Reviewed by: Dom Passantino
Reviewed on: 2007-01-30

Posted 01/30/2007 - 09:07:01 AM by smwynne:
	My god. What a shit review. You consistently crank out the shittiest content on this site. How have you not been canned?
Posted 01/30/2007 - 09:32:16 AM by johnedowney:
	Wow. Just...wow. That was one of the worst album reviews I have ever read. I haven't even listened to the album (I don't even know who the fuck the Klaxons are), and I know that you got it all wrong, since you spent more time indulging your own thought process than describing what the album sounds like. You let YouTube do the job you were supposed to be doing, too, which (to me, at least) is like citing Google as a source in an essay. When your tangents are longer than your review of the actual album, it's time to hang it up.
Posted 01/30/2007 - 10:05:31 AM by mikepowell:
	i like the review. i mean, i think part of dom's point was to 'act out' how this band has been way overwritten and overthought even before their first record came out, and that when you get down to it, they're basically an average indie rock band with some frills.
Posted 01/30/2007 - 10:15:45 AM by armadillo:
	Lol at the angry posters so far. You know, Dom used to piss me right off, too, but this and The View reviews are gold. It helps to grow up and relax re: taking music oh-so-seriously. Thanks for dropping Jane's Addi... I mean, The Music like an A-bomb. When bands like Kasabian or Klaxons come out, I've also thought "Waitaminute..." In any case, as far as the big-beat/rave/electro-rock flavoured guitar band sub-genre goes (emphasis on "sub" obviously), Klaxons don't irritate me too much, and as far as I know, C+ is the highest rating Dom is ever willing to give to anything he reviews. Finaly, to respond to criticism: A review speaks less about the album than other things when - GLARING *$%# HINT - the ENTIRE point of the review is that the album is garbage (or at least, counterfeit). When you have very little positive to say about the music, you might as well address things like hype and the illegitimacy of the sub-genre that the album is linked to. In actual fact, Dom describes more than one album track, which is a first for him. There's also something called a "sense of humour". Get one; it's fun. Although the next time Dom stomps his foot over a sacred-cow band I adore, I'm sure to jump back on the other side of the fence...
Posted 01/30/2007 - 10:20:05 AM by badhaircut:
	This band is so much better than Kasabian or The Music.
Posted 01/30/2007 - 10:43:45 AM by NickSouthall:
	Worst album cover, like, ever, innit.
Posted 01/30/2007 - 10:51:20 AM by J_R_K_:
	this review is ok, but dom's reviews are just so predictable. wow, a nme buzz band? dom doesn't like them? if nme stopped having a flavor of the week, dom wouldn't have a point of view. the review is so self aware it's as tacky as the new rave label.
Posted 01/30/2007 - 11:54:19 AM by bendsinister:
	I'm glad someone else thinks that this band is stupid. They are lauded as the saviors of music and make a bland, boring record that didn't even make me want to do the Charleston let alone frot with some hotties.
Posted 01/30/2007 - 11:58:39 AM by meatbreak:
	I knew this would happen. To be fair, anyone reviewing this album is going to have to mention New Rave at some point and it’s all to predictable and disappointing to see people base their entire reviews around it. An NME anointed scene that Dom quite rightly pegged as a cynical move on that rags part to boost it’s ailing sales, and give it’s writers something to rally round. The fact that Datarock have been pulling this stuff off for years without anyone noticing is testament to the incisiveness with which Klaxons nail this sound without actually sounding like anyone else at all, thereby drawing fire on themselves. Bizarrely, reviewers seem to be so quick and keen to point out that Klaxons do not sound anything like rave music at all. Funny that. But then tear strips of them for it. (That’s weird – I thought you didn’t want them to be sounding like rave, else why the bad kudos around the term) These reviewers then proceed, at great length and great difficulty, to try and assimilate the sound of this album back into rave culture. No wonder why Dom’s review keeps veering off into irrelevant territory – what the hell is ‘listening to them you feel that they’ve not learned rave correctly’ supposed to mean? Or that whole paragraph for that matter. It pains me to read all these confused and counter-intuitive reviews by supposedly insightful people. Why listen to an album and force your preconceived ideas on it? That’s fine for the initial listen perhaps, but surely when it becomes apparent that there are far more strings to this bow than you have arrows to sling at it, critically, you should really be stepping back and giving it deeper examination. The glimmer of light in Dom’s review is the mention of The Manual, yet he even misses the opportunity to extend this into the more obvious terrain of Drummond’s pop prankster act. What a brilliant joke Klaxons have just played on everyone. What a head-spinning mind-fuck of a trick they’ve just flipped. By spending the last year letting the press run after them trying to make this Rave shit stick, people have been so obsessed by tagging them that they’ve not even noticed the actual songs this band are crafting. What a genius stroke of japery to never completely dispel the myth (after all, Myths are what Klaxons are all about – pay attention) then drop an album that is so pertinently and cacophonously NOT RAVE on an audience that’s readied themselves for the second coming of Dreamscape. Did you want them to release the album on 11 separate cassettes in a giant gatefold case? (That’s actually a great idea, but in fact, the carved gatefold vinyl of this album is very neat indeed and will have to do) It would make no difference. Too right this is the biggest chart band with the biggest scope – that’s a contradiction of the rave pigeonhole for sure, yet it’s meted out at the end of Dom’s review as if we would somehow forget all that’s gone before it and it undermines attempts to refer the album back to rave as if that were the albums only point of genesis. I had imagined that the release of this album would have everyone getting dizzy in one massive collective double-take. Can Isle Of Her,Atlantis To Interzone, Golden Skans and 4 Horsemen of 2012 all be by the same band? For sure, and some decent criticism discussing it would be better appreciated than an whole review trying to justify some tedious genre classification. And Nick - The inside cover's much better, that's why I flipped mine around.
Posted 01/30/2007 - 01:14:21 PM by grandbanks:
	How interesting, I really think there are a whole slew of points to be made both about this review and this band. I am not even going to go into the music itself, for this review really didn't, but also because I am more interested in everything else going on. Think I agree with Powell and Meatbreak, if that makes sense. Firstly, what a mind-fuck to even be a band in England most of the time. Being an American I can't really understand, but the press over there is insane. If what Meatbreak is implying is true, then kudos to Klaxons for executing a pretty fascinating and entertaining chain of events for themselves. It isn't necessarily admirable, but it makes sense to me on a lot of levels. I had the most trouble with this statement from Dom: "Maybe they, or at least their career, would have been better off in the long run if they’d just positioned themselves as slightly less funky Madchester revivalists." This feeds right into a lot of what Meatbreak was saying and what must be troubling to a lot of British bands: what an absurd thing to say. They've put out one album, why would you comment so fliply about their career? What does one album and a whole lot of over-the-top press and attention really say about a band? And why would you posit another much lamer genre (slightly less funky Madchester revivalists) instead of the more off-the-wall and quite amusing made-up genre they have backed away from. I don't mind the "acting-out" of how this band has been over-thought from day one, as this is what is at stake in the music world these days: how do we convey and quantify value in an over-saturated world? I don't know, but this review is not clarifying anything and is not making a coherent point. Perhaps this should up the rating at the top of the review instantly, as it has made this reviewer talk circles around himself and has made as poignant a statement about the inherent problems with the British music hype-machine (and increasingly the rest of the music-press is following suit) and being a band these days in general. I don't know whether to pity or congratulate Klaxons, and that is interesting.
Posted 01/30/2007 - 02:00:53 PM by camlindsay:
	Once again, this reviewer gets it completely wrong. I guess he'll be the "one" to shit on this album. There always is somebody to puke on the good carpet at the party. I hate those guys...
Posted 01/30/2007 - 10:32:26 PM by gloden:
	I don't know about the album versions ('cause I haven't heard them), but every REMIX of their tracks that I've heard via mp3 bloggers sounds awesome. The Metronomy remix especially. I think I've decided to just enjoy this band as fodder for remixes.
Posted 01/31/2007 - 07:54:02 AM by meatbreak:
	Every track on this album is compelling in some form or another. The lyrical content, which you can either dimiss as nonesense collage or decipher like heiroglyphs or demonic scripture, is rich in imagery and references, not simply tossed off onto a napkin at a service station on the way to the next gig. The sounds are really detailed, the way the instruments get tied together with effects, pushing and pulling the songs between the verses and choruses or crashing into each other, rushing to reach the peaks first. Check out the gap just before the first chorus on Atlantis To Interzone when Reynolds says "Check this...". That's a band and producer thinking on their feet. Compare this to the other great hot-potato of the weeek: The View. Enough said. You're dead on about the remixes Gloden, never a bad one yet. The Van She mix of Gravity's Rainbow is especially freaky, and the soupy dub version of Golden Skans by Erol Alkan: both as good as Metronomy's. Maybe if no one can agree to ignore and rise above the Rave tag to get into the music, then it'll be the remixes this band get remembered for.
Posted 01/31/2007 - 02:16:18 PM by J_R_K_:
	"The glimmer of light in Dom’s review is the mention of The Manual". I second that.
Posted 06/20/2007 - 06:53:16 PM by paul-docs:
	Right on the money, meatbreak. Dom missed the point entirely. Again. There's nothing even remotely approaching rave on this album, and more fool you for thinking this wasn't planned.