Seeing Red

The fact he can sing and write appealing pop songs also helped stack the cards in his favour. Guillemots' first album, Through The Windowpane, featured string and brass sections and delicate melodies plus pop songs Made Up Love Song £43 and Trains To Brazil.

The lush debut reflected the lavish surroundings in which it was recorded - Air studios in North London, which was founded by The Beatles' producer Sir George Martin.

Red, too, is the product of where it was conceived. The four-piece took out a long-term lease on a studio in a gritty East London district.

"I think having our own place is what we've all always wanted," says Canadian double bass player Aristizabal Hawkes. "The studio's like a home really. We don't have to tidy it up and we can come over in the middle of the night if we want, there are no time restraints like that."

As a result of the new surroundings, Red is much more sparse and industrial-sounding. Distorted, aggressive basslines occupy many of the album's 11 songs, while death is a constant theme running through many of the tracks.

"Yes, a lot of it's about death," nods Brazilian guitarist MC Lord Magrao, "But not in a negative way. I don't think dying is the end of anything anyway."

It's then pointed out the most prominent theme on the album is the sky - nearly all of the 11 songs mention the heavens in some way. None of the band have noticed this, and the realisation comes as a bit of a shock.

"That's a good point," says Fyfe, visibly thinking through the lyrics of the new album to check. "It's not intentional. I did have this thing a few months ago where I thought we should call the album Towers, which is a terrible name. I thought the songs were either about looking up, or falling down."

"We often get asked why all our songs sound so different from one another. We don't really know though," says Fyfe.

"Take an album like Revolver by The Beatles. It has Tomorrow Never Knows, Here There And Everywhere and Got To Get You Into My Life on it, which are all massively different songs.

"It's 40 years old, and it's weird how things have moved on. People used to want variety, but now music fans are almost suspicious if you make an album where every song is different," he continues.

"Isn't it boring where every song on an album sounds the same? It works for some records, where there's a mood across the whole thing, but I think as people we've just got short attention spans, so it's exciting to have an album like this."

All four members of the band helped write Red, whereas Through The Windowpane was written almost exclusively by Fyfe before he even formed the band - he recruited a band to bring to life the album he had in his head.

Drummer Greig Stewart is a huge fan of African music and his influence can be heard clearly on every song, while MC Magrao, who hails from Sao Paulo, explains how his guitar sounds are heavily inspired by the sound of the city in which he grew up.

"I want to create sounds like a motorway because I was born near one," he says. "I'm not directly influenced by samba music, as you might expect, but I'm Brazilian and I have my country in my blood."

Arista, meanwhile, confesses she loves Rn'B and hip hop, and the jazz music her dad played when she was a youngster has also seeped into her playing style.

"I've lived in the UK since I was ten, but I go back to Canada a lot, and my mum lives in LA, so I go there to see her. I guess that's where my hip hop fascination comes from."

Their current single, Get Over It, is currently getting airplay on the nation's radio stations. Airplay is something of a sore point for the band, however, after their most commercial-sounding song Trains To Brazil, failed to set the airwaves alight. The band then made a rare concession and re-recorded their next single Annie Let's Not Wait in the hope of getting more exposure.

"We didn't do it under duress or anything, but we regret doing that now.

It worked, though, because that song's the most-played thing we've ever had, but we all felt really blank about it because it was nowhere near as good a song as Trains To Brazil," says Fyfe.

"Part of me wants to scream out 'we're pop!' and have No 1 singles while the other part of me wants to be really obscure and only release limited edition vinyl. Ultimately, we want to be hugely successful, be poppy and have people love us, but only because our songs are so good."

■ TOUR DATE: May 27 - Newcastle University ■ Guillemots released their second album, Red, on Monday