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Klaxons
Interview by Marisa Brickman
Photography by Christian Smith



The Klaxons have taken England by storm recently - a storm that has left fingerprints on white pants and burnt out glow sticks in its wake. After bringing their wailing punk disco inferno style to the cover version of Kicks Like a Mule's rave anthem "The Bouncer", they began spreading other like-minded party tunes over the Internet.

The Klaxon's single, "Atlantis to Interzone", released in April 2006 on Angular Records, has become a DJ favorite for indie dance nights nation wide. The Boys have also been in the studio with producer James Ford (ex-member of Simian and one half of Simian Mobile Disco). They are also hooking up with DJ-turned producer Erol Alkan. Modular Records is set to release their EP this Summer in the US, and a full album early in the UK this fall on their own imprint on Polydor.

They've been heralded in the press as the darlings of "New Rave" a title they'll take willingly, but have enough of a sense of humor to laugh about it. Despite the laughter though, ex-ravers and indie kids have been showing up in droves to their gigs with a plethora of party paraphernalia in tow, ready to get the part started with The Klaxons.

When was your first show?
James: 9th of November at the San Moritz.
Jamie: It was a party for Angular Records.
James: It was us and a band called the Fucks, but the Fucks pulled out so we ended up headlining for our first show.
Simon: It entirely was abysmal.
Jamie: You know what I realized the other day. We did an instrumental version of "Atlantis" where we just hummed the melodies.
Simon: Everything, everything broke. Like everything. After the first song, everything was on the floor, the keyboards, the guitars...
James: There's a video of us. Literally, all three of us dropped everything and started dancing. We dropped everything and just started dancing.

So, I guess it went over well.
Jamie: It was incredible though, people were just having the time of their life.
James: People said it was very punk.

What's the deal with your drummer?
Jamie: We have a drummer that we use for live.
James: Oh yeah, he's awesome.
Simon: He's a show pony.
Jamie: We just wheel him out and he performs.
James: The band is really just us three. You know, he's the drummer, he just drums.

I guess he didn't get to go to Croatia?
All: No (laughing).
Jamie: Weren't you supposed to come too?



Yeah, it didn't end up working out, long story, but I wish we'd have gone! How was it?
James: Basically to be quite honest, I'm not going back there for a while.
Simon: There was a tranquillity to it that James and Phil managed to kill.
James: Yeah, pretty much. I got there and I was thinking, 'let's chill out, have a breather, drink some nice wine'. But it's just being around those guys. They're big boozers so when you're around that environment, you get taken into it all. Before I knew it, I was shouting, screaming, dancing, you know, throwing things in the river.

You guys basically ARE the new rave craze. One article's sub-head that I read said, 'Klaxons: Return to the Gurn'.
Jamie: Brilliant!

You're not annoyed with all the new rave references by now?
Jamie: It was only an initial way to break into the world of music. It's funny, it's really funny.
Simon: I think it will be different when people hear the record.
Jamie: It's something that got us noticed when we started and it's hilarious.
James: It's not something we really egged or encouraged.
Jamie: We encourage people to bring rave memorabilia to gigs.
Simon: It's one of those things where every minute somebody tags something to you and you get dragged behind a tag almost.
James: It hasn't been detrimental.
Simon: I think having 30-year-old crusty gay guys, beefy gay guys coming along to the show because they heard the cover of "The Bouncer". That's quite exciting - people who come along to gigs that wouldn't normally go out to see an indie band - they have a reason to go.

What made you decide to cover "The Bouncer"?
Jamie: It's hilarious. It was my idea when we had the original drummer. It was the first song we learned to play as a band. It has a great bass line and drum beat - a really minimal pop song.

Did you all grow up listening to rave tunes?
Jamie: I think a combination of that and Nirvana.
Simon: We all listened to a combination of things, but that was just one element that we picked out and decided to lean on. It wasn't something that a lot of people, or anybody, was referencing.
Jamie: It was the only thing left that hadn't been re-hashed you see.

When I was growing up in the States, there were definitely kids listening to dance music and going to raves, but it wasn't nearly as huge as in Europe.
Jamie: It took a while to get over there.

And then it was mostly the cheesy shit.
Simon: The thing here is that it's kind of seen as quite a joke.
Jamie: It wasn't taken seriously at the time either, was it? It was one of those subcultures that got kind of shoved to the side. The police tried to ignore it due to its illegal -
James: Controversial nature.
Jamie: It just always attracted trouble, didn't it? It was always something that was kind of frowned upon.
Simon: It's quite an exciting movement to think about it culturally - all these parties in fields. People used to text each other and run around in the countryside trying to find out where these huge sound systems had been erected. It's quite a community feel in a way - the way the parties were organized - that's the element we try to take from.

Do you have a way of organizing your fans? Are there secret Klaxons fan club rules or procedures?
Jamie: I don't know where they're getting their information. They just keep turning up. I guess it's just kind of word of mouth.
James: It was weird - the gig the other night at Shepard's Bush with the Rakes - there was at least a handful or so of people that were dressed in what looked like only glow sticks. So, all we saw from the stage were like these dancing glow sticks. It was phenomenal. I don't know if it's organized or not.
Simon: I still can't get over the fact that people come to watch us. I remember when we got off the plane in Amsterdam to go to this sold-out party. There was like 800 people there and we were like, 'these people are here to see us'. You still just think its some kind of accident that they're there and you're playing.

The video for "Gravity's Rainbow" - your first single - is pure genius. It's so fucking good. It's like Hot Chip's "Over and Over" video - they come on television and they just visually stick out so much compared to the other videos on MTV2.
Jamie: There's always a car and a girl.
Simon: Yeah, it's crazy because for a lot of bands that's people's first encounter with you - is that three minutes on television. There seems to be such a textbook way of doing things that is so incredibly diluted.

How did the video work?
Jamie: The television loop thing was there's, all the props were ours.

Where did you shoot it?
Simon: In a basement and with a blue screen.

So where are the babies from?
All: Russia.
James: They didn't speak any English.

How do you hire babies?
Jamie: Ask Sam, he's your man, he'll get you anything.
James: 50 quid a pop. There was a discount - buy two get one free.

Were you holding babies all day? How did you feel about that?
James: I was cracking up. We were literally holding them for about 20 seconds. The parents were on the side. It was just like 'Give them the babies now!' So we grabbed them, held them for a second, start singing the song, they start crying, I start laughing. Ohhhh, it was horrible.

Yeah, Jamie, your baby was huge!
James: Yeah, Jamie's could talk.
Jamie: It was massive. He had a conversation with me. It wasn't very comfortable.
James: He's like, 'Can you move me around?'
I was like, 'Oh are you comfortable?' He was like, 'Get your hand off my bum'.
Jamie: It was like a monster fish.
All: (laughing)

No way! That is hilarious. Have you guys always been obsessed with neon?
James: Not really.
Simon: I've kind of always like black.
James: That's real new (pointing to Jamie's bright neon hoodie).

It looks like a hunting sweatshirt.
Jamie: Yeah, it's going to prevent me from getting shot in the woods.
Simon: We used to look quite smart a few years ago. Shirts and ties and nice shoes.
Jamie: Now we've just turned into a bunch of tramps.
James: You should see some of the looks we get in the streets.
Simon: Gay!
James: They just shout 'Gay' and 'Queer' and those sorts of things.
Jamie: Our new favorite game is that if people give us weird looks, we give them really weird looks back.
James: Now we give them looks before they even get the chance to give us weird looks.

One thing I've noticed about England is how, generally, people seem to get REALLY wasted. Like drunk wasted though - I've seen more people here are drunk in public...
Simon: It's the laws.
James: Yeah, I guess people go out right after work, and they only have a few hours before the pubs close, so they really get them in. We were pretty wasted last night.
Jamie: In England you go out and get hammered and then go to a club and dance. It's not really like that in New York. It's seems like you just kind of sit around in bars and chat and have a few drinks. Not that people don't party hard. In England you just drink to get to a certain state and then you go to a dance club.

Any special shout-outs you wanna make to your people?
Jamie: Big shout out to Beefy and Taz.

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