Flagbearers for the "nu rave" movement they helped found, London's The Klaxons make their full-length debut with Myths Of The Near Future. Fans of the old rave, initially, will be forgiven for not knowing what all the fuss is about - beyond a dramatically punked-up cover of "Not Over Yet" by '90s chart star Grace, The Klaxons owe precious little to the synthetic rush of UK clubland past or present. Persist, though, because once beyond this realisation, it's possible to appreciate this band on their own merits. "Isle Of Her" and "From Atlantis To Interzone" comes on like brooding US punks Liars, all thrumming, distorted bassline and a vocal delivery that veers between desolate and manic (although the latter's whirling air-raid siren is very much The Klaxons' own addition), while on the other side of the coin, "Golden Skans" betrays an impressive ability for anthemic, harmony-laden pop. Lyrically, too, it's a confusing and fascinating document, fragments of "peacock's tails" and "madcap Medusa" emerging from the maelstrom. What at first sounds unfocused gradually makes a weird kind of sense; indeed, you suspect The Klaxons planned it that way from the beginning. --Louis Pattison.

This Album is absolutely fantastic, and the great parts largely outnumber the bad parts.
If you've heard 'Atlantis To Interzone' and liked it then you're largely likely to enjoy this album.
A great breakthrough with music and have had this Album for a few years and still love it.

This band reminded me the old British funk band "Shriekback" on 80's, playing fast accurate and having very interesting vocals (harmonic matching lead and back).
"Two receivers", "Atlantis to Interzone", "Golden Skans", "Totem on the Timeline" synthesis is a strong entry. Also, "It's Not Over Yet", "Magick" and "Gravity's Rainbow" are very good.
I paid attention to the full worked bass in all over the album - very good performance here -.
Certainly promising band. After this start I wonder how could be their next one. I'm looking forward to.

Hype, hype, hype. It's a wonderful thing for aspiring male bands today, isn't it? Without it, The Libertines wouldn't now be getting hailed as former saviours of rock and roll, and Pete Doherty wouldn't even have a career.

The Klaxons, too, owe much of their success to hype. Despite freely admitting to admiring talent vaccum Jennifer Lopez, and despite the fact that half of Klaxons are going out with a couple of trendies from CSS and NYPC, The Klaxons have been hailed as Indie Geniuses and wondrous pioneers of the inane fad which is 'Nu-rave'.

I do not hold much stock by this kind of drivel. The opener on this album 'Two Receivers' did nothing to make me bat an eyelid, let alone grab me in any way, such is it's mediocrity. But then these guys wear the right clothes, don't y'know? I had high hopes for the highly-feted 'Atlantis To Interzone', such has been the hype surrounding that song, but all I discovered were bog-standard Indie vocals, a shonky style of arrangement, and some truly ghastly off-cuts of 'Old Rave' which was predominatly crass and lacking in finesse, anyway. How disappointing.

'Golden Skans' shows yet more odds and sods of styles which have been in and out of fashion since the early 1980's, so Lord knows why people keep spouting all this bumph about originality. There is none. Proves one thing though: hype - Indie man's best friend.

And so it goes on. 'Totem On the Timeline' sounds vaguely like a Bloc Party b-side, being neither interesting nor cutting edge. The same infuriatingly asinine vocals pop up here, and again on 'As Above, So Below', which musically isn't that bad, sounding quirky in a Sparks-esque kinda way, but sadly, that ain't original either, because Sparks did it first.

'Isle Of Her' and 'Gravity's Rainbow', meanwhile, certainly aren't bad songs, but they don't merit the kind of foaming at the mouth reaction that the band have received from the music press. The Mercury Music prize, meanwhile, actually would have been more appropriate if given to NYPC, since they are capable of empowering anthems like 'Hiding On The Staircase'. But then, the Mercury Music prize couldn't possibly go to an all-female band when there are arrogant young men involved, could it? Especially not when one of those arrogant young men is the boyfriend of a member of NYPC. Tsk! It simply wouldn't do!

I really wish I could tell you about 'Forgotten Works', but sadly, I've forgotten it, such was it's ordinariness. 'Magick' went pretty much the same way. It's high-tech electronic sound is little more than a fad, which actually hides a multitude of sins: ordinary vocals, and lyrics which are similar to those of Syd Barrett, or more recently, bands like Muse. Old hat. That this band could cover a drab dirge like 'Not Over Yet' and actually be admired for that is testament only towards the patriarchal nature of this society. 'Four Horseman of 2012' contains yet more of the same electronic tinkering that everyone and their uncle is indulging in nowadays, the same electronic tinkering that Radiohead were doing back in 1999. It was relatively refreshing then, even if it wasn't new. But Klaxons also owe a lot to Pink Floyd, lyrically and musically. Their 'big' sound is the same sound which pretentious idiots like Pink Floyd were aiming for years ago - and Pink Floyd lost it after Syd left, slowly drowning in pretension and a continual need to try too hard. As for 'rave' leanings, they aren't greatly evident. Frankly, I'd far rather listen to 'They Call It Acieeed' by D-Mob than anything on this album. The cut n' paste methods also on show on this album are also laughably far from new. Public Enemy were making far better use of sampling from 1987 onwards, in an intelligent and provocative way. But then, the cossetted, white, middle-class fan base of Klaxons would know that if they weren't so painfully guilty of musical ignorance and bandwagon-jumping. Besides, why would any middle-class white kid care about the music of intelligent young black men when they could be bottom-feeders to four arrogant, middle-class white men? Them black folks should know their place! Oh sorry, I forgot... they wear Dr. Dre T-shirts. What a pity that Klaxons are so painfully idiotic that they choose to wear T-shirts from the 'Chronic' era of Dr Dre's career, when he was still rapping about 'bitches' and 'ho's'. Do Klaxons advocate misogyny too?

This album, which is now selling for about ??3 in Woolworths, has been carelessly relegated to the dim, shadowy corner of my brain which also accomodates things such as the Chuckle Brothers, the Krankies and Pogs. Forever more shall it remain there.

Now distancing themselves from the "nu rave" scene that they invented with their management, a Mercury Music prize sitting on their shelf, how good is this record?

It's actually not a bad record at all. Some moments on this album are very good - single Golden Skanz for example. But for a band that promised something so fresh and so new, I expected more. Despite the electronic noises and supposed rave-like progressions, nothing can disguise the fact that Klaxons are, first and foremost, a guitar band.

"There doesn't seem to be much fun in music at the moment. Rave is something that's bright, attractive to the eye." said bassist and singer Jamie Reynolds in 2006, but there's not enough fun and too much hype in this record for me to give it a better rating.

2 Stars for the only 2 decent songs they possess, the rest truley forgettable!
How this band won the Mercury music prize I have no idea, 808 State tunes played, (sorry ripped off) on guitars, if you don't believe me check out In yer face, and Cubik from EX:EL.
Klaxons have admitted that they were a joke band purely set up to exploit the "Nu Rave" scene, yeah well, the jokes on you. Incidentally, Woolworths were selling this for ??4 the weeks running up to the Mercury, and Sainsbury's were selling it for ??3, so desperate were they to off load their stock.
History will prove me right, buy if you're a fashion victim, if not avoid like vomit on a Shoreditch footpath on a friday night.