Interviewer: Their new album’s called Seven, their new single’s called Seven, they’re James and they’ve come to meet me on a number seven bus.
Well, we didn’t really pick the right day to come sightseeing, I know, I’m sorry. How are you both anyway?
Jim: Very well, thank you.
Tim: Fine, thanks. Will you tell us if any low-hanging bridges are coming up?
Interviewer: I’ll just shout duck. Now, your roots are in Manchester, how are you finding it here in London?
Tim: How are we finding it? Wet. (Tree hits Tim’s umbrella) Hey, are you going to warn us about the trees?
Interviewer: Now, your new album released in February is called Seven, and it seems to have a lot of diverse tracks on it, but are there any running ideas or themes on the album?
Tim: Well, some people have said the word “God” crops up a lot.
Jim: So does the word “and,” mind you.
Tim: And the word “The” is a recurring theme as well.
Interviewer: Now, when you were in the studio recording this album there were some strange things happening, is this true?
Jim: We had this crazy producer called Youth, an ageing hippy, managed to find his way into the studio, and he was in the studio for a few days before us, and we thought he was like setting things up technically, but he wasn’t, he was actually decorating the studio! He’d gone in there and put rugs on the walls, and incense, huge flower displays…
Tim: Hundreds of candles, everything we did was in candlelight. By the way, Youth, if you’re out there, I want you to know that it was Jimmy who called you an ageing hippy, not me.
Interviewer: You have a new single out, also called Seven.
Tim: Another coincidence.
Jim: Amazing.
Tim: Happens all the time.
Interviewer: And there’s a great video to go with it, tell us about that.
Tim: Basically, it was Larry’s fault, the guitarist’s fault. We decided on the idea of having seven awful things happening to the band, or seven elements attacking the band during the course of the video, we were gonna be tarred and feathered, stuff like that.
Jim: And we had wind machines, big wind machines that could actually blow you over. We went for extremes, it wasn’t just “oh, we want a little bit of wind;” if we go for wind we want a lot of wind, and the fire…
Tim: The climax was 9 to 12 tonnes of water dropping on us, we got hit by this tidal wave! You get hit by 9 to 12 tonnes of water, it’s quite a shock I tell you. We ruined this film studio, it was completely wrecked, all the equipment went 40 yards across this converted aircraft hanger.
Jim: It flattened us. We thought we’d be able to play through this wave of water and it just completely flattened us, swept us about across the studio. It was really funny.
Interviewer: So you’re really popular with the studio artist now?
Jim: Yeah, little bit of cleaning up to do I think.