M: Me and Ilja, we were talking that you, guys, you have that American element in your sound as well, you don’t sound like a typical European band. You’re really familiar with the music they’ve been producing.

R: I think it’s what we listened to when we were younger. Probably we sound very English to American ears, I’m not sure. 

I: He (Julian) knew about you from the American radio. 

R: Yeah, that’s right. We’ve been really out there right from the beginning. In fact, ur first audience was built up in America. 

E: yeah, we spent a lot of time touring out there with our first record. We were out there for a couple of years doing our work.

M: It obviously affects the rest of the things you do.

R: Yeah, it changed our idea of how much work was involved, so the work ethic thing. I think we realised it when we toured with Julian’s band the Whigs on that very first album tour, so we’ve been friends since then. So this is another kind of lucky thing or it feels kind of like a faith kind of thing. We realised the distance, the level of musicians and all the different kind… how many bands there are in each city. So to have any kind of presence you really have to work hard. We learnt that there and I guess we brought that back to what we do over here. It’s just fun, it’s great when anyone’s music translates to different countries, so we really appreciate it when audiences for us, you know,  the same reaction happens whether we’re in Europe or in UK, or further.. It’s kind of fun when music gets rid of those borders. We want to hear good music, you know.

M: We were talking earlier – there are no rules anymore, you can record anywhere you like, so you can split between USA and Europe and wherever. 

R: It’s an ever changing thing. Everytime we make a record the world’s changed again and especially in music. Elements on a record that were definite, like demo things, that we took right through to the final thing – we got a chance to work in Nashville recording, and that was another ambition of ours and a really amazing experience.

E: It was the first time we recorded a full live band out in Nashville. We were working with Richard X. in the studio in London and still recording live instruments, but a lot more electronic stuff was done on the programming side of things, so it was great to bring those two worlds together, playing with that line of the electronic and the live band. This time it was really good to be able to record in America. We had done it once for a couple of songs for our previous records, so it was great to be there and actually record a whole set of material. And it has it’s influences, you know, being in Nashville.

R: Yeah, I wouldn’t say ours is a traditional sounding Nashville record. And I think, we realised that some of the language and the way we work, especially the language, in the musical kind of way. We had lots of fun. You realise your differences when you get in that kind of intense environment. But it was cool and slightly mysterious, we weren’t finishing the album there, we were just doing backing tracks. Like the backing track to Carnivorous with no context, I’m sure it was quite interesting to anyone that was in the studio that day. We did some amazing things, we did some cool stuff, anything acoustic, so Julian was doing lots of percussion, and, like an old 1920s vibraphone, electric vibraphone and tubular bells and stuff that we didn’t have access to in England. We went to town in the studio with that kind of stuff. Some of those ideas really made the record and glued together some of these electronic parts with some real… yeah, some interesting things that we hadn’t tried before.

Yeah, it was just cool. I think we’ll do something a little different next time, and just not to repeat ourselves again. I guess as soon as this record’s out we can start to think about what we might fancy doing next. And that kind of feeling… it’s almost an itch you have to scratch to make another record. You get the satisfaction of making an album, as soon as it’s out it’s like… that next cup of coffee. Or whatever. So, I’m waiting for that.

M: Do you have the same approach when you write lyrics? 

R: No, the lyrics is a painful, long process. We often write the title and then a year later finish the lyrics, because it just goes on and on. Sometimes it comes all at once.

E: Yes, sometimes it just appears, doesn’t it. We got this little collaboration between us two. Which is good, we work quite quickly together.

R: We often say absolute gibberish, and then the other one writes down what… what’s that thing where you do like a medium and they kind of do an automatic writing. Then we just sing the demo and it’s absolute nonsensical noises and then the other person would listen to it and write down what they think the lyrics are and often that’s the best. And it’s not that kind of contrived, lumpy field of writing verse. Sometimes it comes all at once like Love is all you love is a bit more like that and sometimes we are on the train to the studio and we have to record that day and we just finish them quickly.

R: Sometimes pressure is good, you just have to do it.

I: I think that many people reading this can relate.

E: Sometimes there are lyrics that have stuck around and have never found their place with a certain mix of music. There’s an instance of that on this record. A couple of times small lines appear and you think “aaahh, finally I get to put this in a song”. Yeah, some things take a bit longer.

R: Yeah, and we also have songs, music that does that as well, like sometimes there’s a song that we’ve had since the beginning of the band just waiting for a moment, and a record that it would fit in to. And sometimes a song can be written that day and recorded the next day and another one can be written when we first started out. But we almost weren’t the right band to release it, it wouldn’t have been in the right context. That’s an interesting bit of it – putting together music and deciding what material goes together. And hopefully, those decisions are good.