A media bunfight with Noel Gallagher is on the cards but Klaxons’ Jamie Reynolds isn’t biting. Gallagher, we feel it necessary to point out, has knocked Klaxons in the press, deriding their glitterball psychedelia – ‘nu rave’ in scenster-speak – as migraine-inducing. Surely a little payback is due?
“Noel Gallagher came to see us in Ibiza a year and a half ago,” recalls Reynolds, holding a Tiger beer to his lips backstage in Dublin. “And we were out of our minds. We were wearing shorts. We were 'aving a laugh. We were playing [long-running Ibiza mega-club] Manumission and there was nobody there. Except for loads of celebs: you had Gallagher, Kasabian, Skunk Anansie’s Skin, M People’s Mike Pickering – Jade Jagger was kicking about as well. And all they’ve got is us. We had about six songs and we were rightly fucked. We were like Brits abroad, taking the piss. Noel Gallagher went away and someone asked had he heard of this band. And that was the only experience he had of us. So fair enough.”
Were you really that awful?
“We were terrible to be honest,” chimes in James Righton (you’ll remember him from Klaxons’ Mercury prize win: it was he who crashed the podium in a state of gleeful dishevelment). “When we met him, that’s what we said: ‘We were shit. Fair enough. Fair comment, mate.’”
Gallagher, let the record show, has since retracted his observation. He’s not alone in revising his opinion of Klaxons, who started out as essentially a novelty act. In early interviews, the Londoners spouted amusing nonsense about being heirs to The KLF while their concerts drew a neon ragtag: kids with sideways hair shaking glo-sticks and partying as though it were 1989. Klaxons even coined a handle for their mash-up of raver duds and indie guitars: 'nu rave'. To a significant degree, they were, they admit, taking the piss.
“It’s weird. At the start it [nu rave] was just an idea. Suddenly there was a media swell and now it actually is real,” says Righton. He points to the existence today of a flourishing nu rave scene whose ranks include fellow Mercury-nominees New Young Pony Club, continental acts such as Black Strobe and Justice and, of course, potty-mouthed Brazilians CSS .
“It forced itself into existence,” says Righton. “It’s like, if you talk about something enough, it starts to make sense. It’s been dropped into so many things and when it’s dropped into popular culture and television shows and whatever – then it’s a scene that exists. It’s real. It’s weird, for a non existent scene to suddenly exist. It’s very strange.”
As for the nu rave uniform – neon t-shirt and glo-stick – well, Klaxons, four suburban blokes in their 20s, are as baffled as the rest of us.
“I don’t know anything about it,” says Reynolds. “We just see the kids in front of us. I find kids dressing up very exciting and I find the combination of fashion and music is a very exciting thing but I don’t know if it’s gonna go on. I’m not sure if it’s going to continue. There was none of it in Europe. None in America.”
James chips in: “I think that some of the kids coming to our concerts were, like, so excited. Music at that point is so important to them. They’ll all remember it in 30 years time – when they were dressing up with glo-sticks and making clothes and coming to the shows. It’ll be a fucking documentary with us sat there, with our bellies and our beards. It’s amazing that we were, or are, a part of something.”
Setting Klaxons apart from kindred nu ravers is the breadth of their musical ambitions. Referencing Thomas Pynchon, Aleister Crowley and JG Ballard, their album Myths Of The Near Future (the title pinched from a Ballard anthology) is a minor tour de force. You may not have agreed that it deserved to bag the 2007 Mercury, but there’s no arguing that it’s one of the most distinctive LPs to have captured the gong.
Looking back on the ceremony, Reynolds is still irked that Klaxons’ victory was overshadowed by the Amy Winehouse circus. “We got mentioned in the press after it happened, of course we did, but we barely got mentioned," he fumes. "The press the day after – they were all talking about how Amy Winehouse hadn’t won it.”
Klaxons are well aware of the so-called Mercury curse: only a handful of winners have gone on to appreciably better things and more than a few have slipped quickly and quietly into obscurity (Roni Size, where art thou?). “I can only think of three bands that have made better records than the ones that have won the prize – Primal Scream, Suede and Arctic Monkeys,” nods Reynolds. “None of the others went on to make a better record. I really like the second Portishead album, but it’s not as good as the first one, is it? There is that, of course – we know that. But it’s not a problem. It’s a challenge, isn’t it? Another challenge.”
If Klaxons seem to have kept rather a low profile since the Mercury it’s because they were busily waging a full fledged assault on the US market. To date progress in America has been promising but they haven’t exactly blown the country away. Blame their “rubbish” Stateside record company.
“It seems like they give up on records very easily,” rues Roughton. “If that single doesn’t work, if it doesn’t get on the radio and doesn’t get played, that’s it – end of work on the record. ‘Golden Skans’ didn’t get played on the radio stations they hoped it would and that’s it. No more work on the album.”
Reynolds recalls a “surreal” transatlantic conference call with their US label. “They’re telling us the record is gonna do this and it’s gonna do that. And then you go out there and meet them a couple of times and they come backstage and say hello and then you get there and they’ve completely fucked it up – the whole experience is just bizarre.”
There’s a knock at the dressing room door – the record company chap indicating the interview is over. There’s time for one last zinger: is it true that Klaxons plan to cover ‘Diamond Lights’, a wink and nudge hit for the UK soccer players Glen Hoddle and Chris Waddle in the late ’80s? Roughton cracks up: “I’ve got a mate at Tottenham Hotspur. He’s a shady agent guy. He always asks if we want to play poker with some of the players. Obviously, I said no – it’s big money they’re playing with, those are serious poker games. Anyway, I did an interview for the Spurs monthly magazine and, as interviewers do, they asked: ‘So, would you do a collaboration with Glen Hoddle?’ And, taking the piss, I probably said ‘Yeah, of course’’. Just for the record – we’re not.”