When Klaxons played their final show in January 2015, James Righton had fallen out of love with music. With his band finished and his wife, actress Keira Knightley, pregnant with their first child, he found himself questioning what he actually wanted to get out of his life for the first time in a decade. “I remember looking at my iTunes and was like, ‘I haven’t listened to an album in about three months,’” says Righton when we meet in a quiet Islington pub on a warm spring day. “What happened? I was once an 18-year-old kid who would just devour everything and want to know everything about every member of every band I liked. It became this thing where I hated the idea of music, and I didn’t know if I wanted to make music.”

Klaxons exploded in the mid-00s with a blend of DIY punk, scuzzy electronics, rave aesthetics and mystical, Burroughs and Pynchon-referencing lyrics. They were anathema to the laddish indie rock that had been dominating the independent music scene at the time, catalysing the minor DIY youth subculture ‘new rave’. Soon they were embarking on extensive world tours, working with The Chemical Brothers, and appearing on-stage with Rihanna. They seemed unstoppable, both critically and commercially – their debut album, Myths of the Near Future, sold 350,000 copies when it was released in 2007 and bagged them the Mercury Prize the same year. But after their planned second album was deemed too uncommercial and rejected by their major label, the band lost momentum. 2010’s Surfing The Void felt like too little, too late, and 2014’s Love Frequency made little impact. Soon after the album’s release, they announced in a low-key Facebook post that their next headline tour would be their last.

“Even though the last album didn’t do as well as we wanted it to, we were still touring bigger gigs than ever, especially in Europe,” says Righton. “We could have carried on, but it was far more exciting for me – and at the same time, scarier – to actually just pull the cord. I could see myself becoming quite angry and bitter, looking back and going, ‘Why didn’t I do that?’ I’d rather take a risk for it and fail.”

After Klaxons split, Righton tried to rediscover the spark that drew him to music in the first place. He found himself revisiting the music he’d loved growing up – melodic rock acts like The Beach Boys, 10cc, and Todd Rundgren, as well as Paul McCartney’s solo albums and The Flaming Lips’ The Soft Bulletin – and started to consider what his own take on this style would sound like. Adopting the name Shock Machine, Righton’s songs came together effortlessly in a way that had eluded Klaxons for years. “I really enjoyed it,” he beams. “I don’t know if it’ll be the same in the future. I had an idea of what I wanted it to be and what I wanted it to sound like.”

After sending a collection of demos to in-demand producer James Ford, who worked with Klaxons on both their debut album and its aborted follow-up, the two decamped to a cabin in the south of France to record for four weeks. From those sessions, four tracks make it on to Shock Machine’s debut EP, Open up the Sky, with more set to appear on his forthcoming debut album. Open up the Sky references Righton’s beloved psychedelic pop with its rich harmonies and unconventional arrangements, but Ford gives it a crisp, contemporary sound. Most importantly, it sounds carefree. “I’m a dad now,” says Righton. “It would be great if this does well. It would be great if it sold millions. I kind of care less now – but care more, in a weird way.”

Klaxons didn’t split acrimoniously – you announced your final tour ahead of time. Why did you want to leave the band?

Shock Machine: My last gig was Guadalajara in Mexico, in January 2015. I’ve got an immense amount of respect and love for (bandmates) Jamie (Reynolds) and Simon (Taylor-Davis) – we went through so much together. But for me, personally, by the end of it, I felt quite trapped within the confines of what (the band) was. It felt like diminishing returns in terms of the amount we put in and what we got out of it. The bar was probably just too high from the off, and we could never live up to it.

Did the other guys feel the same?

Shock Machine: I hadn’t spoken to Jamie since we left the stage in Guadalajara. I moved to New York and saw Simon a lot, because he’s living in New York too. When I released the first song, I got a lovely Twitter message from Jamie saying that he was a real fan and loved the music. And he sent me a really lovely, amazing email saying the same thing. So when we met up last week, it was just like we hadn’t ever really stopped hanging out. We’re really good friends, at the end of the day.

Had you been writing solo material for a while?

Shock Machine: I didn’t have any. Within Klaxons, I never wrote the lyrics. I always wrote the melody and music with the other guys. I’ve always been capable of playing, but I never had the confidence. And I’d never written lyrics. (So) I just thought, ‘I’ve got to do this.’ I locked myself in a room and it came really easily. I’ve been making music for a while now, and I don’t think you can force it. I don’t want to say ideas fall from the sky or anything, but I do think that there’s a moment that you have to do something. I just reacquainted myself with the things that I fell in love with when I got into music in the first place – which was (things) like Todd Rundgren and The Beatles.

“I’ve been making music for a while now, and I don’t think you can force it. I don’t want to say ideas fall from the sky or anything, but I do think that there’s a moment that you have to do something” — James Righton

When I think back to Klaxons, I always hear those influences – certainly in the melodies and harmonies, which I felt that not many people tended to pick up on.

Shock Machine: It was always the stuff that I thought was really lovely about it. For me, my favourite music was things like The Bee Gees, ABBA and The White Album. The 70s is the period that I love more than anything. ‘Bennie and the Jets’ was my reference for (the track) ‘Shock Machine’: it’s really slow, it’s just on the ones. There’s a Frank Ocean song that’s got it (too). I’ve always liked that slow stomp. I was like, ‘I’m going to try to make my own version of this.’ I’ve always been attracted to odd chord changes and interesting melodies. 

Shock Machine doesn’t feel like a total departure – you’d previously made quite a psychedelic record with Klaxons that never got released, right?

Shock Machine: The second one, yeah. It was the three of us making music, and that was the druggiest music we’ve ever made. (But) things weren’t completed. It was probably our most excessive. There were sessions where we had sketches and we’d hire recording studios for probably six weeks with, like, some chords and a bit of melody, and try to make an album out of it. It was totally different, this one. I’d had everything written – every lyric, every melody, a lot of drum beats, everything. I wanted it to sound like a moment in time – a reaction to how we made our last album, which was done over a couple of years with numerous producers. I wanted it to feel like an early McCartney record, like Ram, where he went off to Scotland and just kind of did it. I knew how to get the best out of James Ford. I was emailing him demos and he would say, ‘Make it weirder.’ It was me and him – I got rid of my management, I got rid of everyone. I wanted to keep the circle as small as possible, because by the end of Klaxons it had got very big. There was no, like, ‘This is really good – but I think we need another single.’

Was there ever a temptation to go back to a major?

Shock Machine: No way. I’m too old! There are brilliant people at major labels – great people we worked with – but as was always the case, after every album, most of the team had gone. The turnover (of staff) is so quick (in the music industry). Suddenly your product manager is someone that doesn’t really like you. When you sign that first deal, you get reassurances that you’re gonna be on them forever. It never works out like that. Unless you’re selling shitloads of records, I think it’s really hard to exist on them. It’s so appealing, though – if a label comes up to you and says, here’s an amount of money where you can have a house, it takes a very strong person to resist that.

“The whole feel of the EP and a lot of the themes about it is actually dealing with this position I’m in. I’m trying to get my head around the idea that this band, this thing that was my life, was ending at the same time as I had a child on the way. Both these things were incredibly fucking frightening” — Shock Machine

How did having a child affect your approach to music?

Shock Machine: All of the music came around that time. I was just like, ‘I’ve got a moment. I’ve got to make stuff because my life’s going to change in a huge way and I’ve got to really do this.’ And the whole feel of the EP and a lot of the themes about it is actually dealing with this position I’m in. I’m trying to get my head around the idea that this band, this thing that was my life, was ending at the same time as I had a child on the way. Both these things were incredibly fucking frightening. They were actually panic-inducing. But at the same time, that was a real motivator. The excitement of having a kid on the way, matched with this blank page where there are no rules, was really exciting to me.