“Rave on!” The phrase is causing quite a buzz within current vernacular, spearheaded by three British lads called Klaxons. Across the pond, Klaxons have sparked a new movement, or perhaps one should call it an old movement, packaged fresh with the new title of New-Rave. They’re one of the UK’s biggest up-and-coming bands, and in recent months have begun to take America by storm.

Punch-drunk-sonics echoing air-raid sirens and boisterous beats are what Klaxons perfer to surround themselves in. These revolutionary sounds paved through underground culture of England in the early 1990s, giving birth to a genre of music called Rave. Not surpringly, in music’s cyclical cycles, the term and sound of Rave has resurfaced, minus the big pants. Calling out DJ names, clubs and what warehouse party one went to that weekend are conversations of the past. Now, within the digital age, finding the latest track on MySpace or emailing an mp3 takes precedence.  

Jamie Reynolds, James Righton and Steffan Halperin landed stateside for the first time last fall in 2006, performing to a packed, and quite fittingly, underground-basement-venue-house in New York City. However, their first real US tour has just begun – branching out to see the scope of what America has to offer in Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Not to mention a night of DJing with legendary scenester and the concierge for foreign bands while visiting, Steve Aoki, at New York City’s famed Hiro Ballroom, with two sold-out shows at Brooklyn’s Studio B and Bowery Ballroom.

Making a bit of time for psychoPEDIA while on a tour stop in Denver, Colorado, Reynolds quipped about his first days of finding good tunes. “When I was a bit older, I went to town [to get my music] – there’d be rave clothes, paraphernalia of sorts and cassette tapes of DJ sets.” In England, and here in the United States, DJ’s were considered gods and cross-country runs were the norm. Reynolds recalls, “We’d take cans of beers, get on the train and then get slashed by the time you arrive at the next town to go out for the night.”

The rest of the spring and summer are filled with surplus dates of touring across the United States, Europe and England, of course making the official darling stops at Coachella and back home at Reading and Leeds Festivals. Currently, the boys are happy to be taking in Yankee visions: “This is my first time across America; I’ve only been to New York before. I’m just taking everything in and enjoying this time. There’s so much to see.”