“The Mercury Music Prize exists solely to champion UK music by promoting the 12 albums of the year by British or Irish artists” is the claim boasted by the official site for this award. A cynical view would be that it’s about as political as the Oscars with the winner carefully selected to cover a different genre each year; for previous winners including M People, Roni Size and Gomez, it’s been a curse rather than a blessing. This year’s prize recipients were Klaxons, a trio of young musicians from London who have somehow combined rave, space rock and funk music together, not a genre which can be assigned to any other previous winners that’s for sure. To be fair it’s a strong album too.
Many will be familiar with their singles from 2007. ‘It’s Not Over Yet’ was an inspired reworking of a Grace’s rave song from the early 1990s, meanwhile ‘Magick’ is a surprisingly uncompromising pop song. More impressively, they really came into their own on ‘Golden Skans’, where breathless vocals and disco build into a thrilling chorus; it has rightly been hailed as one of the singles of the year. The key to ‘Myths Of The Near Future’, though, is that it works as a complete album rather than a few memorable singles and some also-rans. Of the more adventurous tracks, ‘Atlantis To Interzone’ is reminiscent of the underrated Lo-Fidelity All Stars thanks to its intense dance rock feel, the mid-paced ‘Isle Of Her’ takes on punk-funk, electro-pop and space rock whilst ‘Forgotten Works’ is another example of their experimental harmonies. On these songs they fuse the aggression and subversion of The Pop Group with, well, pop music. Time will tell whether Klaxons will be seen as pioneers in ten years time but right now they sound in good shape and in terms of “known” acts there weren’t many other worthy winners in 2007.
Web Sites:
Klaxons Official Site
Klaxons MySpace
Further Listening:
Lo-Fidelity All Stars, The Pop Group
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