An unavoidable truth will follow this sentence. “New” rave (© 2006/7) is, by and large, about as rave as my Nanna. Thus dispelling a great myth of the quite present. But at least Klaxons’ inclusion in the whole construct has some basis in logic – the whole thing, of course, largely sprung from the fact that their debut single ‘Atlantis To Interzone’ sounded like the KLF chewing on a rusted metal wasp under medically inadvisable strobe lighting. And for being such flagrant genre terrorists they deserve plaudits, though it’s not necessarily a label that the rest of their catalogue should have to live up to, regardless of how many glow-sticks or soiled Es you throw at them. We’ve not heard anyone mentioning the Pop Will Eat Itself revival yet either, which might be more appropriate at times.
But either way it’s no myth that they have recorded a very fine debut record indeed, conjoining the often allergic fields of guitars, euphoria and dancing mindlessly with quite some skill. And that extends beyond just adding power-surged drumming and choreography for those people with flags that land planes. The recent single ‘Golden Skans’, for instance, sounds more like The Futureheads running into the Flaming Lips than anything dancing off its tits in an 80s warehouse in South West England, while ‘Totem On The Timeline’ is like Bloc Party taking Art Brut’s perky daftness and turning it to millennial paranoia. Both you can still dance to with your arms flung back and face tilted up to the sky in mock/genuine rapture, and will no doubt kill at festivals this summer.
And if you wanted firm evidence of their durability following that, the closing apocalyptic meltdown ‘Four Horsemen of 2012’ sounds like distorted punk mentalists Mclusky jumping up and down on a bewildered synth as part of some oik-pagan ritual. Opener ‘Two Receivers’ and ‘Isle Of Her’ in particular do pay heed to the perceived rave influence featuring as they do whopping crowd-hypnotising ambiences, familiar to 808 State in the first instance and KLF duelling with Kraftwerk in the second. They do pack them with musical explosive of course and make them their own, you wouldn’t have heard anything like this in the early 90s, but the flavour is most definitely prominent.
So, if the aim was to avoid the obvious tags and weld something entirely unique and self-defined, then they simultaneously blew that and solidified the new rave label by including 90s rave ‘classic’ ‘It’s Not Over Yet’ as a souped-up cover version. Though we didn’t bank on it being like a fire alarm at the foot of a volcano at Hades’ largest nightclub. Awesome, basically. There’s still every sign through the 11 tracks though that they’ll be gregariously painting new labels for themselves long after new rave becomes old and lonely… and bets are now open on its shelf life. The problem then, as now, will be there is no real company out there for this band.