Light touch my hands, what the fuck are ‘Golden Skans’
While a lot of people like to use bands like Klaxons as a punchline for the sorry state of indie music in 2007, there are a lot of things that we ought to commend them for that were criminally overlooked at the time.
Their appearance may have been unusual, frequently daubed in bright neon costumes and face paints, and they might have jokingly referred to themselves as ‘new rave’, which got a few people riled up as though they were denigrating the names of rave and new wave, but if you inspect their output a little closer, there’s a lot of similarities between them and their contemporaries.
There are shades of the dance-punk that LCD Soundsystem were pushing, and there was an edge of post-punk similar to Bloc Party, and considering how seriously they were taken, it’s a surprise that Klaxons end up being the laughing stock of the era.
They won the Mercury Prize with their debut album, Myths of the Near Future, which upon reflection, is a bizarre album to have achieved such a feat considering its competition of prime recipient fodder in Amy Winehouse and Bat For Lashes. The record itself, while pointing towards angular post-punk and club anthems as its primary musical reference points, nods to the works of literary figures like Thomas Pynchon, JG Ballard and Aleister Crowley, all put through a day-glo filter with liberal use of the Yamaha PSR-280 keyboard’s DJ button. It’s perplexing, for sure, but it’s strangely enticing in its eccentricity.
However, sometimes their abstractions proved to be a bit much, and their cryptic lyricism would often veer into the unfortunate territory of being seen as pseudo-intellectual hippy-dippy nonsense, as references to seemingly unrelated things would crop up in the space of a couple of lines. This, when done carefully, can create a sense of mystique around the band, inciting listeners to dive into feverish discussions of what they really mean, but given that the Klaxons had already wound people up enough with their image, it only served to turn people away more.
That said, the band achieved a top ten hit in the UK with ‘Golden Skans’, and it became a staple of the indie nightclub for the next ten years or so, if my university days were anything to go by that is. However, did we ever really know what the heck they were on about, or what a ‘Golden Skan’ even is?
So, what is a ‘Golden Skan’?
The truth is actually quite in keeping with their rave aesthetic, because a ‘Golden Scan’ refers to a type of projector that was used in nightclubs, and would send golden beams of light in multiple directions at once across the room, illuminating many a dancefloor during the period.
Imagine the most euphoric rave, and then imagine the shimmering strobes that jet up towards the ceiling and bounce around to the beat of the music.
Manufactured by Italian company Clay Paky, who probably didn’t think that they’d have a top 10 hit referring to their invention, the ‘Golden Scan’ is still regarded as an obscure invention that has been superseded by other more modern inventions.
Given that Klaxons also had songs that referenced Koh Pha Ngan, Mayan apocalypse predictions, and also covered Grace’s ‘90s dance hit ‘It’s Not Over Yet’, expecting them to not put in an esoteric reference is a tall ask, but it’s perhaps a more appropriate reference for the band than meeting Mother Teresa on a booze-fuelled Thomas Cook package holiday.
