Klaxons Down Under Tour

First published on 10 Aug 2010. Updated on 5 Apr 2011.

Just over three years ago that Klaxons released their 2007 album, Myths of the Near Future, accidentally inventing the non-genre/hoodie sales-driver ‘nu-rave' along the way. Much has changed in the intervening era, but new LP Surfing the Void shows Klaxons still have their eyes on the near-flung temporal shores. This time specifically on 2012, the year the Mayans promise us the Olympic opening ceremony to literally end them all.

Klaxons' cosmic way with words is still intact, although the band abandoned their Burroughs-inspired cut-up techniques in favour of a more linear, if no less empyrean, pagan-futurist spiel inspired by the band's encounter with writer Daniel Pinchbeck, who introduced them to Stone Age medicinal herb/brain-redecorating hallucinogenic rocket train ayahuasca, which induces day-long trips to the centre of the mind. Guitarist Simon Taylor-Davis is at pains to point out that ayahuasca is a serious medicine, and is "by no means some kind of wacky contemporary acid. You're not going to a stag do in Las Vegas on ayahuasca."

But it certainly seems to have upped their productivity. Prior to recording the new album (which was written in around three weeks), Klaxons also recorded an EP with James Ford (the source for all those  ‘OMG klaxons had 2 scrap album!!! roflmaool!!11' tweets). And apparently the band have demoed another ten songs for their next album too. Before Klaxons disappear over the event horizon, we spoke to Taylor-Davis about the group's current reality.

The new album is centred on this cyber-shamanic subject matter...
Yes! The thing we've been saying, which I like, is that it's more inner space than outer space. A lot of the lyrics are based on - as well as experiences we've had - a lot of spiritual writings and stuff that we've got interested in. A lot of it was inspired on a trip we had to meet the writer Daniel Pinchbeck, who's a big figure in the New Age world. He talks a lot about the consciousness shift of 2012 and shamanic ideas.

Did it solve the mysteries of the universe, or just leave you with a bunch of new ones?
Oh, a hell of a lot more mysteries! But it did solve mysteries. We got involved in a world which is very much based in medicine, and that shamanic world is an ancient healing practice. So it certainly healed a lot of things, and it gave us a genuine awakening to a new world. I think it gave us an ongoing clarity of engagement. It genuinely opened us up to a new and big world - an endless, entropic world.

Do you think the use of ayahuasca had a measurable effect on your songwriting?
I think it had a huge part, for Jamie, lyrically. He was looking for a subject to write about, and you can have a quite lengthy conversation with the plant: it can go on for ten hours. He had a genuine awakening to the fact that everything you're actually looking for is right in front of you, and you don't need to go looking for it. It had a genuine, huge impact. I don't think the record would have existed in this form without it.

The album deals a lot with the concept of the evolution of the collective unconscious – do you think humanity is going through a transformational phase?
Definitely, and that's one of the exciting things about the next couple of years. It's evolving in a positive way, and that's the part of Daniel Pinchbeck's writings that we were interested in, that 2012 – whether or not it's an actual, physical event – the idea of it being a shift in consciousness is something very real and is something which is incredibly positive and exciting. So, yes, I do believe we're going through a transformative period, and I think that we'll look back at these days with a great air of nostalgia, the beginning nuturing steps of the internet and of culture, and that they'll be looked back on as a positive time.

Has this process given you a new perspective on your past output?
On the first record, definitely. It's only now that I'm beginning to form a slightly different opinion of it, in a slightly more objective manner. Literally in the last few weeks, when I've looked back at the first record and gone: What a bunch of dickheads, ha ha! What a bunch of slightly annoying, stroppy idiots, having the time of their lives with some really good ideas. That's what I think looking back at it now.

This album seems to be an attempt to give your fans the benefit of your evolution...
Yes! The core essence of the band is excitement, from the first day of getting in a room together, it was very apparent with the personalities the three of us had that all we wanted to do was excite each other, and the minute we had excited ourselves, we were 100 per cent convinced it would excite other people. I think us having a real instinct about excitement, and trying to genuinely move people by excitement, is the basis of everything we've ever done. The minute we started talking about music and references and other bands, no music came out. Music is incredibly instinctive, so to excite ourselves again with this record, we were immediately convinced it would excite other people.