Hi Jamie, how’s it going? Great, absolutely top form. I’m sitting in my green chair in my lounge with my feet on the table.
You love that green chair eh? Haha, yeah! It’s my favourite chair, which I rarely get to use. I’m loving it.
What are you up to? We’re lucky to have five days at home in London. It’s great. I’ve been digesting box sets I’ve been meaning to watch for ages, I’ve been writing some new songs, which I didn’t expect to do, and I’m really excited by that.
What box sets? Oh, I’d never seen Twin Peaks, so I just sat and watched the entire first series. I really enjoyed that. And last night I stayed up and watched Carl Sagan’s Cosmos. I’m just trying to figure out a bit of a history of the world. I’m very much into civilization at the moment. I’m sitting here feeding my brain.
Good stuff. So how’s the new record? It’s a continuation. I think the first album, you find us in a teenage, bratty, really wanting to be noticed phase, and I think this one’s a comfortable continuation. It’s not heavier in its sound, but it’s weightier.
A bit more guitars than rave? I think we’re still first and foremost a pop band, but there’s not so many electronics on this record. This is very much us becoming comfortable with our instruments in a traditional band set-up.
I read that the cat on the album cover is actually yours? Ha, he is indeed! He’s not here today though, he’s at my mum’s house. My mum was saying that he’s just sitting there, loving being sent pictures of what he’s up to all the time. His adventures are well documented at the moment.
So how did that come about? I just thought, I love this guy, how am I going to get him in the game, haha. Nah, we needed a cat and I just thought that he was so incredibly handsome that it had to be him.
Has it been hard to live up to the Mercury success? I’m not sure. I think the one thing that Mercury did was buy us some time. It didn’t make it harder. It allowed us the space to go away and take our time to renurture ourselves and put the band together.
You’re renowned for enjoying the social side of life… Our motto is that we take fun seriously!
I heard the first attempt to record the album stuttered a bit? What happened was we went to France. We didn’t have any music written before we got there and then spent three weeks in something of a dream state. We were nocturnal and we were experimenting in both psychedelic explorations and musical explorations. At the end of three weeks, we kind of woke up and the sun was up and we were like, “oh, we’ve got this funny collection of music”. We played it to our record label, who came along and physically cried in the room. At that point we took a step back and were just like, “this is really odd”. We then went on tour for nine months, got back and everything kind of clicked in.
Are we going to hear the crazy stuff? Yes sir! I’m sitting here listening to it and I absolutely love it still. It’s going to come out next year to make an EP of that very bizarre time we spent in France.
And you’re coming to Australia… It’s something of a teabag tour this time, which doesn’t seem fair, but we can only say that we will be back shortly. There’s nothing confirmed at the moment but we’re due to come back early next year.
Sounds like Big Day Out? Well, you know what, we’ve never played BDO and there’s nothing more that we’d love. It just hasn’t happened. So please can you say that. Have a word and sort it out!
Klaxons play Sydney on Sept 2 and Melbourne on Sept 3. See www.ticketek.com.au.
Their new album, Surfing The Void, is out Aug 20.
