Three years ago Klaxons conquered the music industry with a mix of neon colours and 'indie-rock for people on ecstasy'. Having found inspiration in Tumblr and a ‘Space Cat’ they’ve re-emerged from the depths of London with a follow-up, Surfing the Void. Mikolai speaks with a very earnest Jamie Reynolds about “having fun all the time".
Mikolai: OK, first up: I love the album cover – the cat. I was wondering how that came about?
Jamie Reynolds: It was an image we saw on the Tumblr community, and it was an image we referenced the entire time we were making the record, we had it saved as out screensaver and the ‘Space Cat’ became the guiding force of the record. He set the tempo for the tracks and was very much overseeing the project, so we knew he was going to make the cover. When we got back to London we replicated [the original image] by hiring a space suite and using my cat.
M: Oh, so that’s your cat in the photo?
JR: Yeah, it is.
M: What’s the cat’s name? What’s he like? Does he have a pleasant disposition? We want to know everything we can about the cat.
JR: His name is Orphee, he’s a Norwegian Blue I brought from London a couple of Christmases ago. He’s actually staying at my mum’s house at the moment while I’m out and about.
M: And speaking of cats, do you spend a lot of time online looking at cats and commenting on I Can Haz Cheezburger or is that not really your scene?
JR: I’m on the Tumblr community, and I hang out there, and I think it’s more interesting than anything else on the internet. Yeah, just picture blogs, really.
M: OK, on that online tangent; what’s the dumbest rumour you’ve heard about yourself or the band?
JR: We get quite excited about the rumours actually, a lot of that stuff online is intriguing and we’re inclined to perpetuate the myth. You know, ‘always print the myth rather than the truth’. We’re quite happy to be in that position.
M: But is there a specific rumour that’s particularly funny or entertaining or stupid?
JR: All of it’s funny at this point in time, but there are a lot of non-truths floating about our Wikipedia at the moment, things that never happened to the band that we get asked about all the time.
M: And do you guys ever contribute to that yourself? Do you get bored and make up horrible lies?
JR: No, I think we’re quite truthful, but things just manage to navigate towards us that have nothing to do with reality. We’re not ones to send people off on paths, we just wait to see what happens.
M: OK, a proper sensible question – the dust has settled on nu-rave and that period, what are your thoughts on it in hindsight?
JR: I’m completely proud of it and really fond of it, I just think it was an exciting time in music and it seemed to connect bands from all over the world, bands that weren’t specifically from just one spot.
It was just bringing that excitement and enthusiasm [to the music industry] and just injecting colour in the music scene and making things alive and vibrant. So I’m absolutely fond of it and it’s not something we’ve really left behind.
M: What about the Mercury Prize? Some people get a little weird about the whole thing and consider it cursed, what affect did winning it have on the band?
JR: That was the cherry on the cake for us, it’s very much a critics' choice award and I’ve always liked the bands that have won it so it’s something we very much wanted.
M: There were stories going around last year while you were making the new record about problems with your label and them having to remind you that were making a pop album, I wanted to get your take on what was happening behind the scenes.
JR: We spent quite a lot of time making music that wasn’t pop music, we were just exploring our ability to write music, we were still finding our feet because we’d only ever written 10-15 songs with each other, so we enjoyed having the time to write together and just exploring without needing to make pop music. But Klaxons has always been a pop band, we said that from the beginning, and when we decided that we should stop messing around making experimental music and make a pop record that came very quickly. Around September last year we decided to stop messing around and make the second Klaxons album.
M: So I saw the
videoclip for the first single, 'Echoes' and you guys are on some sand dunes or out in the desert?
JR: We were eight hours outside of Cairo in Egypt, a place called the White Desert, it was absolutely unbelievable. We’re kinda obsessed with natural phenomenon at the moment, and that was the one we thought best suited the single, and so we took ourselves out there and it’s just absolutely breathtaking, an unbelievably vast and beautiful part of the world. Extremely hot.
M: How long were you out there?
JR: The video was done as you see it, opening with the sun coming up and closing with the sun going down, and that was literally as long as we were there for. We just got in, did it, and got out of there, and just had a fun time running around in the desert.
M: What about the album title,
Surfing the Void, what does that actually mean to you?
JR: To me it means make the best of a bad situation. For the band it cheekily refers to the fact we want to come back and take the current music climate back.
M: And so is there a plan? What would you like the album to achieve?
JR: Just to be heard by as many people as possible and just having an absolutely brilliant time. The music is there to celebrate brilliant times and to get it out there and people have a great time with it is the goal.
M: Would you rather be rich or famous?
JR: I don’t know, I’m neither rich nor famous, I don’t know. [laughs]
M: What about a day job, if it all fell apart, what would you do with yourself?
JR: If I wasn’t in a band I’d still be working in a record shop, that’s pretty much the way it was going. These days I’m writing more, trying to get into writing and writing for publications. If it came down to it I’d take a bit of time off and write a book.
M: Have you started this novel yet?
JR: It’s an idea that’s floating about that I need to put together and hone in on.
M: So say you write it, and it became huge and was a movie and all the rest, would you get the house in the Hollywood Hills or a New York Loft?
JR: [laughs] I don’t know if I’d live in America to be honest, I’m very much a lover of England. I love London very much, but I think the next move will be the English country side.
M: So a country manor type deal and making cheese like Alex from Blur?
JR: Not a manor, but I’d like somewhere on the back of a river, I‘d be catching fish.
M: Do you have fishing skills?
JR: I’m awful at it, I’ve only ever caught one fish in my life and I’ve been fishing a lot. It’s one of the things in my life I’d like to improve on.
Surfing The Void is out next month. They will also tour Australia this summer:
Falls Festival: December 29th at Marion Bay, Tasmania.
Falls Festival: January 1st at Lorne, Victoria.
Sunset Sounds:
January 5th and 6th at Botanic Gardens and City Gardens, Brisbane.
Southbound Festival: January 1st–3rd at Busselton, WA.