Can someone sound the Klaxons' klaxon?

Like the Nintendo Wii and Kevin Federline, The Klaxons were big news in 2006, after which they apparently hitched a one-way ride to dumperville.

Fans of "new rave" will be pleased to hear, though, that The Klaxons are staging a rather convincing comeback. The ground was laid last summer, with this bleep-tastic remix of MKS's Flatlines:



Their own new material started to appear in March, led by the dreamy, Gorgon City-produced There Is No Other Time. It "peaked" at number 42 in the charts, which is worse than it deserved. Maybe a guest verse from Pitbull or Jason Derulo would have helped.


Undeterred, the band are back for another crack at the top 40, this time with Show Me A Miracle, which singer Jamie Reynolds calls a naive response" to dance music.

"We were listening to a lot of Bauer and a lot of R&B and hip-hop," he told Zane Lowe, "genres we've never tried to make before. We just got together around a table and started trying to replicate it."

Have they succeeded? Not really. This still sounds exactly like a Klaxons record. But a very good Klaxons record, nonetheless.


The Klaxons' third album Love Frequency will be released on 2 June, with production from Tom Rowlands of the Chemical Brothers, Erol Alkan, LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy and more. So there you go.

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Songs you may have missed: The nude edition

Sorry for the lack of updates this week - the real world has been getting in the way (plus there wasn't much to write about, to be honest).

Anyway, here's a rundown of the songs that floated onto the internet this week, most of which seem to be stripped-back, denuded, unclothed and generally acoustic versions of original songs. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

1) David Bowie - Sound And Vision (2013)
You've probably heard this on an advert for a mobile phone and wondered where it came from. It's Sound And Vision, and it's definitely Bowie's voice, but the only backing is a naive piano that sounds like it was recorded in a school assembly.

In fact, the mix is the work of Sonjay Prabhakar, who was given the original master-tapes and pared away all the production to leave the lead vocals, Mary Hopkin's backing and Roy Young. Yep, that's really there on the album mix. Who knew?

It's proved so popular that Bowie has given an official release his blessing. It's out now on iTunes.




2) Miley Cyrus and The Roots - We Can't Stop
Presented like the opening titles of The Brady Bunch, this a capella rendition of Miley's FU anthem actually makes the song tolerable. Easy to forget there's a great set of vocal cords hidden behind that tongue.




3) MKS - No Regrets
As well as the near-perfect cover of Lorde's Royals, which I posted on Tuesday, MKS performed an acoustic version of their new song No Regrets at their recent Reload Sessions recording. A ballad that could be a love song, it could also be about the girls' split and reunion: "Enemies, I hope we clear the air".




4) Foxes - Youth
Precisely one million years after it first appeared online, Foxes' beautiful Youth is finally getting a proper release. Radio 1 put it on their C-List this week, which augurs well. Foxes celebrated the news by playing the song in bed, for some reason.




5) Robbie Williams - Go Gentle
I was lucky enough to go and see Robbie record an episode of Radio 4's Mastertapes last night. The premise of the show is that artists come in and discuss their defining album - in Robbie's case, Life Thru A Lens. He talked about being booted out of Take That ("I asked them if I could take a pineapple with me") and how Gary Barlow rejected his first ever song.

"I phoned Gaz up and I said 'I've got this song - it's about a prostitute, in Manchester' and he said, 'it'd be alright for a rock group, wouldn't it, lad?"

At the end of the night, he played a couple of tracks from his new album, Robbie Williams Swings Both Ways, including this - Go Gentle, a sincere, but goofy, declaration of love for his one-year-old daughter. He was in tears at the end of it.




6) VV Brown - The Apple (live on Later)
OK - so this Jools Holland performance is as far away from acoustic as it's possible to get, but WHAT A SONG.




7) TLC - Meant To Be
Written by Ne-Yo, Meant To Be is the only new song on TLC's 20th anniversary collection. T-Boz sounds like she's been smoking 40-a-day for the last decade, but this is quite lovely in a 90s throwback kind of way. More Red Light Special than Waterfalls, but I can live with that.

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MKS cover Lorde's Royals

Magnificent. Well done, everyone.

MKS - Royals

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Songs you may have missed: Bumper edition

Work's been exceptionally busy this week, so I haven't had the chance to blog as much as I'd like... With the result that this week's "Songs You May Have Missed" is a bumper edition. Lots of exciting new tunes and remixes to choose from.

Roll up, roll up...

1) MKS - Flatline (MNEK remix)
Initial-tastic pop acts MKS and MNEK (it's an anagram of KK SEMEN if you squint a bit and imagine an extra 'E') get together for an Ibiza-flavoured remix of truly brilliant pop number Flatline.

The mix doesn't improve on the original - but it does give Mutya Keisha and Siobhan extra opportunities to aimlessly wave their hands around in the air.





2) Nirvana - Heart Shaped Box (Director's Cut)
Santa in a nappy, foetuses in a tree, a young girl in a Ku Klux Klan costume: This video has it all. The director's cut of Nirvana's Heart Shaped Box, previously only available on DVD, was thrust upon the internet this week to celebrate the anniversary of In Utero. It sounds as awesome as it did 20 years ago.




3) Sam Smith - Nirvana
From an angry, growly Nirvana to a happy blissful one. Sam Smith's sensuous new single is cut from the same cloth as Marvin Gaye's Let's Get It On - IE a very sexy silk cloth draped across your naked breasts. This'll steam up your spectacles.





4) The Preatures - Is This How You Feel?
Sydney quintet The Preatures (pronounced "the preachers", I presume) are quite lovely, mixing 50s harmonies and jangly guitars in a slightly Haim-y fashion.

Is This How You Feel, from their forthcoming EP, starts off sounding like The Cure's Close To Me, then swirls off into wistful psychedelia. Yummy.




6) The Saturdays - Disco Love
Can you fault a song with the lyric, "It's never winter when its Donna Summer all year long"?

The answer, it turns out, is a big fat yes.




5) Lady Gaga - Applause (DJ White Shadow Trap Remix)
This pared back remix (for the most part) highlights what a strong tune Applause is. Deliberately choosing obscure chords to counterpoint the melody, it makes the song much more unsettling and interesting than the pop version.



7) John Newman - Cheating
If you've been dumped there are two options: Sobbing and eating cake, or hiring the building opposite your girlfriend's house, erecting a massive billboard spelling out the word "cheater" in lights, and performing a song about her infidelity at full volume while she's still in bed.

John Newman goes for the classy option. Sort of. 

And there you have it... See you after the bank holiday for more musinourishment.

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Things to love about the new MKS video

Hello Mutya! Hello Keisha! Hello Siobhan! Hello spinny man in white trousers!

Filmed in LA last month and debuted on YouTube late last night, here at long last is the inaugural video by resurrected Sugaband MKS. It's not going to win any awards for innovation - basically it's just three girls pissing about in front of a camera - but there are some moments to cherish. "EG":

:: MKS standing in front of a wall
:: MKS sitting on top of a wall
:: MKS not riding a bicycle
:: MKS stumbling down a sand dune
:: MKS clapping half-heartedly
:: MKS dancing half-heartedly
:: Siobhan's not-a-skirt
:: Mutya's flagrant disregard for car safety
:: A dog on a skateboard
:: Er...
:: That's it.

NB: The song is still gorgeous.

MKS - Flatlines

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MKS get around to releasing Flatline

ABOUT BLOODY TIME.
This just popped up on the official MKS Soundcloud page. It's a new-old-Sugababes moment of musical brilliance. Here's everything you need to know.

:: It is mid-tempo but it is not a ballad.

:: It has been described as "stadium-sized".

:: In other words: Tons of reverb.

:: Key dying-relationship lyric: "I can feel a flatline that ought to be a wave".

:: Flatline was produced by Devonté "Dev" Hynes - who did Solange's teriffic True EP.

:: There are backing vocals from indie also-rans Spector.

:: In marketing speak, it's a "first-look" single.

:: In normal language, it's the first taster of the album, but there'll be another single soon.

:: Although "soon" is a relative concept in the crazy world of MKS.

:: Basically, if we hear another song before the end of 2015, it'll be a miracle.

:: Tracks on the mythical debut album (or second album, depending on how you look at it) may or may not include
Drum and Love Me Hard (!)

:: The album will not have "huge hits" on it, according to Keisha.

:: Well, what she said was: "We turned down big songs that would be huge hits because they weren't right for the album", but "no hits" is the basic gist.

:: Flatline is very good indeed.

Get your chops around this. It's smashing.



PS: MKS will reveal more details of this long-gestating musical project in a Google Hangout at 6pm BST today. Sounds awful.

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New music from Haim, Jessie Ware and MKS

Ring the "guaranteed Discopop blog post" alarm - there's new music on the internet by Haim (incredible), Jessie Ware (amazing) and MKS (let's just wait and see what the album's like).

1) Haim - Falling (Psychemagik remix)
Oh Haim, with your slick Californian rock guitars and your haircuts like Alanis Morisette circa 1995, how could we love you more? I'll tell you how: With a corking remix. And this remix is so corking, Moet and Chandon are going to take it round the bike sheds and get it pregnant.




2) Jessie Ware - Pom Pom Pom Special Delivery
OK, Jessie Ware's new single is really called Imagine It Was Us - but some cretin at Radio One has ruined it by making a man shout "Pom Pom Pom Special Delivery" all over the top of it. Suitable for the new Skrillex single, perhaps, but it completely kills Ware's slinky 80s groove (produced by Julio Bashmore, who's clearly been listening to Cherelle's Saturday Love).

If this aural spam makes you dismember your ears and hide them under a cushion, fear not: We'll get to hear the unspoiled song in a week or two. At her last London show, Ware revealed that Imagine It Was Us was coming out as a single. She filmed the video 10 days ago, "with choreography and everything". Until them: Pom Pom Pom Special fucking Delivery.



3) Phoenix ft MKS - Entertainment (Blood Orange remix)
I mentioned Phoenix's excellent new single in a previous new music round-up. Now it has added backing vocals from Mutya Keisha and Siobhan, making it approximately 2,563% better. It may be another service station on the road to fresh material from the old new new old Sugababes, but it's a service station with luscious harmonies hiding amongst the sausage rolls. Magnificent.

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Mutya, Keisha, Siobhan, Music, At, Last

Mutya Keisha Siobhan’s new album has been gestating longer than a baby giraffe. This either means (a) it'll be brilliant or (b) it won't. [You can't put a price on insight like that - Ed].

There's no way to tell how it's all going to pan out, because we've got nothing to base our opinions on. The list of collaborators is simultaneously hooray (Dev Hynes, MNEK, Richard X) and handle with caution (Cameron McVey, Shaznay Lewis, William Orbit – all great, but with poor track records of late).

Still, there is hope, and that hope comes in the shape of a song. Posted by Dev Hynes on his Soundcloud page earlier today. It's seemingly a throwaway track, a new melody performed over the instrumental to Kendrick Lamar's Drank (Swimming Pools) - similar to how Freak In Me was constructed 11 years ago. "The girls felt like having a bit of fun at the end of the last session," wrote Hynes. "Enjoy!"

There's a moment around 2'30" into the song, just a simple piece of backing vocal harmonising, that just kills. The rest of the song is more perplexing – the tune's only ok, and the stoner R&B vibe is a bit disappointing, harking back to Mutya's solo aspirations more than the sultry pop brilliance of the Origibabes.

The main thing, as Popjustice pointed out, is that it shows they’re capable of finishing a song. Let's hope this is the trickle that proceeds the flood.

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