Meet The Nu-Rave. Same as the Old Rave?

After a summer of building up their Nu-Rave malarkey (New-Rave, is there a defined spelling yet?), the past few weeks have finally seen it unleashed on the UK with a full-length tour and a cover mount CD with the NME. RoomThirteen managed to catch the tour and heard the CD, so has it been worth all the hype or was it all just a cynical ploy timed to perfection with the new University year to snare the 'fresher' market for the ailing NME's readership. Alongside dissecting the bands and the music involved, the wider issue of music hype and the influence that magazines have will be discussed, so stick around if you're after a bit more than just a review.

Given the fact that the Klaxons were interviewed on Radio 1 last week and were quick to distance themselves from any movement, its clear its not been a natural scene that's evolved through the bands. Compared to the fact that "scenes" like the ones that have developed in Glasgow and Leeds in recent years has been more through good fortune as opposed to a concerted effort, the bands having been lumped together from varied backgrounds and locations, not through a shared focus.

So any notion of a collective drive has been binned but are the bands any good? The evidence of the tour and the recorded output of the bands indicate a positive yes. Datarock may have been first on the bill but a spirited showing only hinted at the creative fun that lies on their 'Datarock Datarock' record. As an album, it sits perfectly well as a continued piece with very little filler, a feat not achieved by the majority of new electronic bands these days. 'Fa Fa Fa' may have been available for a year or two on compilation albums but tracks like 'Computer Camp Love' or 'Princess' easily hold their own with most of the singles around today and hint at a healthy career for the act.

Shitdisco have been building a reputation in Glasgow for many a year, as much for their parties as for their music but appear to have timed their run well. Whether the increased exposure will benefit the band in the long run, its difficult to say, their set was fun but they definitely still need some to grow and develop and it can only be hoped they aren't going to be chewed up by being thrown to the masses too early. This is where one criticism of the NME can come in but then again, if there wasn't a new band on the bill there would have been criticism for not selecting a new thrusting and exciting band, so its "dammed if you do and dammed if you don't."

The Klaxons are just superb - with the album just at the mixing stage, they still managed to fill a set full of songs that had the crowd involved from the start and dancing throughout. They would be standing on the edge of a breakthrough even if it wasn't for the NME's involvement so lets not get carried away in thinking the band owe anything to the magazines patronage, they might be speeding the process up slightly but there's nothing happening now that wasn't bound to happen.

The free CD was a fair overview of bands that may be loosely banded together in a lazy manner but the tracks stick together well. With acts like Hot Chip, Franz Ferdinand, Erol Alkan and Soulwax featuring in one way or another, its clearly not a new groundbreaking movement here, this type of music has been kicking around for a while (if you take it back to the previous rave sound, its just shy of 20 years old) and its just being repackaged for a new generation, much the way that Britpop and New-rock has been recently.

So the upshot of that is, yes, the bands are all making good music and they do deserve to be receiving the kind of critical praise that would encourage listeners to get into them. So why is there a big turn-off and people immediately writing them off as no hopers or a passing fad? It's purely down to the patronage of a big weekly musical newspaper and in the way they callously lump bands together in an attempt to make their job easier and to push more new things onto the unsuspecting kids.

Thing is - and lets not be mistaken - the NME are way off the pace here. Their new darlings Klaxons featured on the cover of Disorder magazine months before the NME caught them (Disorder also trounced the NME with a cover feature on their other current darlings The Horrors), the Datarock album was released last year and some of the tracks on their CD have been kicking about for quite a while.

One thing the NME does have is clout and financial backing; it has a brand name to be reckoned with. There are loads of web magazines that could put together acts that take more risks or push more boundaries (ourselves included) but not everyone is aware of Roomthirteen (one day they will be) but most music fans have heard of the NME.

The NME is not what it used to be. It used to be cutting edge journalism, it used to review albums fully rather than the throwaway sections they have now, they used to provide editorials full of debate and conjecture. The world has changed around the NME, the Internet has offered so much more to people and the NME has changed in return. It has dumbed down, it appeals to a target market that it wouldn't have done beforehand, it now appeals to a younger market that need to be guided into music, with magazines like Uncut and Mojo providing the serious topics in a magazine format.

So the NME may be behind all these bands they promote, but you know something, at least they're still out there promoting bands. They may be doing it for their own commercial gain, but they're not a charity and at least they are putting on shows and giving kids the chance to get to these shows and see bands they may not have previously had the chance.

You don't have to like it but to dismiss these bands as bullshit just because a major magazine backs them is terrible and indicates a need to be cool and cutting edge as opposed to being a music fan. Clearly there is a problem for some people as whenever the NME recommends a band, there is an automatic rejection of these bands by some. That's a level of ignorance and "sheep-like" behaviour, very much the same as those who allegedly choose their music selection due to what the NME says.

So yes, there are plenty of reasons to dislike the NME because it isn't as great as it was (then again, what is? We're living in an age of nostalgia where people are convinced that PacMan brings greater enjoyment than a modern game like MarioKart. Lets not get caught up in the old memories equals fun times way of thinking). The NME though, are still in the business of giving press and praise to bands and bringing them to the publics attention, so no matter how they manage to do it, its probably best to still give the bands a chance as opposed to writing them off without hearing a note.

At the end of the day, the first two Klaxons singles were absolutely brilliant and this writer was delighted to get the chance to see them at all, and it didn't matter if it was under a banner of NME, RoomThirteen or whatever tawdry tabloid newspaper you would care to name. The bands the important thing, how you get into the music shouldn't really matter at all. Unless you hear about a band from RoomThirteen, then you should go and tell everyone where you heard about them.