"YOUNG ART-ROCKERS SHAPE THE FUTURE AND RESPECT THE PAST

With china tea cups, a faint mothball odour and quaint pre-war ambience, the Emmaus café in Portslade, Sussex isn't the kind of venue you'd associate with hyper-hip guitar bands. Unless, of course, you count British Sea Power. Formed 18 months ago after singer Yan and bass-playing brother Hamilton moved from Cumbria to Brighton, joining up with guitarist Noble and drummer Wood, they specialise in an intense but restrained form of spectral art-rock.
    Yet at their choice in cafés suggests, these early twentysomethings also specialise in curating antiquated ideas and interests. After all, who else sport ancient Royal Navy uniforms, lionise Czech literature and have a website written in the knowingly starchy style of Pathe News.
    "We also have maritime interests generally," declares Hamilton. "The sea is where melancholy resides, and melancholy is quite an enduring human emotion." 
Noble starts grinning: "I just hope people get the underlying humour of it all."
    British Sea Power's oddball idiosyncrasies took shape at their Club Sea Power night in Brighton, where Russian folk music and Thirties big band music was chosen over, say, deep house cuts and trance anthems. And instead of lighter-sticks and strobes., plastic birds, deer antlers and skeletal trees provide the beguiling club décor. These have since graduated to BSP's captivating live shows, where Yan's bog-eyed, David Byrne-meets-Bez stage demeanour is matched by the band's Bunnymenesque air of charismatic mystique.
    "All I'm doing is trying to be focused on the moment," protests Yan innocently. "People think I'm on crazy drugs and ask if they can get some. They're often disappointed." The same can be said for BSP's singles - 'Fear Of Drowning' and 'Remember Me'. Epic but never overblown, they're a glacial blend of Joy Division's glowering intensity, The Pixies' amp-crunching power, Bowie-ish vocals and some niftily lateral samples and electronics. Fully supported by a revitalised Rough Trade records, a debut album is due in the summer. Noble promises sternly that the LP "will be magical and great. We just won't accept anything less."
    Such commitment to excellence is hardly surprising. Like their stoic Old Britain imagery, BSP hanker for a time before victim culture and relativism eroded human endeavour and confidence. "I don't think the past is wonderful," says Yan, "but, today nobody's interested in the future or our ability to shape it. Previously there was a sense that, like this café's desired 'war against homelessness', any problem could be overcome. Wouldn't it be great if we could apply that thinking to today?" "

'Fear Of Drowning' was included on a cover mounted CD of the issue this feature appeared in

From L - R : Wood, Yan, Noble and Hamilton