James Nicholas Righton (born 25 August 1983) is a British musician. As well as singing, he was the keyboard-player of the London-based new rave band Klaxons, which disbanded in 2015. In March 2016, Righton announced his new project Shock Machine with a video directed by Saam Farahmand.
Righton released his first solo album The Performer on Soulwax's Deewee label in March 2020.
Righton was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. Righton's father, a musician and cobbler, encouraged him to be a part of several bands that performed regularly while he was still at Stratford-upon-Avon High School.
While attending the High School at Stratford-upon-Avon, Righton met Simon Taylor-Davis and taught him to play the guitar. While working towards a career as a performer, Righton worked as a music teacher. He attended the Benicàssim festival, where he again met Simon Taylor-Davis, and soon after that the two met Jamie Reynolds in New Cross, London. When Reynolds lost his job, he bought a studio kit with his redundancy money. The three men began to record and perform live under the name of "Klaxons (Not Centaurs)", a name inspired by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's The Futurist Manifesto. In 2005 this band played with Finnigan Kidd as drummer, until Kidd left and Steffan Halperin joined in 2006, Around this time, the band began using the shorter name of "Klaxons".

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