Klaxons and its extraordinary tales in UK tour dates
With Klaxons’ debut album, we could foresee the future: it was colourful, fun, psychedelic. Above all, it was danceable – the type of dance when arms stand high above heads and feet high above the floor. It was like a trance, and we liked it. Klaxons was so difficult to pin down that the British press created a label just for them: new rave.
But as if following James Murphy’s predictions in the song Losing my Edge, next time we heard about Klaxons they had ditched the turntables and embraced the guitars for Surfing the Void, an album at once dense and dreamy, with heavy guitars, out of time keyboards and vocal that reminds of grunting. Then came the interviews: there were tales of biblical visions and Ayuhasca, collective consciousness and the world shift, bringing together of humanity and shamanism.
It could be worrying but there is no ordinariness in Klaxons and its vision can still be clearly perceived behind it all. They are determined to create something extraordinary, and the only way of achieving it is standing where few people have been before. Unlike Samson, Klaxons strength survived Delilah and they can still wrest a lion a day.
Klaxons UK tour dates: Manchester (Nov 11), Norwich (Nov 12), Bournemouth (Nov 13), Nottingham (Nov 14), London (Nov 16), Cambridge (Nov 17), Oxford (Nov 18), Birmingham (Nov 20), Glasgow (Nov 21), Leeds (Nov 22).
The Drums sound like suicide thoughts in a sunbathed beach. Instead of clashing, however, these contrasting feelings somehow complement each other, at once easing the drama and adding some deepness and melancholy to the feel good beats. If post-punk and surf music are a weird combination, it’s even more awkward to see an Americanized version of eighties British music, but the result is an interesting and rich mix of influences and backgrounds. It’s like a band bringing together Ian Curtis and Bez, only less absurd. On stage, the conflicting identity layers persist; instead of the hipsters traditional glooming faces and blasé attitude, they present the audience with energetic performances and flirting greetings.
Some bands are overrated, others underrated, and a few are simply taken for granted. The reason is not quality related, they have simply been around for such a long time producing consistent songs and in such a steady way that they are seen as part of the musical landscape. More or less like a cherry tree in the street: no one is really surprised or annoyed by it, but everybody gets to eat its fruits and notice its existence when in season.
The list of illustrious admirers is long and diverse – of Montreal’s Kevin Barnes, Prince, P Diddy – and her performances have gather comparisons with the likes of Bowie and Grace Jones. But Janelle Monáe seems so comfortable in her skin that none of the big names appear to worry or intimidate her. The daughter of a janitor mother and a truck driver, herself having worked as a maid and at Blockbuster, she looks sophisticated and sexy in her gravity defying black power quiff and black and white clothes that seem to belong to Fred Astaire. Monáe is as much about music as she is about image, both being very similar creatures in the arty world she inhabits, the world of elaborated personas, theatrical performances and sheer originality.
Black Eyed Peas have been around for quite some time now, but its only
