Klaxons

Klaxons formed in London in 2005, Jamie Reynolds, James Richardson, and Simon Taylor-Davis developing a sound that drew on rave culture, psychedelia, and indie rock in ways that were immediately distinctive and divisive. Their music was fast, colourful, and deliberately excessive — a reaction against the earnestness of mid-2000s indie rock that embraced the energy of rave culture while retaining the melodic directness of indie pop.

'Myths of the Near Future' (2007) won the Mercury Prize — a decision that generated considerable controversy but also considerable attention. The album was genuinely strange and genuinely brilliant, with songs like 'Golden Skans', 'Gravity's Rainbow', and 'Atlantis to Interzone' combining rave energy with psychedelic ambition in ways that were unlike anything else in British music.

Klaxons' second album 'Surfing the Void' (2010) was a more straightforwardly psychedelic record that earned mixed reviews. The band dissolved in 2015. They are remembered as one of the more distinctive and divisive acts of the late-2000s British indie scene — a band whose Mercury Prize win defined a moment and whose debut album rewards rediscovery.