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Provided by the compucert With the January release of Myths of the Near Future , The Klaxons have caught the eye of listeners and press alike, winning Yahoo! Music’s “Who’s Next” competition and the Mercury Prize. In a shocking upset The Klaxons won the Mercury Prize beating out heavy favorites Amy Winehouse and the Arctic Monkeys! Established in 1992 the prestigious award honors the best British or Irish album over the past year with past recipients including Franz Ferdinand and Primal Scream.
Fellow musicians, Muse, have shown The Klaxons the highest form of flattery by covering the single “Gravity’s Rainbow.”
Don’t count on The Klaxons to stop there; the band has their sights set on a multi-continent tour winning over new fans along the way with their over-the-top live show.
The band will make up a string of dates after canceling due to a broken leg of front man Jamie Reynolds – a leg he broke misjudging a 12 foot stage dive at a French venue.
AUDIO STREAMS
Check out a 90sec clip of "Golden Skans"
http://www.klaxons.net/
TOUR DATES
Sep 23 Paradise Rock Club - Boston, Ma
Sep 24 Madison Square Garden - New York
Sep 26 Henry Fonda Theatre - Los Angeles, Ca
Sep 28 The Fillmore - San Francisco, Ca
Sep 30 The Showbox - Seattle, Wa
Oct 01 Commodore Ballroom - Vancouver, Bc
Oct 04 Fox Theatre - Boulder, Co
Oct 05 The Bottleneck - Lawrence, Ks
Oct 06 Vic Theatre - Chicago, Il
Oct 08 9.30 Club - Washington Dc
Oct 09 The Fillmore - Philadelphia, Pa
Oct 10 Opera House Concert Venue - Toronto, On
Oct 12 Webster Hall - New York, Ny
Oct 14 Vive Guervo Salon - Mexico City
Oct 20 The Forum - Melbourne, Australia
Oct 21 Hq Complex - Adelaide, Australia
Oct 23 The Capitol - Perth, Australia
Oct 25 The Enmore Theatre - Sydney, Australia
Oct 27 Tivoli - Brisbane, Australia
Nov 09 Zenith - Paris
Nov 10 I Love Techno Festival - Gent, Belgium
Nov 11 Columbia Club - Berlin, Germany
Nov 12 Grunspan - Hamburg, Germany
Nov 15 Gloria - Cologne, Germany
Nov 16 Paradiso - Amsterdam, Holland
Nov 17 Rohstofflage - Zurich, Switerzerland
Nov 18 Kleine Elserhalle - Munich, Germany
Nov 20 Qube - Rome, Italy
Nov 21 Hiroshima Mon Amour - Torino, Italy
Nov 22 La Laiterie - Strasbourg
Nov 23 Zenith Arena - Lille
Nov 25 Ambassador - Dublin
Nov 26 Apollo - Manchester
Nov 27 Corn Exchange - Edinburgh
Nov 28 Academy - Newcastle
Nov 30 Guildhall - Southampton
Dec 01 University - Leeds
Dec 02 University - Cardiff
Dec 04 Academy - Birmingham
Dec 05 Brixton Academy - London
Dec 06 Brixton Academy - London
BIOGRAPHY
It’s fair to say that Klaxons have an amazing weight of expectation upon them. Just over a year into their existence and already the kids love them, the press love them and everyone is pretty much sporting a glow stick at their shows and a dash of day glow in their day time attire. The media can smell something molten hot going on, a Brit pop revival is in the air yet most are somewhat bemused and are having a hard time defining what this reincarnation actually is. For the music consumer and MySpace addict there’s the mad energy of the three singles - the latest, ‘Magick’, a frenetic paean to occultist Alistair Crowley, plays regularly on daytime Radio One but stands out a country mile from the mass of regulation indie.
Jamie Reynolds (26) grew up on the council estates of Bournemouth and Southampton. By age
twelve he was already drinking and smoking weed and, by thirteen, hanging out with lads five years older. A group of them asked him to be bassist in their nascent indie band, Thermal, and a few bass lessons later Jamie’s band were supporting heavy-hitters of the time such as Mansun and Heavy Stereo. The big break never came, though. When they went to record Thermal’s breakthrough single they discovered the lead singer couldn’t sing and the band split up. Jamie was gutted and threw himself into partying. He studied philosophy at college but his heart wasn’t in it and he dropped out, spending the next eight years working in record shops “giving people hassle for buying records I thought weren’t cool.”
Like Quentin Tarantino, the video store clerk who dreamed big, however, Jamie spent these years plotting, drinking in musical knowledge, and planning. Things came together spectacularly when he moved to London and was made redundant. He spent his redundancy money on studio kit and hooked up with Simon to form a group called Klaxons (Not Centaurs), named after a line from early twentieth century art text The Futurist Manifesto.
Simon Taylor (24) grew up in Stratford-upon-Avon . Although he was into indie music he was also listening to ‘Dance Nation’ compilations and going to youth club happy hardcore discos. He asked James, who was in the year below him at school, to teach him guitar, then he headed off to do Fine Art at Nottingham University . It was there he embraced the jagged sounds of Josef K and the Fire Engines and made drunken late night plans to form a band with the boyfriend of one of his housemates, one Jamie Reynolds.
James Righton (23), meanwhile, worked every summer on the boats in Stratford-upon-Avon , but was into music early because his dad’s a musician. He went to Reading Festival at ten and saw Oasis at Knebworth aged thirteen. He enjoyed everything from Pantera to Radiohead but after studying history at Cardiff University he disappeared to Madrid to teach English and explore “these great weird techno clubs”.
In late 2005 his old pal Simon persuaded him to come back from “his everlasting gap year” and join Klaxons. The chemistry of the three was immediate. They meticulously planned what they wanted to achieve and recorded the sci-fi prog-punk 7” ‘Gravity’s Rainbow’, putting out 500 copies in hand-painted covers. The b-side was a version of long lost 1992 rave hit ‘The Bouncer’ (originally by Kicks Like A Mule). Jamie dropped the phrase ‘nu-rave’ to describe Klaxons’ “bring the party” ethic and, hey presto, the balloon started to go up. By the time they did their frantically oversubscribed first gig it was already clear the band were onto something special. ‘The Bouncer’ isn’t an electronic dance record at all, of course, but stuttering brutally Spartan rock that has more in common with Big Black or Fugazi. The point was that Klaxons, with their garish dress sense, lack of poseur mystique and desire to turn a concert into a frantic good time, were just what the self-absorbed post-Libertines London guitar scene needed.
An old-fashioned rave-style party at a school gym, with the location revealed at the last minute on a mobile number, sealed Klaxons’ reputation. Hundreds were turned away and the dancing went on past dawn with no police interference. What followed has been a hectic six months - constant touring of Europe and the US; the William Burroughs sci-fi call-to-arms of the second single ‘Atlantis To Interzone’; the definitive tent-bursting set at the Reading Festival; endless ‘next big thing’ tips by everyone from GQ to NME to The Sun.
Klaxons, though, are ready for it. They are not going to waste their opportunity and are eager to let the world hear the full palate of their capabilities on the debut album ‘Myths Of The Near Future’ produced by James Ford of Simian Mobile Disco. All three come from single parent families and have become a tight-knit gang of musical brothers who take all the hype with a pinch of salt, concentrating on making art that will outlast the fuss. They read voraciously and their lyrics, full of references to the writing of Richard Brautigan, Thomas Pynchon, JG Ballard, Alfred Jarry, etc, are a refreshingly far cry from the current trend for bus stop’n’chips (that would be fries over here in the US) social realism. Call them pretentious, if you want, but they’ll merely say, “So what,” and hammer into the next ballistic number.
The word ‘klaxon’ derives from the Greek word for ‘to shriek’ but in French means ‘to toot’. Those who have fluoro-pogoed along to the galloping ‘Four Horsemen of 2012’, Klaxons set-closer and debut album-closer, would admit that the three-piece live up to such a description. On the other hand, tune into deliciously harmonic new song ‘Golden Skans’, with its Beach-Boys-go-‘80s backing vocals, and suddenly all spikiness has dissolved in a flurry of soft-hearted throb. The album will surprise a lot of people; “We’ve been making this monster but it’s not what people are going to expect from some fucking Shoreditch neon band,” James ventures with typically dry wit. “I don’t think we’re like any other bands,” says Jamie, grounded and calm, “We’re out there on our own.”
2007 could be Klaxons’ year, with their stew of cosmic imagery, avant-garde awareness, dizzy melodies and raging energy set to lead the way forward. “Light the bridges with the lantern,” says Simon, ever wide-eyed and passionate, quoting from their song ‘Forgotten Works’, “You know something’s going to happen.”
It certainly seems likely…
So, Ladies and Gentleman we welcome you on what is destined to be a truly unique and universally mind bending, awe inspiring Klaxons voyage into the future… myths and all.
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