" GET ON MANOEUVRES WITH THE COVERT INDIE GUERRILLAS UNAFRAID TO PERFORM AEROBICS ONSTAGE

First they took Reading. Disguised as a gangly student with a lobotomised monk's haircut, the General In Chief of British Sea Power, Yan (no surname, no pack drill), marched south from his home town of Kendal in late-1997, infiltrated with the yobbish satellite town with militaristic precision and began formulating his battleplan. He needed someone on the inside, so he brainwashed lieutenant Noble as his right-hand guitarist and the pair spent a year and a half perfecting the British Sea Power mode of attack.
    They would come camouflaged, swathed in twigs and branches and plastic owls like a rocking woodland copse. They would wear First World War officers' uniforms. They would lull the enemy into a false sense of security with readings of archaic , pastoral poetry - Wilfred Owen, Keats, Pam Ayers - and then ack-ack them to ribbons with blasts of Bunnymen guitars and jerky David Byrne yelps. They would thousand-yard-stare their foes dead in the eyes like hicksville serial killers, intimidate them by pretending to be dinosaur rabbits and display their strength and constitution by exercising onstage - jogging, sit-ups, squat thrusts, gymnastic endeavours in general.
    "You have to keep fit don't you?" says Yan (whom everyone keeps calling "Scott", suggesting double-agent shenanigans), sipping lager in a grotty London boozer that's as musty and out-of-time as his bands vision. "The best one is the flying leap, landing in a press-up, but I don't do that one any more because it hurt my back doing it. It helps to move in time with the music, to get physically involved. We try to exercise our minds and bodies."
    Um have you ever tried dancing?
    Yan stiffens his upper lip. "I'm not a good dancer. Every time we do something weird it helps catch your attention. I like getting into the frame of mind of an animal, a prehistoric bunny rabbit. I think it's weird to stand there, have no expression and do nothing when everyone wants to be entertained by you."
    Calling on the Kendal cavalry of bassist Hamilton and drummer Wood for reinforcements, in the summer of 1999 British Sea Power went somewhat ridiculously over the top. The city of Reading fell (possibly 'about laughing') within weeks, at which point BSP suddenly realised the place was actually a boring shithole full of violent pissheads ripped to the mantis on Red Bull and bad speed, and they set their sights on new territories. Next they would take Camden-By-The-Sea.
    "We had to leave Reading because it's got no culture or band scene or anything," Yan explains. "Brighton seemed the best place to move to because it's close to London but by the sea. There's lots of places to play in, the workings are there."
    Home to Clearlake and whole platoons of mad old army sergeants wetting themselves in charity shops., Brighton took British Sea Power to its bosom because they dressed for a different century but - crucially - weren't the Levellers. They set up their base of operations in a bunker called Club Sea Power, which drew sailors and lost souls alike. Among them, one Geoff Travis of Rough Trade, who wanted to help spread the BSP propaganda to all corners of the empire. Before poor old Blighty knew what hit it - BLAM! - the dual singles blitz of 'Fear Of Drowning' and 'Remember Me' were detonated - brilliant and brutal bombshells disguised as soppy odes to loss and inadequacy.
    "'Fear Of Drowning' is about leaving things behind and trying to go on to something new and glorious," says Yan. "It's people who are scared of trying things because they're scared of failing. It's better to try and fail then not to try. I mean, every night we're willing to go up there and make fools of ourselves. The same week I wrote it was when I was living in Lewes, just outside Brighton, and there were these massive floods. That was a bit freaky, sitting there singing about drowning and swimming and whatever."
    Add to all of this warlike wibbling a keen interest in Czechoslovakian architecture, a wish to see the world like a recently landed alien because "apparently it's how Albert Einstein used to think" and Hamilton's habit of making himself black out through hyperventilation 'for a laugh' ("It's something I tried with a friend. One night we were up in the woods and we'd been drinking around a camp fire. It was just something he thought would be a good idea. It wasn't such a great idea.") and you have something more than just a thrilling and visceral Boer-rock band blasting away at the battlements. You've got that quaint British tradition of the timeless concept band in the vein of Dexy's, 'Parklife'-era Blur and, er, Clinic. The kind of band that a) get stalked by ex-goths from Hartlepool who've suddenly found a new personality they can pretend to have, and b) get called and 'art project' by sneery hacks who wish they'd thought of it themselves.
    So basically you're less of a rock band and more of an art project, then?
    "I think we're an art project that absolutely rocks," Yan grins, that One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest stare kicking freakily in. "Music is an art anyway, isn't it? So you may as well accept it, but we don't all sit around discussing or analysing it."
    So the attack plan. First you took Reading, then you took Brighton. Next stop, logically, must be Eastbourne...
    "Eastbourne could be quite tough," says Hamilton. "They get wild out there. And they've got all these sea defences and they know how to build decent trenches."
    Who do you think you're kidding, Mr Durst, if you think old England's done?
British Sea Power are the boys who will stop your little game... "

Left to Right - Wood, Yan, Hamilton and Noble