Every news about Surfing The Void must’ve had the “highly anticipated” in it, referring to the sophomore Klaxons album. And why not admit to it? We’ve all been biting our nails and praying it would leak faster. That there would be no news saying the album’s release is being delayed once more. And it’s not just the people who know Myths Of The Near Future by heart and cried along with the four Brits when the debut won the Mercury award. It’s just about anyone who knows just how talked about were Klaxons when they came along with the glowsticks and absurd William Burroughs-inspired lyrics.
Naturally, some will compare the two albums, Myths and Surfing, and maybe even throw some “just as good” or “I’m losing faith in them”. But there is no point. In recent interviews, Klaxons sound like different people. Indeed, everything post-Myths should show how it is no longer the pranksters who wrote and recorded a rave album we are talking about. They still are fucking insane, rest assured. But they are walking a different path and the music they make no longer feels immensely hedonistic like the Myths songs.
Just as naturally, there are things that stay the same. Never have Klaxons written intelligible lyrics. Never have the words to their sound been easy to understand. Just as cryptic as ever, they make Burroughs just as proud and the rest of us feel sorry these guys do not have plans for some dysptopic novel in the vein of JG Ballard’s Atrocity Exhibition. Just as easily as before, the four put the craziest of lyrics in your mouth, making them sound like the lines of your latest pop hit. The very combination that made Klaxons so popular to start with, the out-of-this-world chaotic lyrics and the incredibly catchy tunes, is ever-present and leaves little doubt to whether Surfing will be just as of an unlikely hit as Myths. It also sure feels like the new album is an extent to their song Four Horsemen of 2012 and it is clear their interest in the end of the world in no new thing.
But you know Surfing The Void is a completely different beast as soon as the heavy bass lines of Echoes hit you. Many were fearful of this release due to words that Polydor wanted something more pop. Yet, the record is hard to take in after one bite. Produced by Ross Robinson (responsible for producing albums for Korn and At The Drive-In), there seems to be so much going here and each second feels the space around you like glowsticks used to at the band’s first concerts. Guitars swirl like there is no tomorrow. Industrial sounds bounce back and forth and scratch your brains. Steffan Halperin’s blasting drums lead the way most of the times and it feels just right.
The title-track feels insanely claustrophobic, the chaos of the melody and the screams remind you of the long gone days of Atlantis To Interzone. Just that now paranoia takes hold of everything and all that lies ahead is suffocation. Extra Astronomical feels like a hit over the head with a hammer because of its dense industrial guitars, the menacing two notes riff and the rapid drums. Vortex-like Cyberspeed gives the impression Simon Taylor-Davies has been playing guitar with a drill, the menacing distorts creep out of the speakers while the vocals are buried deeper into the mechanical instrumental. Like Isle Of Her could’ve been a love song in disguise, so can Autotune-scented psychedelic love story The Same Space be the soundtrack of a Sci-fi film.
But the claustrophobia is lifted at times. Echoes with its guitar solo, focused melody, the chorus that comes in after one minute, its Muse-scent is quite obviously the album’s single and the one to feel in the shoes of Golden Skans. It’s not the only one, mind you. The prog-pop and slow pace of Twin Flames is a catchy as Klaxons can get. While most of the other tracks have joint cyborg-like vocals or mostly Jamie Reynolds’s airy voice, on this one it’s James Righton who lends his pop star coolness to the whole song. Future Memories, its space-out piano and soulful vocals, the way the bass builds tension promise to swiftly become part of the mainstream conscience.
And, with every listen, it becomes blatant Surfing The Void is a shamelessly fantastic release. There is all of the Klaxons we love here: pop sensibility, sheer madness, tale of strange worlds, impeccable song-writing. Psychedelia they promised and they do deliver: each layer of sound probably makes a whole lot more sense on ayahuasca (the hallucinogen they claim to have been ingesting – with Klaxons one can never be sure of the truth). But it is still a wonderful way to wrack your brain while trying to make sense of Surfing The Void.
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