Klaxons
Love Frequency
Release Date: Jun 16, 2014
Genre(s): Pop/Rock, Alternative/Indie Rock
Record label: RED Music Solutions
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Album Review: Love Frequency by Klaxons
Satisfactory, Based on 8 Critics
Based on rating 3.5/5
Listening to Klaxons’ third album, a disquieting thought recurs: is this really how the former MDMA sages of New Cross Gate imagined their own near future to sound? The trio have spent almost three years recording ‘Love Frequency’ with a cast of ‘computer music’ luminaries including James Murphy, Erol Alkan, Gorgon City and Tom Rowlands of The Chemical Brothers. Yet, the end result scales back the space-rock excess of 2010’s ‘Surfing The Void’, itself a dialed-down version of the madness they originally intended to follow their Mercury-winning debut with. Now, with no need to keep wilder impulses in check, you might have thought the hour was nigh for, say, a synth-metal concept opus about the esoteric voyages of the Count of St Germain.
Based on rating B-
The party isn’t over for London’s Klaxons, but the three-piece now politely excuse themselves from the dance floor at a respectable 2:30 a.m. Just months away from celebrating their 10-year anniversary as a collective, a new sense of spiritual empowerment sits atop their signature new-rave future-funk. Four years removed from the ayahuasca-induced riffs of Surfing the Void, the collective purposefully discovered new (and less hallucinatory) inspirations for their newest full-length, Love Frequency.
Based on rating 6.5/10
Head here to submit your own review of this album. London's Klaxons, though they may not agree or indeed welcome the term, hitched their wagon to one of the most ephemeral musical trends post-millennium, Nu Rave. Adorned with grossly obese electro-spasms, E-number detonations and proto-dubstep frenzies, 2006-ish was the halcyon year for the style, before it passed the baton off to whatever flash in the pan came next.
Based on rating 3/5
Klaxons have chutzpah. Seven years after their Mercury-winning debut Myths of the Near Future and four years since Surfing the Void – a follow-up remembered mainly for having a cat in a spacesuit on the cover – the trio are back and making bombastic pop that may no longer be called nu rave, but still aspires to his some kind of sweet spot between the dancefloor and a summer drive to Sainsbury's. Bringing in production from Erol Alkan, Tom Chemical Brother and Gorgon City, the tone is anthemic and every track is buffed to a glaring sheen.
Based on rating 5.5/10
Although it appears to be a pill on the front cover of Klaxons’ third album Love Frequency, it is in fact a piece of plastic, designed by Trevor Jackson and intended to show his interpretation of what the record is. While it’s likely that the majority of those picking up a physical copy will assume that the collection is a drug-fuelled, ecstasy-starring one, the piece of plastic actually indicates the complete lack of drugs during the making of the album. Instead, it’s mostly clean, bright and shiny; often disguised as the psychedelic trips that made up their debut, but never as quite as trippy, and always with much more regimentation.
Based on rating 5.1/10
Two opinions that could just about pass for facts upon the arrival of Klaxons’ third LP Love Frequency: 1. For many people, particularly in America, hearing the name “Klaxons” immediately opens a time warp back to the DayGlo nights of 2007, when terms like “nu-rave” and “blog-house” were spoken with straight faces and a lack of impunity. 2.
Based on rating 2.5
Ah, Klaxons. Occasionally loud, brash, chaotic and very, very annoying, there’s often a clear alignment between the band’s name and their music. And lifestyle too, apparently; well, in the early days, at least. But things have changed since the trio emerged from New Cross, announcing their arrival by scooping the coveted Mercury Prize with debut album Myths Of The Near Future in 2007.
Based on rating 4/10
In clubs across the country and around the world, you can hear it: the sound of EDM plummeting to its nadir. Sorority girls monologuing over brain-dead beats, David Guetta re-appropriating ‘Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)’ in a manner that makes Audio Bullys’ version sound as transcendental as Jon Hopkins, and that one inexcusable piece of garbage that sounds like it’s riffing on ‘They’re Taking the Hobbits To Isengard’ - it’s enough to make you never want to hear a synthesiser again. But take heart, for like a neon-splattered beacon of hope, Klaxons have returned, no doubt roused from their slumber by the sound of Daft Punk getting lucky.
'Love Frequency'
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