Klaxons, Show Me Magick!

“It’s a joke that’s got out of hand, I said it at the start of the year and people just wont stop with it now, it’s got nothing to do with us” is Jamie from Klaxons refreshingly honest when describing ‘New Rave’ a genre banded around by all the Nathan Barley wannabes at the moment. Seemingly a scene created by the media to shift units and presumably get rid of a load of old glowsticks New Rave has taken the crown from Emo as the genre most people are jumping on whilst simultaneously bands are distancing themselves from. One such band is Klaxons, a band that not only justify the hype but earn more praise with every move they make, Gigwise spoke to Jamie from the band in what we can only assume was the ten minutes of his day that wasn’t dominated by drugs, neon and mind melting music.

It’s the fifth time we have tried to contact Jamie in as many minutes and he still hasn’t got back – we’re worried that he will think we are a mad groupie and ignore all of our subsequent attempts- one last try: “Ring, ring”, “Hello?” comes the voice down the other end “Oh the interview, sorry I was just doing some cleaning”. Welcome to the world of Britain’s biggest new band.

“Every gig was sold out, everyone just went mental when we came onstage” says Jamie and in fairness he could be describing any Klaxons gig here but he is in fact referring to the bands current tour with fellow indie/ dance luminaries Shitdisco and Datarock that has just come to an end, laying wreckage to all that stood in its way. So is playing live important to Klaxons? “Yeah absolutely, at the moment I love playing ‘Magick’ that’s just going off at the minute or ‘4 Horsemen’ at the end of the set, that’s always good for people to go absolutely nuts to at the end.” And a gig of the year? “I think Leeds festival was my favourite of this year, just playing to so many people and they were all going mental. Blokes were hanging from the ceilings. The other night in Manchester we had about 50 people onstage and there were people crowd surfing on top of each other, on stage. That was amazing.”

How exactly do you follow up a fantastic first single? Many bands struggle to re produce and sail into a slurry pit of complacency (Hello Kaiser Chiefs). The arrival of Klaxons with ‘Gravity’s Rainbow’ excited an awful lot of people but they managed to top it with ‘Atlantis To Interzone’ surely a shoe in for number one spot in every ‘Track of the year’ polls come December, topping that would be an effort but that’s exactly what Klaxons have gone and done with ‘Magick’ the bands third single, so what is it about exactly? “I don’t know if I want to give away any of the hidden meanings but it’s basically a dark song about bringing change.” Comes Jamie’s decidedly unhelpful answer. The average Klaxons song is hard to describe and many a critic has tried in vain, using words like “intergalactic” or “colossal” all we would say is that Klaxons make music designed to be listened to at full blast all night long, on repeat.

Everybody knows the hits but these guys craft a cracking b-side and with the likes of Simian Mobile Disco and Erol Alkan lining up to remix the band it looks like dance floors will be sound-tracked by Klaxons for a long time to come, but how do the band write their songs and what inspires them? “An escape from reality I guess, to try and create a gateway into a dream world, just try and get away from the mundane life.” With an album in the bag you could forgive Klaxons some time off song writing but that’s not the case, "We did a couple last week last week in the studio that could become b-sides. Basically how we write is a mish-mash of things. We all used to bring our separate parts together, now we just use a sort of cut and paste method really. We work together and just take all of our best bits and put them together.”