Taking the Myth?

Myths have formed around the eclectic indie rockers Klaxons since their startling Mercury Prize-winning debut. Real Groove sets out to debunk the theories with guitarist Simon Taylor-Davis.

As far as the media consuming public are concerned, Klaxons are on their last chance bid to save their careers. The ill-fated second album was turned down by record label Polydor, with drug binges and over indulgent prog rock all part of their lost weekend in the French and Italian countryside with producer James Ford. Sent off to musical rehab, anyone would think the British quartet were punished by being paired up with producer Ross Robinson, the so-called Godfather of Nu Metal who has worked with acts such as Limp Bizkit, Korn and Slipknot.

 But then, what the media feeds you isn't necessarily always the truth. To be honest, sitting in a more-than-cozy, darkened booth at a central London private members club, I was prepared to grill Simon Taylor-Davis on these very matters. But as our conversation unfolded the truth of Surfing the Void slowly came to light and proved to be wholly different to the previously reported one.

Simon Taylor-Davis's leopard print shirt over limb-hugging jeans and dark blazer fills the rock profile certainly, yet is in stark contrast to the indie, mystic space-travellers garb the band are more known for. In fact Simon confesses that his natty attire is because he has a date later on with a young British actress he met during the recording of the album in Los Angeles.

That album of course is the long awaited sophomore effort from one of the most exciting bands to come out of the UK in many years. The band exploded onto the English music scene in late 2006 amidst a particularly dull period of bed-wetting earnestness and substance-addled tabloid behaviour by their peers. Their day-glo splattered indie was quickly branded with its own tag and nu rave was heralded as the best thing since the last time a journalist tarred a bunch of emerging bands with a lazy genre-defining brush. Taylor-Davis is unfazed with the label and the now popular bashing of it by the media.

“We never saw being labelled as nu rave a bad thing,” states the guitarist, seemingly surprised as to why he's even being asked the question. “I mean we were just making the music that we were into at that time, we weren't thinking about what people would call it. It was just us playing around at friend's parties to begin with anyway. But at the same time we're proud of everything we've made, why should we be ashamed of our music just because the magazines want a new genre or word to get excited about?”

This pride also extends to what has been reported as the rejected second album effort that apparently had the band members tripping balls on an unknown substance in the pastoral quarters of France and Italy. Rather than the strung out, doomed flight of prog indulgence that many will tell you was the intended follow up to Myths of the Near Future, the prolonged studio sessions were nothing more than a dalliance for the band after having spent the past two years relentlessly touring.

“Basically we were in the position of having toured for so long and we felt we needed a break. Our label wasn't pushing us for a new album or anything, but we told them we wanted to go and do some sessions with James (Ford of Simian Mobile Disco and the producer of Myths...). So we went to a couple of really nice places in the middle of nowhere and started playing around. When we recorded the first album it was done really quickly, like in the space of a week or something, so it was nice to be able to be in the studio without any pressure on us. We never intended for the songs we made there to be the second album, but we jokingly told a reporter about it and how we had given the recordings to our label. All of a sudden we were reading these reports that our album had been rejected and we had to head back in to the studio and get rid of James.”

In reality, after having worked solely with Ford, the band felt they needed some fresh ears for their new album and settled on Robinson.
“James has been a friend of ours right from the start and we wanted to make sure he stayed one. Also we had only ever worked with him and we felt we needed to try something else,” explains Taylor-Davis. “Ross has a completely different approach to making an album. He got us to think about each song and visualise everything we wanted to do with it before we recorded it.”

The result is immediately different from their début, with the neon sheen being replaced by a more mature, harder edge that may well divide fans. For Taylor-Davis though, the album is a more honest and structured effort.

“We made our first album in a horrifyingly short space of time, so having all this time for this one we really had to think about what we wanted to do. I think for that reason it's a much more personal album, even spiritual in some respects.”