So, Gary, what are you up to now?
Well, today’s the first day off for ages. We’ve been touring for the last three months and I’m just a bit busy. Eric’s gone back to Los Angeles.

Are you planning something new about vacation or work?
No, I’m not planning vacation… just a chillout. I may go for a while. I’ve got a friend up in Scotland who’s gone fishing and I may go and join him.

Do you go to Scotland often?
No, not enough. I mean, maybe a couple of times a year.

Let’s talk about the new album. Could you tell us about the idea of making it, the way it was born, the way you created such a sound, which is so different from what you have done in the past.
Well, it was quite a natural progression, really. I had a band with Eric…

King L…
Yeah, King L, and that was a real electric guitar kinda thing…

Yeah, but what has changed from Danny Wilson to your solo album to King L to Transister?
Hoo, I don’t know…

Difficult question?
Yeah, I just can’t draw the line between each album… I can hear stuff in Danny Wilson, King L, Transister…

Are you missing the Danny Wilson times?
I miss the people sometimes… like anyone.

Do you still hear from them?
Sure.

And are you thinking of doing anything with them again?
We’ve never seen, you know. But Kit has his own band now which has still tons of gigs together now, makes his album things… I’ve had… just occasional things with Ged over the years…

One of the things your fans regret most is that you don’t sing in the new album…
Well, I made something with Transister… What happened was that we didn’t really know what that was gonna be when we started the Transister thing. Basically I bought a sampler, Eric and I started messing around in the studio and really liked what we were getting with the samples. Both had this idea at the same time, to ask Keeley if she wanted to try and do some stuff, because we’re friends with Keeley. The original thought was that it was going to be like a solo thing for Keeley. The first thing we did was "Look Who’s Perfect Now" and then we had more stuff, and basically withing a few weeks we had half of the album done. But it just worked out so we had to sit down and say "What the hell is this?" And it was really then that we decided to make a glovy together, with all we recorded… six tracks. And in the process all I said was "I’m gonna miss singing if I don’t sing, if I don’t have the freedom to sing, so all I want you to know is that if I’m gonna do this every now and again I wanna do songs that I sing"… I mean, not necessarily with the band, but be free to make a solo record or whatever record I wanna make. And they were totally cool with that, cause they understood that’s where I came from… They were cooler than the record company…

And how long did it take to record the new album…
Well, the first six tracks we had in six weeks, because Eric had to return to America because of these visa problems… and that was an unbelievable streak of luck cause when he got there and played the tape to Chris Dereader (sp?) who’s a dj there in Los Angeles. He started to play it on his radio show and every record company on the planet was phoning Eric trying to get off a deal, straight out of the blue. It’s so hard to happen… So I had to go in the process of sorting out recording deals and stuff. It takes quite a long time, with lawyers and all involved. So we had half of the album… Very much every company that we spoke to said to just continue the way that you’ve been working… and we went to the studio again. By the time that we got back together again we’d forgotten how to record… (laughs) and everybody just wanted to experiment with different things, so this second half took us longer to get back in the groove, probably twice as much as it took us to do the first half.

Was there any album that influenced you in the use of the sampler?
There were masses of albums that were blowing me away… specifically Tricky’s stuff… And there’s a label here called Mo’ Wax. It’s run by this guy called James Lavelle, one half of U.N.K.L.E., and DJ Shadow, and they do these compilations called "Headz", with all different artists remixing different stuff…

And what records influenced you by the time of Danny Wilson, of your solo album and King L?
Well, I always listen to everything really, I can’t say one thing or another. Actually, it’s a question that you get asked a lot but I still never find an answer.

Yeah, because maybe readers or fans want to know what you’re listening to at the moment…
What I’m listening at the moment… Well, two favourite albums at the moment. The Massive Attack record I think is fantastic and a band called Dawn of the Replicants, which are Scottish and then there’s a drum’n’bass band - well, it’s two guys - called 4 Hero and they’ve done a pretty cool album where one side is all acoustic instruments and the back is all jungle and drum’n’bass.

And what is the last album you bought?
4 Hero.

You mentioned Scotland. How much of Scotland do you think is there in your music at the moment?
I think it’s always there. I think Scotland has a fundamental effect on the way I see music. I like my music to be emotional. I think that comes really from Scottish folk music and soul music.

Staying in Scotland… your sound has been compared to the one of Garbage. Is it annoying for you?
Not annoying. They’re one of the groups that have blended guitars and techonology. At the moment, at this point, where the dance culture and the rock culture are combining, they’re one of the groups that are doing it best. What do you think of the Scottish pop scene, which has changed a lot over - say - the last ten years… I think it’s always moving and always changing. I think the all the special things that come out of Scotland have nothing to do with any scene. I think the Blue Nile, this band Dawn of the Replicants, they seem to have come out of nowhere in Scotland, because they’re kinda isolated. There is a scene in Glasgow, there is a scene in Edinburgh and there’s maybe a small scene in some of the other towns, but there’s no Scottish scene as such. To me everything seems to come out of a vacuum…

Yes, but there used to be a scene in the Eighties, with such bands as Deacon Blue, Love and Money, Danny Wilson…
You see, even at the time I used to say that there is a talk about the Scottish scene because there was a frenzy of record companies signing Scottish bands and Danny Wilson had nothing to do with it. When we went to do festival, concerts or television shows and stuff where we would meet Deacon Blue, or Hue & Cry, or Blue Nile or these people we hadn’t met them before, so the scene itself to me anyway was a mess because I came from Dundee and a lot of them came from Glasgow.

But it was all perceived as a kind of one only Scottish wave.
I don’t know why it happened particularly.

Which track from the new album describes the mood of the album and the band in the best way?
' Stars Collide', probably, a kind of walk in the past… But the great thing about Transister is the collaboration. When we write we just sit with the guitars. Everyone brings in an idea. I can really hear everybody in all of the songs… ‘Head’ was another track that I was particularly involved in. But I wanted to have the band try something that wasn’t written purely on acoustic guitar…

Can you promise your fans anything about another solo record?
I will definitely make a solo record, whether it’s under my name I don’t know yet, but I want this next record to be a Transister one. Keeley and Eric and I already have new ideas and we’ll talk about it, then I’ll probably think of a solo record, but I have been continually collecting ideas and songs, not for Transister but for me…

Do you already have demos?
One of two things… but I don’t like to record demos too early, because I like things to develop in your head, I like to think that the song is good enough to last till I’m ready to record it.

You once wrote a letter to your fans, saying that the King L is not dead. Do you still think so?
I was thinking about it yesterday. I just got home and I was thinking: "I must see Neill MacColl, cause I haven’t seen him for ages" and I wonder if we ever do stuff together again… not just Neill and me, but with the King L. I would like to, because I think that was a brilliant combination of people. Last night when I got home, it was around midnight, one of the messages I got was from Neill…

So there’s still a chance…
We’re still in touch and there’s still a possibility.

So the King is not dead…
No… (laughs) we shall see.

One of your songs went like ‘From a boy to a man, from a man to a king, from a king to a clown’… Who do you think you are now?
A bit of all these things actually (laughs)

Choose one.
I feel like a boy. Something like doing music in suspended animation… You don’t actually have to grow up (laughs).

Could you just pick up three words to describe yourself at the moment?
One could be ‘busy’… I was going to say ‘busy and tired’, but that’s not painting a very a good picture (laughs)… Oh, that’s a hard question. I can’t think of them now. I just woke up.

Okay, I will replace the question with another one. Which is the last book that you read? Oh, I’ve got two books I’m reading at the same time, at the moment. The book I’ve been reading on the road is called ‘These demented lands’ by Alan Warner and the other book that I was reading is this 'Conversations with God' by Neale Walsch.

Do you still play Danny Wilson songs at your gigs?
No, cause I don’t with Transister but I did some solo acoustic things recently and I play songs from every single band, every single period…

Will you come over to Italy sooner or later?. Anything planned?
Well we’ve got a rough plan for Europe, around September time and we’ll also have some dates in Australia. The rough plan depends on how the record’s doing so that we can finance it. It’s quite expensive to take a band in concert… It depends on whether fans want to come and see us (laughs).