As usual, only Phil and Dave are on interview duties. Football fanatics bassist Andy (A One Man Crowd Called Gentile) and drummer Johnny (The Slammer) have said they'll only do interviews with Match or Shoot, keyboardist Matt (Sheriff John Stone) also opts out, and engineer Martin (The, er, Many Tentacles) won't even have his photo taken. Not that it matters, because the ebullient Phil and quietly cocky Dave are the perfect spokesmen for the Lo-Fis' peculiar genius. The chemistry between Phil's beats and Dave's twisted lyrics makes the music dark, demented and danceable all at once.
"I think we always knew we were going to make an important album," Dave states matter-of-factly.
"We didn't want to be the Beatles, we didn't want to be Oasis, we didn't want to be a tribute band."
Phil agrees. "I've never really got my head around the fact that somebody can think a band
are better than their band," he confesses. "Isaac Hayes is a genius, Marvin Gaye was an
absolute god, but I'd want to do something as good if not better then them."
The Lo-Fis have created their own mythology by cutting and pasting their influences, not
apeing them. At the climax of an early gig Phil poured lighter fluid on his turntable and
set it alight just as Hendrix did with his guitar 30 years ago. The strange names were
inspired by Funkadelic: "bands are a lot more interesting when they sound like they come
from another planet".
"I think you can be rock n' roll just as much with a sampler as you can with a guitar,
" insists Dave.
"Banging, minimal techno can be rock n' roll," Phil adds. "And we can be just as intense and full-on as an early Oasis gig." "We're not what they thought we were," Dave concludes firmly. "They decided to create an image for us a bit too early. It's annoying but the positive thing about it is that everyone was desperately confused about us. I think they still are."