Power of imagination

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True Brits (from left): Matthew Wood, Neil (Hamilton) Wilkinson, Scott (Yan) Wilkinson and Martin Noble

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When indie rockers British Sea Power first emerged at the turn of this century, they exuded a satisfying weirdness. Displaying a penchant for army surplus and wildlife-themed accessories, and playing surreal, catchy tunes, they couldn't have been further apart from The Strokes-styled New York bands then in vogue. But while those hyped musicians faded, BSP released a splendid debut, The Decline Of British Sea Power, and grew into a self-styled national institution.

Now about to release their third album, the quartet - siblings Yan and Hamilton (aka Scott and Neil Wilkinson) on vocals, guitar and bass, guitarist Martin Noble and drummer Matthew Wood - still stand out as deeply brilliant oddities. 'We just can't seem to fit in,' shrugs Noble cheerfully. 'I think we've always been part of a parallel universe.'

BSP have happily thrived in all kinds of environments - playing gigs in settings including the highestaltitude pub in England and a ferry on the Mersey, gaining acclaim from the likes of David Bowie and Jarvis Cocker and performing with musical bumpkins The Wurzels. 'When we first started, we genuinely didn't know what we were doing,' admits Hamilton. 'Our earliest songs were more about history; we thought we'd have more fun with this record. There's more of a sense of place as well.'

In fact, there's a sense of several contrasting places. Do You Like Rock Music? was recorded in Canada, on the edge of Czech woodlands and in a 19th-century fort in south-east Cornwall.

It's a work of expansive melodies, found sounds, pulse-racing moods, themes of good and evil, migration patterns (latest single Waving Flags is both a Betjeman-inspired epic drinking song and a homage to Polish workers) and British wrestling chants (on the track No Lucifer) - really, what's not to like?

'Regular studios are too clean,' grins Noble. 'The freezing place where we ended up working in Montreal was like a junkyard, full of old machines and things like that. There was a secret door that led to a room which contained a broken piano - so we pushed it down the stairs and put it on the record. The owners didn't mind; it was pretty smashed up anyway.'

Yan nods: 'What professional musicians block out, we go out of our way to include. We'll take all the strange noises we can get. At Fort Tregantle, we put microphones 50ft up in the air to record helicopters. We were based in this water tower that looked like a squat but sounded like a cathedral.'

While their environments brought strange life to their recordings, BSP also discovered that the military-owned fort was not as deserted as they'd believed when an Army squadron landed to practise night-time manoeuvres. The captain, overhearing Yan singing, described it as the sound of someone being tortured. Yan, however, remains good-natured about their uniformed neighbours.

'I think we were somewhat wary of each other but not unfriendly. We never sold the squaddies ecstasy pills, as Shaun Ryder claims he once did, anyway. We kept them for ourselves.'

Noble recalls another bizarre run-in when the band decided to shoot their long-time stage mascot Ursine Ultra (a 3m-high bear) for their Waving Flags video: 'I was in the bottom half of the bear suit and walked past about 20 soldiers. It brought a smile to their blacked-out faces. They had heavy rucksacks and guns; I was wearing paws and flying a kite. Neither of us was serving a particularly great purpose.'

While BSP have always complemented their music with eccentric visuals, they claim that they filmed this album's backdrops just in case people thought they'd fabricated the entire experience. But what was the most unbelievable thing that happened to them?

'The fact that we lived in a damp, pigeon s***-infested water tower, which contained only two plug sockets for facilities. It rained on all our equipment and we almost got electrocuted,' replies Noble.

'Probably that we finished this album in the end,' adds Yan. 'Also, that you can hire a castle for £50 a week and that soldiers would threaten to take you hostage in a war game. Or that we didn't catch pigeon canker.'

Yan and his bandmates all stand by the album's deliberately ambiguous title. 'We always thought rock music was an all-encompassing art form,' he argues. 'It could even include gardening or animal mimicry.'

True to BSP form, this is both ridiculous and entirely possible. In the meantime, Yan is also working on a 'horror comedy' film. 'You can tell by the common language that cinema, painting and music are not so separate,' he says. 'It's all about balance, tone, contrast and fadeouts. And this is British Sea Power's Hollywood album.' Then he changes his statement, chuckling: 'Nah, it's more like Hollyoaks!'

The single Waving Flags (Rough Trade) is released today. The album Do You Like Rock Music? is released on January 14.

 

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