredibly euphoric thing, because I couldn’t actually be there. That was the most inspirational thing about it.
Have fun while it lasts, eh guys?
Simon: Well actually we’ve got 26 interlinking albums planned. Three of them are written. We’ve got a long way to go.
Don’t lie.
Jamie: Okay, we’ve only got about five songs and we’ve only played two gigs. But people are catching on really quick. It’s scary.
I see you’ve got a myspace band page like everyone who’s anyone these days. Got any interesting “friends”?
Jamie: Not yet, although someone told us that one of the guys who was on Space Cadets signed up. All the people that have heard us through myspace are people we already had some connection with. Sorry.
JAIMIE HODGSON
Klaxons play The Old Blue Last, 38 Great Eastern Street, London EC2A on Wednesday, January 25. Check myspace.com/klaxons for more.
