10 years on from Klaxons' 'Myths Of The Near Future', Nu-Rave still represents the lightning bolt of a scene at its strongest

January 2007 marked the beginning of one of UK indie’s last real perfect storms. All around the UK, teenagers were infatuated with a band, their style and what they stood for. Klaxons, originally rising to prominence in 2006 with the limited release of ‘Golden Skans’ and ‘Gravity’s Rainbow’, finally let loose their debut on January 29th; the Mercury Prize winning album, ‘Myths Of The Near Future’. Though this benchmark certainly helped accelerate the explosion, the real instigator came in the form of the Channel 4 show ‘Skins’ a week beforehand. Depicting the lifestyle every sixth former and high schooler alike yearned for; sex, drugs and rock’n’roll, it influenced a generation into not giving a fuck and going against everything their parents wished. While the visual representation of this was almost a training video, it needed a soundtrack, something tangible to take away and help this fire burn away from the television.

Thus, the reign of Nu-Rave was born.

As the tenth anniversary of both the album and this scene approaches, it’s worth having a look back, though not in retrospect mind you, but instead with the same youthful excitement as was felt back then. What the time between now and then stands for is not only the freedom of expression that music and other cultural forms bring when twinned, it also shows the spontaneity with which it strikes. The consequential release of a debut album and a TV show's first series birthed a strong movement that saw fashion, cultural stylings and attitudes aligned as a generation. Like the Mods, and Brit Rock before it, Nu-Rave, while not on as grand a scale, certainly held its own.

The knowledge of this being the tenth anniversary of more albums than we’d care to admit will in no doubt lead to many of us bursting with memories of drunken parties soundtracked by whatever we heard on the Skins soundtrack. So much has changed in this decade that we may look upon this past as a relic of what once was, but the key thing to remember is, often, music has no rhyme or reason to its power - it just happens. You don’t realise you’re a part of a scene or movement until it's in full swing or you’re on the other side of it still wearing a neon hoodie from Topman covered in triangles.

Some say that Skins broke down the doors we were all hiding (and drinking) behind and made everyone - even our parents - aware of what we wanted to be, all in one neat, vomiting package. A world filled with neon, no fucks and an encouraging media, it very well may not be the rave of old, but it certainly created something none of us saw coming. The only question is - who’ll write the new myths for the near future? [sc name="stopper"]