Traveling to Infinity

On a temperate fall evening in late September 2010, Thee Semiotic Alchemyst and I went to check out the Klaxons, at the Music Hall of Williamsburg on North 6^th street in Brooklyn. The band was on tour in support of their second album, Surfing the Void and seemed poised to maintain their position at the top of the musical food chain.

The show was a blast, as the band put all their energy into their performance, and in return the crowd loved them for it. This is the most essential part of a live performance, that the performers give absolutely everything they’ve got in total dedication to the live musical experience. I can objectively say as both a musician and a critic that the Klaxons brought the business, as I could check off nearly all the boxes of a kick ass rock show. Superfans screaming the bands lyrics back to them? Check. Couples making out to the music? Check. Shitfaced fans spilling beer everywhere as they raise their inebriated hands in praise? Check.

The Klaxons formed in New Cross, London in 2005 and just two short years later released their Mercury Prize-winning debut album, Myths of the Near Future. When the band broke up in 2015, it seemed a sudden dissolution as they were truly surfing the momentum of being a popular rock outfit with a schedule full of world tours and festivals.

But talent alone is not enough for sustaining a career in the arts, and that’s how it goes when one embarks along the road of rock n roll. It’s all a gamble from the first time you set the intention to create and perform music. And when you commit yourself to the muse, vowing to follow it wherever it may lead, your art will become both public and private. You may reach the heights of fame or arrive at the palace of total obscurity. All that shit does not matter. What matters most is the absolute allegiance to the call of the muse and the responsibility to perfect your craft in order to transmit to the world all the wonderful whispers that you hear.

That the Klaxons made it as far as they did is what’s most important to me, for I could tell just from watching that show in Brooklyn that they were dedicated to following a call, no matter where it may lead. For all those who’ve travelled in a van for hours on end to arrive at a venue, undernourished, over tired, and ready to rock, I salute you. I salute Jaime Reynolds and the rest of the Klaxons for even being able to bring their band to that level of success.

After the show, Thee Semiotic Alchemyst and I hung out with Reynolds and his girlfriend as we had a brief but fun conversation. It was great to hear their story and then to interview Reynolds about Surfing the Void. We spoke for a while about Pataphysics, Robert Anton Wilson, drinking Ayahuasca -- which it seemed increasing numbers of artists were doing at the time --- and about music. Despite talking about such far out topics, I thought Reynolds was an extremely down to earth and nice guy. I mean the guy just got off stage playing the role of the kick ass rockstar and then sat down for a nice chat with some people he’d never met before. That’s pretty cool.

Gabriel Kennedy: You had some Prog Rock influences on this album. Any specific bands?

Jaime Reynolds: Some British groups from the 70s, like 73 and 74. Robert Weir, the Soft Machine, Caravan. We listened a lot to their period stuff, but I don’t think it sounds like anything we are doing. I don’t know whether it found its way through in the end or if its fucking rubbish.

GK: So it was something that got you inspired and in the studio?

JR: It was that British psychedelia, like slightly odd psychedelia with high vocals. I brought it to the band and everybody got on board with it.

GK: When you guys first came out there was this whole media title labeling you guys as 'new rave'. What’s all that about?

JR: Yeah. I sat in the pub one night and I just said to my friend and told everybody before we had our first rehearsal ‘this is who we are, this is what we are going to be.’ The manifesto was already set out from the beginning and everything fell around that. I think the others couldn’t be happier with it. I think that the spirit of injecting enthusiasm and celebration in music is where we are and who we are.

GK: The new stuff, from Surfing the Void, sounds a lot edgier too. Very strong stuff. On the website you mentioned a few influential writers, Thomas Pynchon, Richard Brautigan, and the master Pataphysican, Alfred Jarry. His name does not get dropped too much; how did you get into Jarry?

JR: Simon (Taylor-Davis, Klaxons guitarist) found Alfred Jarry. I first heard of Alfred Jarry from Paul McCartney who was going on about reading his biography and started getting into Pataphysics. So, I picked that up from him. Simon had picked up one of Jarry’s poetry books and we took from one of his poems, chopped loads of that up, and spit it back out again.

GK: Are you into Robert Anton Wilson?

JR: Oh yeah. Absolutely! He makes a lot of sense to me. I read Prometheus Rising recently. That’s like a self-help book and inspires me from day to day. I haven’t read Illuminatus! Trilogy, but Principia Discordia was directly lifted from, again. I will highlight parts from what I read and put them together in lyrics.

GK: Ever do Ayahuasca? If so, any standout experiences? Did it affect your philosophy and have any influential impact on this album?

JR: I have yes. Well, the first three times I did it the experience was extremely visual. My main thing was animals and spirit guides and birds. The first time I did it with my girlfriend and I saw every symbol under the sun and thousands of symbols I’d never seen before which all ended up culminating in this vision that I did not really understand until the day after. We were watching a film and the vison that I had seen the night before appeared in the film. It was the vision of Ezekial’s Wheel in the Bible, with glowing orbs on top the stairs surrounded by winged beasts at the bottom of a staircase.

GK: Was it a Jodorowsky movie?

JR: No, it was that bullshit movie Knowing, about the end of the world. I was watching that the day after because my brain was already thinking that way anyway and then the vision appeared in the movie and I thought, “Oh fuck that’s what I saw last night. Why is that coming on now?” I was really enthused by that and I went home and wrote some lyrics for the new record. But the main thing I got from it was that I went to the session because I was determined to try to find out the answers to what I should write this record about, and I left there with the feeling that I didn’t need to look for anything because I already had the knowledge for it, but I needed the experience to help arrive at that conclusion. And the second time I did it I surfed the back of a bird for four hours. The third time I ended up hanging out with a load of reptiles that accumulated into a frog with a crown on its head. And then I stopped having visual experiences, and I was upset about it. I wanted to hang out with all these creatures. The last one was extremely personal and all I could think about was my family relations, my intimate relations, my personal relations, all things in my life, and ask what that means to me as a man at this point in time. Yeah, the last one was relationship focused. And since then, I’ve been having some fucking weird experiences falling into breathing trances and helping my friends, which is a bit odd.

xxx

Jaime’s girlfriend testified to witnessing Jaime’s breathing trances and they laughed at how absurd it all sounded. But she continued to tell us that he’d learned this technique from a shaman he’d been working with and how it actually brought some good healing vibes to the rest of the crew. Before I could ask any more questions, the venue’s security rushed through the green room door, telling us all that the venue was closing and it was time to go. So, the conversation ended.

Years have passed since this interview, but the message still resonates. I liked what Jaime was doing with his art, as he was seeking the “derangement of the senses,” Rimbaud wrote about. He was walking a very unique and interesting life path that being a rockstar allows, which is to attempt to interpret traditional shamanic practices emerging from indigenous cultures of the Southern Hemisphere and find a place for them in this world. (see my interview with Martin Rev of Suicide for more about the Rockstar as Shaman theory.) Jaime stated in a later interview that he had moved on from working with the shaman and more into pure studying the craft of music. In doing so Reynolds embodied the other great thing about art today, which is the power and responsibility to keep it moving. As an artist, in order to stay spiritually alive and unscathed by the many energy vampires today’s world has to offer, one must have the wild confidence to keep it fucking moving. So even though the Klaxons no longer exist, in their moment, they did what artists are supposed to do and I commend them for it. Huzzzah!!