This screech from within was a merciful release of sorts – 'Ignore The Machine' an instant slash through the pseudo-sensibilities and everyday ache of gripe-pop. Their record is nonsense and perfect. Both mocking and passionate. An apparently brainless ooze of noise. I think it's positively romantic!

Nik: 'It's great that you laughed at it. Everybody makes their own interpretation. It's a good feeling record, it makes me feel happy."

Nik is Nik Fiend, mouth artiste with the gait of Herman Munster, the eyes of Marty Feldman and the voice of Alf Garnett. He virtually sizzles through the interview. Marginally less flamey is Chris, manager of synth affairs and listed as Mrs Fiend on the record. (Mrs Fiend! Imagine a pointed eared housewife in curlers rubbing Brasso on goblin-shaped cutlery.) warming up towards the end is John (aka Ha! Ha! with drum machine) and remaining fairly cold throughout is Dave (Yaxi – guitar).

Chris: "It's quite emotional as well, sounds good whatever state you're in. You've really got to get into it and then you'll see exactly what I mean."

Nik: "Lyrically it's a little story , chunks of what was happening to us as a group at that time. I wrote pieces down. It's something that meant something then, that's why it's delivered with a lot of feeling, it's how we were all feeling. Coming home at seven in the morning in the thunderstorms, seeing everybody off to work when you're just come back from work!

"You get into bed and three hours later you're off again. It's about that confused state doing a tour which none of us ever had before. Its a confused record, I suppose."

And does it resolve the confusion or maintain it?

Nik: "Maintain it, I think. I'm a confused person. We're all confused. We have our moments and I write them down. With 'Ignore The Machine' John sparked it off by writing the title and getting the music going for it then we just kicked it around. We didn't plan it, it just happened."

'Ignore The Machine' has been kicked around, beaten out of the familiar , formula grid. Musically, it's a very strange shape.

Chris: "We were originally going to record a completely different song but this was the way we felt and a better statement at the time. It meant more."

Nik: "It's like saying thanks to all the people we met on the tour. I'd never been north of Watford before but you go out and all the ba rriers break down. I was terrified when we pulled into Glasgow but everybody was tremendous. And you just wouldn't go to these places unless you were in a band.

Interesting that they explain the song in that way because it's not obvious at all. The words are like fragmented phrases of a bigger idea. Little triggers – possibilities spring forth. Dig in your teeth and suck out a meaning.

Nik: "That's why we wanted to do an interview. Not to tell people how big our heads are but to explain things a bit more deeply. If you write all that on a record you'd need a book."

Chris: "Not to explain the meaning but the reasons and the feelings. If you explain it in neat little sentences it just takes away what people can make of it for themselves."

John: "With us someone will get an idea, a rhythm machine pattern, a riff on a guitar or a noise on the synth, then we'll sort the basic thing out at our house. Nik usually doesn't sing anything until he's in front of an audience. Then the songs will change as they go on."

Nik: 'It's like rapping in a way. It's not rapping, but it's talking about everything that is relevant to you there and then. It's a way of introducing yourself to people instead of having a great preconceived load of shit which you come on with and waddle out." (Such a quaint turn of phrase, this boy!) "It's spontaneous and after two or three songs everybody is having a party."

John: "Rehearsing is a waste of time."

Chris: 'It is for us but I don't think you can say that for everybody, It's just that rehearsing is so. . . so. . . so... so... boring, If there is audience you can work off them."

John: "If it falls apart it doesn't matter to us."

Nik: "'School's Out' at the Batcave, we played backwards or near enough."

John: "He (Dave) hit his head on a speaker so he couldn't play anything. After that we just fell over him."

Nik: "We laughed with it and so did everyone else. If we had stood there serious musicians and fucked it up, everyone would have gone 'ha, wankers'. We admit that we're mental and could fall apart at any moment, it's half the fun. It's like the Munsters, I mean Herman Munster is always fucking everything up, if he was seriously going 'eeeee I'm a monster' everyone would just say 'fuck off, we've seen that before'."

Far be it from me to advocate the reinstatement of the cloistered untouchable, but deliberately assumed 'coldness' from certain of our pop stars can be a comment on the state of audience/performer relations and one not lacking in wider social connotations.

Still, none of this for Alien Sex Fiend. They are all street-level and shoulder rubbing.

Nik: "I'm not knocking Bauhaus, but the people that went to their gig felt the remoteness. They paid a lot of money to get in and there was no talking, no conversation to acknowledge that it was anywhere different from the Lyceum or Hammersmith Palais.

"I like a reaction from people even if they don't like it. I don't expect people to go 'oh, wow' but just to react. I think a lot of kids appreciate that.

"When we play it's emotional, the way we feel comes across. But if the audience really get behind you and lift you, you change. That's why 'Ignore The Machine' was a big turning point every night on the tour. All of a sudden, even if people had been cool throughout the gig, they would let themselves go."

Chris: "It's a peculiar song."

A sweet, nutshell- like summation there. Definitely, oddly, uniquely, 'Ignore The Machine' has a life squirming out beyond it's form.

She continues: "I mean, Gawd knows how many times I've heard it, there's all sorts of things going on in there. I don't know how Yoof (nee Youth, who produced it) ever made head nor tail of it."

Enough. Let's flip.

Chris: "The B-side really is a contrasting song."

Nik: " 'The Gurl At The End Of My Gun' is about several different things which are all relevant to us. Getting stitched up, and certain people's opinions of us.

"A lot of people we've had dealings with come from really rich backgrounds and they're living out the rock bit, they're slumming it in some seedy squat and going 'we're the poor destitute legions' and boring everyone. We're not saying that. We're saying that we want to take it to its fullest extent, there's no bollocks about it, and we don't want to be like anybody else or categorised because we're doing our own thing.

"We don't fit into a movement. The Batcave thing was just a place to put it across to people instead of playing in a pub to ten or twenty people. There's a lot of things we want to do, not just stay at a cliquey underground level. We want to make music and sell records, because if they don't sell we can't make the next one."

Cliquey underground things can be a blessing and a curse. Exactly how do you break out?

Chris: "I think we already have. We did the Batcave which was nothing like London Batcave."

Nik: "I don't think we're obscure enough to stay cliquey underground. We're not contrived enough, we take too many drugs, basically our hearts are on the table. Most people sit around and think about it then rip everybody off. If someone asks us to do a gig we say 'yeah, we're ready.

"The first two or three we did people hated us, it was a big noise with everybody screaming their bollocks off and pulling things over.

John: "Even I didn't like it."

Nik: "I feel really great now, like a hundred million dollars. I've got nothing and I'm happy. I used to have nothing and be unhappy."

Hearts on the table. I like that. Easy to drive a stake through.

Love it to death.