Our song themes and what we generally write about are maybe more varied. You wouldn’t ever get a German band releasing an album called ‘Pop Robot’ for instance. We do like a number of German electro bands a lot, but our favourites are Wave In Head and No Comment. We feel the production of the German bands is some of the very best around today and that is something for bands like us to aspire to. We like the hard edge of the German production values and the coldness of the drums.
We recently completed our version of a Boytronic song called ‘Photographs’, for the German label Intrapop’s “Tribute To Boytronic Sampler CD”, so it will be fun to put our sound up against the German bands on that release. 

Would you volunteer for colonisation of Mars mission?

 Absolutely not, we’d miss our friends, families and machines too much! We love Planet Earth, it’s our home but we’d certainly offer to play a gig on Mars for its inhabitants, in our space suits of course!
Our new album “Urbanism” includes a free live album called ‘Live On Mars’ for the first pressing only, so it’s kind of topical that you’ve asked us this question. Also, Aidan will actually be meeting Neil Armstrong in the coming months, via his work, so that’s as near to Mars as we’ll get for the moment!! 

Speaking of your latest album, why is it named 'Urbanism'? It contains song called 'Post Madonna' - that title also needs thorough explanation.. <smile>

We originally came up with the concept for our new album whilst on a group holiday on the Island of Fuerteventura (which is off the coast of Africa. During a two-week stay, we noticed many signs on the roads and buildings with the word Urbanism printed on them. It struck us that Urbanism was not only a very strong concept for the new album, but a brilliant title as well. The word Urbanism conjured up such diverse themes and not just relating to industry, but a host of other complex ones too. Themes that we felt could inspire new songs about infrastructure, social housing, the raising of children and their education and life skills, working a 9 to 5 job to pay bills, technological advancements, financial/personal wealth and growth, disappointments in life as well as fame and even failure.The first songs were written on our return home.Songs such as ‘WeAre Industry’, ‘Dollar In Blue Collar’, ‘High’, ‘Digital City’, ‘Spinster’s Kiss’ & ‘Slaves’. We felt we were onto something good when the demos were completed. The songs were some of our strongest at that stage, both lyrically and melodically. Though we weren’t 100% certain on the production at that stage, we were sure of the songs themselves and that was hugely important for us so early on. ‘Das Kapitol’ and ‘The Plutocrats’ were written next. Strangely though, both of these tracks appeared on our “Music For Humans” EP instead, released with Pur Zynth Label in July 2002.
We wrote more songs of course, ‘Liquid Blue’ and ‘Post Madonna’.
Now to clear up what ‘Post Madonna’ is actually about, as we’ve had a number of people ask us why we wrote a song about Madonna. As much as we love Madonna, we’d like to state that ‘Post Madonna’ is not about her at all. Lar wrote the lyrics, as a re-working of the phrase Pre-Madonna, basing the idea on a girl who all her life has got away with being rude, discourteous, using and manipulative towards men, because she’s good looking. Lar’s cutting and clever set of lyrics expanded further on what would happen when the looks fade and the telephones calls stopped. When she no longer had men excepting her bad treatment of them, purely because of her being so gorgeous and getting away with it. 'Post Madonna' is the story of what happens to a pre-madonna later in life that’s all... (continues)