Sean O’Hagan is rather loquacious and definitely happy to talk about the High Llamas. Music - you know - is a very serious topic, and it deserves all the time it needs. Besides, this is his first Italian interview, and we’re both really glad it is so.

Having a look at the cover of the High Llamas’ new album, "Cold and Bouncy", he explains how the it was conceived. As Marcus Holdaway respectfully watches him, Sean tries to select the best words among the ones that crowd his hyperactive brains. "I’ve always liked artistic ideas, but I’m a kind of instinctive observer. These radical shapes are a recognizable, and also before the last three or four years we’ve been using a lot of surreal imagery, and now we’re moving towards a more graphical representation, visually and generally. Musically, we wanna move away from a sort of obvious celebration of beauty to more conceptual ideas, you know, lines".

When you talk about the High Llamas, you can’t help mentioning Stereolab as well, and when you listen to "Cold and Bouncy" you can’t help thinking of "Dots And Loops". It is rather obvious that we should talk about Tim and Laetitia, then, to whom Sean is much more than a session man. "I talked to Tim recently", says Sean "and he said the Turin show was the best of the tour. But I saw them in Amsterdam, unfortunately… I think the most obvious influence is on this record, and it’s the electronic input which was Andy Ramsay, the drummer from Stereolab… He’s a new sort of whizzkid when it comes to analogue electronics and German modular analogue electronics. Last year, Andy myself and Tim worked on a record called Turn On. It was very much a kind of experimental idea of working with analogue hardware, samplers and stacks of records. We wanted to make a sonic record without many restrictive prerogatives. The music had been written in principle but it hadn’t been fixed in any kind of style. So it’s really just a continuation of a developing idea, so that’s the main influence. The other is that everybody in the High Llamas works with repetitions, obviously we interpret music in a different way, but with the same basic ideas of taking blocks of music and repeating them starting off a fairly complex harmony and semplifying it into a repetition process".

The music of the High Llamas is all but extemporization. They have their own theorems and a logic of their own on what music is made of: sonic blocks that get assembled according to a detailed project, as if there were a well-defined philosophy behind all this. "I think you’re right. One thing I find interesting certainly now more so than a few years ago - and this might sound like a contradiction within the High Llamas experience - is that, even though main influences in the High Llamas obviously are American, the new way we present our music is certainly European, and that’s basically soundtrack music from Italy, rance, electronic music from Germany and the UK, certain aspects of French pop and the new dj culture which has a very interesting experimental base in Europe, even though dj cultures come from America. And I think that music is affecting some of the most interesting music in America, like DJ Shadow who recorded in the UK. I believe there’s a kind of new experimental crossover voice and it’s a very European voice".

The interview is getting serious. Unfortunately, Sean doesn’t have a blackboard to write on, nor a documentary to show me. Just like his music, his ideas are a constat juxtaposition, and sometimes words don’t seem to be enough to provide a clear and full explanation. Nonetheless, it’s all incredibly interesting, and the philosophy class goes on. I have a question for him: "Does the word ‘deconstruction’ mean anything to you?". Sean hesitates, Marcus thinks about if for a few seconds, then, finally, speaks: "Well, in terms of our music, it means deconstructing any elements that might be traditional… " It’s enough to prompt Sean:"Yeah, completely. We come from a very traditional background, harmonically based, but I think we employ deconstructivism as soon as we get into the studio. Our writing used to be based on a very traditional style (Gideon Gaye, three years ago), even though it was developing in a new way of presenting an album. We now almost effectively write in samples, which is a big move on from what we were three years ago. We always try to replace things, not to use quite predictable arrangements. We always try to undermine ourselves, to undermine our own ideas and we had an effective filter in electronics as well. This affects the way we’re deconstructing our own ideas… Take Robert Wyatt’s first record… I think he had a very experimental concept in actually presenting music in one, or four cut-ups, crossfadings. It’s a very exciting way to work with music. Not many people work that way… I like the idea of music metamorphosizing into other things". Some may wonder if the High Llamas’ style is minimalist. Marcus has the answer: "Well, certain elements are, in that sort of purity of electronic things and also in the way they move towards an ending or something that revolves around" Sean gets the ball: "We usually break a lot of the songs down instead of building them up. We come to a certain level, the harmony happens and then we take it apart. We take the arrangements down to a minimalist sort of stage and then we repeat and repeat and repetition eventually modulates. On two occasions, we had two very complex songs which we didn’t think were as exciting as they could’ve been. In the end, we just took eight bars and we slowed the tape machine down to its slowest dragging and it just totally halted the sound. We sampled those eight bars, we looped the sample and we opened up the filter, so we had this gradual modulation of a completely unrecognizable sound into a recognizable sound. The final day we took the decision to disregard it in its original form and totally transform it, which we never did on the last record. We’ve always been aiming to work in that kind of way, but we’ve never had the commitment to do that. Most of the music we listen to now is electronic music, you know, Totus, Cul de Sac, Mouse on Mars, Microstoria, all the new Berlin music. Most of the people in the territories where we’re known would find the position that we have now quite unusual, but what separates us from people working only in electronic music is the fact that we do stuff with harmony".

Experimental music. This is what The High Llamas are all about. When they start off a song, they never know how it will sound like in the end: "We regard it as a pop experiment", states Sean without unhesitatingly: "There’s a number of ideas running through our music. The idea of working within pop music is still appealing. I like the idea of pop music being accessible and kind of a user-friendly medium. I don’t like the idea of elitism or of a special club or whatever. Melodic groups, at the moment, rely more and more on Italian soundtrack music. One of the things I like of the period from 1966 to 1976 is the extremely accessible music, quite minimalist in some respects. The arrangements were absolutely absurd and it all died with the more experimental side of film industry. They didn’t work with big budgets, but they worked with great ideas. And so a lot of our harmonic ideas are rooted in those ideas and to a lesser extent to French soundtrack music, but mostly Italian, Morricone, Nino Rota, Sergio Nilo, that sort of music".

One of the sides of experimental music is living in the past and in the future at the same time, or so they say. It is nice to see that Sean and Marcus listen carefully to what I say, and it’s also nice to listen to them when they discourse on their own music science, whatever be the question. Sean is the one who likes talking most, and he seems to be one thing with his music: "First of all, as a musician, you have to listen to music. It is absurd to say that you are inspired by a divine source and you are a sole voice. Now, we listen to music and we filter those ideas… I think the trick is… when you listen to music of the past… to go to the unexplored areas, not to go to the obvious areas, not to go just back to the Beatles or the Kinks or whatever, which is what most people do (can anyone notice irony, here?, Rainsound wonders), but to go the bound of the very nature of communication. A lot of music is made and a lot of music is forgotten. You have to look into dusty corners of the past. It’s a simple idea of collecting other ideas from the past experience. What I like about what’s happening in music now is the Impulse Records reissue, Alex Coltrane, that ties up with the drum’n’bass, the post-rock in America and electronic music in Germany. Basically people are looking for new ideas, not just relying on the same formulas"

It’s rather strange that Sean mention the same bands Paddy McAloon spoke of (The Bagpiper, issue 11). Maybe it is because there’s really nothing else to look at: "That’s very true. What’s interesting about the Beatles is finding out what influenced their records… With people like Brian Wilson, who has also a big influence on us, I think the interesting thing is finding out what he listens to, who he listens to… Van Dyke Parks has a huge influence on him…"

Someone said that the Pearlfishers succeeded in recreating the Beach Boys’ mood, which is something the High Llamas failed to do "I don’t know whether that’s true or not. I think to lot of people the mood of the Beach Boys was the Pet Sounds kind of thing. I think it was Andy Gill who wrote that. I believe that the Beach Boys were the first experimental pop group. I don’t believe the Beach Boys were a harmony group. Lots of people had great harmonies in the 50’s or in the 60’s, but what made them different was the writing and I think it’s just a semplification to say that we want to recreate this summertime music. Brian Wilson is an extreme example of searching arranger. What we were doing in 1993 with ‘Gideon Gaye’ was intentionally repositioning ourselves from a sort of pop mainstream that we were occupying two years before. For us to make that record was just a strange thing to do, but what we were doing was to find a new direction, and we moved away from the Beach Boys thing into a more arrangement-based music, moving into what we call experimental music. I think Hawaii was experimental, but we were shadowed by the idea of working within the song structure. We were trying to deconstruct ourselves at the end and we didn’t succeed".

‘Gideon Gaye’ had a relatively good success, maybe because of it’s poppy side, and ‘Checking In and Checking Out’ had major airplaying as well. "The idea of Checking In and Checking Out" says Sean "was to be a sort of Fred Neil and John Hartford, but people thought it was the Eagles or something like that and I was really upset. It was supposed to be like John Hartford or Bob Lind or something like that".

Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks. So far, so good. But what about Steely Dan? In Apricots there’s stuff that reminds a bit of them, even if a lot of people wouldn’t say that: "In Apricots… there was stuff there… there’s certainly a kind of acknowledgement in two or three members of the band. Their music affected us, but we didn’t want to carry on with that sound. In 1993 the idea of doing a record sounding like Steely Dan was quite strange. Steely Dan were interesting… they were mavericks… When I talked about repositioning ourselves I was talking about that. Steely Dan were part of the rock culture and with Gideon Gaye we said that we want to be part of the experimental pop culture, not the rock culture. Pop I suppose is a music that can have a common currency, music that has obviously accessibility… I think you can be radical and strange and eventually be accessible. I would say that it’s a music that doesn’t ostracize".

Since Sean likes soundtrack music a lot, I wonder whether "Cold and Bouncy" could be a real movie’s soundtrack… "Well, soundtrack music is probably my first listening… The only vehicle for contemporary accessible compositional music - apart from classical music - is soundtrack music. I love the idea of recurring themes with different arrangements. It seems to be the only area where you can take a few risks. The problem with the pop music industry is that it does attempt to lower the common denominator. I kind of like the idea of working within this area and I think we succeeded at least in this. If I had to write a soundtrack for a movie, I think it would be basically Sixties futuristic… or an animal film, an absurd animal film, like Doctor Dolittle…"

The High Llamas and art. What about literature? What about the new English wave? What about Jonathan Coe and Nick Hornby? "I don’t read as much as I should do. Stuff I do read - I used to - is European stuff… I love reading stuff about London and musical movements. Speaking of interesting writers, I met Jonathan Coe a couple of years ago. He’s a huge High Llamas fan. I couldn’t believe it. I enjoy his work. He’s very playful. Nick Hornby writes pretty readable books but I find a problem. He works with ideas, I suppose he reflects a generation, to a certain extent, but he wrote ‘Hi-Fidelity’, I don’t think he researched too… I don’t know… I wasn’t impressed… I think he got lots of things wrong. ‘Fever Pitch’ was very much a sort of book of the moment. I think Jonathan Coe is very… talented.

Nick Hornby is playful. Are the High Llamas playful too? "We use humour a lot. We don’t like irony. The music of Mouse on Mars is almost playful, genuine, not ironic, not elitist".

What else are the High Llamas? "Pop in confusion. You know, I like the way we actually title songs. I kind of like the idea of telling lies, even though musically I’m totally sort of committed. I like not being predictable. The problem with the most successful pop music is that you know what’s gonna happen…" He’s right, and maybe that’s the reason people buy records… "Yeah, exactly. I find it absurd. I do not understand why some would buy something. Music that doesn’t ask any questions is surely very boring… Going back to the album title, I don’t think the album is cold at all" Speaking of cold, one may wonder what happened to the Coughlan/O’Hagan relationship. Once they were Microdisney, now… are they still friends? "I still hear from Cathal, maybe a couple of times a year. He pretty much finished the idea of the Fatima Mansions. He’s writing new music at the moment, a solo album, I think, I kind of independent release, I don’t know. Speaking of Microdisney, I think very early Microdisney was very much close to the idea of what we are now, you know, strong ideas. It’s quite weird to talk about Microdisney. You start to think about it as somebody else and you really have to think in order to work out whether that’s the truth or not". Yes, the truth… What is it, after all?