‘Two Receivers’ - Klaxons, 2007
I’m really liking Klaxons at the minute. Their Myths of the Near Future album (which gets an unfair dissing on rateyourmusic) updates early ’90s rave music and staples it to solid pop grooves, brilliant harmonies, and quasi-mystical lyrics to brilliant effect.
‘Two Receivers’, the first song on the album, starts with a grungy drumbeat that seems to come from the ether, before bass and cascading keyboards announce the introduction to Klaxons’ worldview:
“Krill edible oceans at their feet
A troublesome troop out on safari
A lullaby holds their drones in sleep“
I’m not even going to try to interpret this, but the alliteration and phrasing of the lyrics work very well with the song and backing harmonies. With song titles like ‘Atlantis to Interzone’, ‘Golden Skans’, ‘Totem Timeline’ and ‘Gravity’s Rainbow’ (nice to see fellow Pynchon fans), it’s safe to say that many of the lyrics are digressive in-jokes and meanderings.
But one meaning I got from this song was a 2001: A Space Odyssey-style set of ‘receivers’, positioned “nearly out of reach” and tracking everything that humankind does, to report back to base camp. Hmmm…very profound.
The music, like all of Myths of the Near Future, is layered yet very hummable. Listen to this three or four times and you start to notice things in the music, the keyboard riff beneath the keyboard riff. It’s difficult to know what their next album will be like - they should be jailed for starting the ‘fluorescent adolescent’ craze in the first place - but ‘Two Receivers’ and the rest of the Myths… album are worthy debuts. Listen to the song on this YouTube video.
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