So, how's the tour going so far?
Steve: It's going really well, during the last UK tour we started noticing a difference with the size of the audience we were bringing in. But this tour has been a big stepup for us, it's heartwarming considering we thought that the UK were going to forget about us.

How was touring in the US then?
The US was brilliant, I think the attitude is similar to the UK's - you have to put the work in. But we had such a great time, we did it all in a van and some of the scenery was amazing and there were times when we played more than one state a day.

What's this about meeting Nicolas Cage whilst you were out there?
Haha, it's not as glamorous as it sounds. We were in a restaurant and he was on the other side, eating but we didn't have the guts to go up and introduce ourselves but yeah, it was quite an experience!

You've also played a few places around Europe too...
Yeah, Europe is great. Amsterdam in particular was brilliant, Holland and Germany were faantastic also. But in Amsterdam we were treated like heroes, which was really odd but just so great.

Why did you release an EP instead of a follow-up to 'Effloresce'?
Urm it was just something for the fans really. A kind of 'thank you' and to make the wait for the follow-up a bit easier to take.

(It's about this time that my dictaphone decides that it wants to be hit every 5 seconds in order for it to work - meaning that I had to conduct an interview whilst hitting a dictaphone on the table every 5 seconds... which wasn't very fun.)

Why did you decide not to make a video for 'Amputee' when it was released as a single, as it's a lot easier to 'access' and 'get into' than 'Catalyst'?
That was a while ago now, I think it's because we released 'Amputee' quite early on - before 'Effloresce' and we didn't make a video back then. We thought that if we were to re-release it then we'd kind of be cheating people. We may be re-releasing it for the radio in the U.S. but to be honest, that's a window of opportunity that's missed now because we're going to be more eager to get people to hear our new stuff once it's done.

What was it like playing with the Cardiacs?
Amazing. Just to get the oppurtunity to play with them was great, but then to be asked to play one of their songs during their set was just awesome, a dream come true. I'll never forget it.

What is a 'paper champion'?
Well Mike and Gambler are extremely big Rocky fans and it's basically a tribute to one of the Rocky films where Rocky's fighting competitors that obviously weren't as good as him for the title... and that's basically what a paper champion is. But that's one of the few instances that I actually know what the lyrics are about because Mike doesn't really tell us what they're all about, he's extremely secretive about them.

How was the artwork for Effloresce created?
Well we wanted something ambiguous and photogrpahs of something interesting that suited the music and the journey that you go through the record on. So we were thinking of smoke, at first. We tried blowing coloured smoke through a pipe but it just went everywhere so then one of the artists at Beggars Banquet suggested that we tried coloured ink in a water tunnel instead where it works a lot better. So he was photographing the ink being moved about in the water.

I heard there was quite a bit argument over what the album was going to be called, what were some of the names suggested?
Urm, yeah there was quite a debate on that - it got to the point where I didn't give a shit about what the album was going to be called, it was just such a horrible debate. It was the day before the deadline. 'Fight/Flight' was one of the names we came up with. 'Effloresce' was the best one though because the meaning goes totally with the CD...

Who came up with that one?
I've no idea; that happened once I'd left! But we had dictionaries out and god knows what...

Why do you have that kind of ringing sound at the beginning and end of 'Effloresce'?
That was just there because it basically just fitted with the song 'I Am The Morning' and after we wrote 'Long Forgotten' (the last song on the album) we realised that it ended in the same key that 'I Am The Morning' started in so it would be nice if we did that... It doesn't link up perfectly if you put it on repeat though but that wasn't really the point. Say if you're on this journey and we're knocking your head of with all these riffs then we thought it would be a nice idea to bring you back to where you started from.

Your songs are quite complex - certainly with the drums - is that something you deliberately try to acheive?
Err, I suppose we do because it's us that write them but they go through a number of changes during the wirting process and we always try and avoid anything generic-sounding. If it sounds like something generic then we feel uncomfortable with it. So we experiment and we go through different ways of playing it. The way we write songs is kind of by coincidence really, most of the new stuff we write go through what we call the 'Oceansize Washing Machine' and it comes out totally different as we add more parts to it or change the riffs or whatever. We don't write songs with a specific aim in mind - it just kind of happens, we each apply something to the song and it comes out how it is. We just try and be original and if time signatures is what it takes then that's what we'll do. But we also write some straightforward stuff. We often get criticiesd and people say it's pretentious and it's a strange one because they say, "you're always using different time signatures' for your songs" and we wonder why they care because some people write entire albums in 4/4... It's a strange one...

How did you all meet up to form Oceansize?
We were all music students and were all in our own bands and we had played together a few times and basically once we had finished our courses we decided it was teh group to be in. So that's why none of us are from Manchester we just went to Salford University.

Wasn't one of you fixing helicopters at some point?
Mark used to be a helicopter engineer but he gave it up to fix helicopters. That's kind of a mad story because Mark was earning loads and he's one of those people that has to be great at everything and puts loads of effort into being the best that they can be, so he became like the best helicopter engineer and he was asked to do a coure and we asked him if he wanted to drum for Oceansize so he gave that all up and eventually it's paying off... (laughs)

I started a rumour that he went round modifying clocks to tick to 7/8...
(laughs) He's been drumming for about 12 years and he puts a lot in to it.

How much money have you spent on effects pedals?
Well we've been together for 6 years and we've all just been buying them steadily, we haven't gone crazy or anything but we just buy them when we want to/need to and don't want to get rid of the one's we've bought so we just get a collection building up.

(long talk about effects pedals and bands that use them well..)

If you had to choose five albums that made an impact to your sound, what would they be?
Urm, Pet Sounds - The Beach Boys, Sing To God - Cardiacs, er... (thinks) I should really research these kind of questions before I do interviews... Well those are the two main ones. What Dark Star used to do and anything, anything that you can chew on. Pink Floyd - Dark Side Of The Moon too, those kind of things. I like albums that challenge you and once you get into them you get more out of them and that's what makes good songwriting.

What's next? When can we expect?
Some of the songs are a bit shorter this time round. We're still going to be chopping peoples heads off with our axes and stuff so you don't need to worry about that!