The Klaxons Interview

• 9th Oct 2006

Currently Headlining the Club NME on tour are Klaxons, spearheading the so-called “New Rave” scene. We spoke Bassist and Group Leader Jamie Reynolds.

Ok. So Day 3 of the Current Tour how’s it Going?

It's been really good, we played Stoke last night and Norwich the night before both of them went absolutely berserk on both nights its been an absolute eruption. It's not just us, everyone’s been going mad for ShitDisco and DataRock and then we’ve come on and people have been going mental its been a pretty special couple of days. It’s the first time we’ve played big venues outside of London and it’s just gone off here too.

So what’s all this with glowsticks coming back?

Well the thing with the glowsticks coming back is that people are getting the courage to do it again, and people seem to have caught hold of something and its been a big feature of all of our gigs it looks really great down the front when you see them all from the stage. I’ve got a photo of the crowd and it just looks great.

So what’s your background? Where did you all meet?

We’re all from South London. We’ve all met around London. James and Simon went to school together and James went to University with my Girlfriend and I used to visit and encouraged them to move to London. We formed last November we put a few tunes together and got a bit of interest. The interest mainly came through the whole MySpace thing. We went and recorded the tunes we had 2 weeks after we formed and straight away we were getting messages. Its all been down to the availability of the tracks

Do you feel typecast by this New Rave scene or are you a part of it all?

I think its easy for them to find some sort of journalistic words to describe what’s going on up and down the country, and it had to be given a name and it was something that I said to a journalist just after the band started. It’s not something we take seriously. Obviously there is a new DIY ethic and parties going on up and down the country and parties going on in unusual venues and their needs to be a scene to cover it. Its nothing we aspire to it was a joke I made up sometime ago before we evolved as a band. I just think its good that there are kids out there who want to party and there are parties going on, its been a bit dull for a while its good to see people having fun

We’ve been playing outside the UK and next year hope to organise some special events and putting on parties.

What are your influences?

Well just about anything. We’ve been listening to a lot of Noize records, a lot of German electronica, a lot of Dance records and Reggae records. I worked in a record shop for 7 years and accumulated a vast record collection which has been an influence

How’s the album coming along?

We are one vocal away from it being finished. We went down to Hastings a month ago for three weeks and got it finished minus the vocal, because on the last day we decided we wanted to do another track so we have to go back and finish that and then its done we are just waiting to get it mixed. It will be coming out in January

Rave On!