Ahead of their headline slot at Reading this weekend, TIM HUGHES finds out where the Klaxons have been hiding.

WRITTEN off in some quarters as day-glo one trick ponies, Klaxons have confounded their critics by bouncing back – revitalised and reinvented.

After winning the Mercury Prize three years ago, much was expected of the Stratford/ Southampton three-piece, vaunted as the vanguard of that lurid mix of acid house and pop known, briefly, as nu-rave.

With award in hand, the lads packed up their glo-sticks and decamped to France to begin work on their second album... and disappeared – going the same way as the 90s-inspired beat-based movement they headed.

But then, winning rock’s most prestigious prize places pressure on a band; especially one as fastidious as Klaxons. After all, this was a band who cited as their influences not wasted rock & rollers, but esoteric writers such as Richard Brautigan, Thomas Pynchon and JG Ballard.

“Winning the Mercury Prize was just a big cherry on a massive cake,” says frontman Jamie Reynolds. “We knew people were into the album, but it meant even more trying to dive into it and understand this crazy monster we’d created.”

The problem was, he says, the songs he, keys man James Righton, and guitarist Simon Taylor Davis recorded, were not suitable for a second album. So they went back to the drawing board – emerging, finally, with follow-up Surfing The Void, which is out this week, and gets a public outing on Sunday at the Reading Festival.

Recorded with American rock and metal specialist Ross Robinson as producer, it followed some intense soul-searching.

“We just took ourselves away,” says Jamie, a former Greenwich University philosophy student.

“We’d been rehearsing in a place where loads of bands rehearse, which wasn’t good. We needed to be on our own, so we went to South London and had 10 days in a room and a lot came out.”

That was last September. And after making the decision to stop touring, go into a studio, and upgrade to a quartet by signing drummer Steffan Halperin, they, at last, began to make progress.

“When we decided Steff was going to drum and we were going to be a proper four-piece, it all slotted into place and started to make sense,” Jamie grins. “We were in a room making a big old racket.”

“We stopped indulging and started making music for ourselves,” adds James – who spent his formative years working the boats on the Avon at Stratford.

“We made the music naturally, so it came out really easily.

“It’s actually never been easier than it is right now.

“We went to Wales for three days a few weeks back and came out with eight tracks. It’s just so easy.”

Jamie agrees: “We had to turn our brains off; we were over-thinking things.”

The resulting album is a logical progression from their debut – still undoubtedly Klaxons, but more focussed and, yes, rockier.

“It’s definitely more powerful,” says Hampshire boy Jamie. “We’re a new force, and we’ve figured out how to play our instruments better and make everything a lot simpler. It was really great to take everything back to basics.

“We stripped it back to being four guys in a room writing music and I think that was a basic evolution for the band.”

A big influence, says Simon, who also hails from Warwickshire, was producer Robinson – who has previously lent his talents to the likes of Korn, At The Drive In, Slip Knot and The Cure. It was he, says Simon, who instilled in them a fresh approach to music.

“We had a connection straight away,” he says. “We respected him more than we had anyone else for a long time.

“We didn’t even talk about music; it was all about intention, emotion and what it means to capture the ‘invisible’ on a record. We were just blown away by him.”

“He only listens to Elton John and, if it’s raining, Disintegration by The Cure,” adds James. “We didn’t have any musical reference points for the album, but he taught us a lot about the feeling of ecstasy in music, without having to be intoxicated.”

So what happened to those songs the band shelved for the album? “We’re having all those songs remixed at the moment,” says Simon. “They’ll be out next year.”

And, finally, with the shortlist out for this year’s Mercury Prize – and with Oxford band Foals among the favourites – what suggestions does he have for artists hoping to follow in their footsteps as winners?

“I’d just say have a great night. We did. It’s as simple as that!”

* Klaxons headline the NME/Radio 1 Stage at Reading Festival on Sunday. Highlights from the festival will be broadcast on Radio 1 and televised on BBC 3 over the weekend. Klaxons’ album Surfing The Void is out this week