‍Are you more like Homer or Marge?

Jon Callum, London

Paul: “I’m more of a Homer, cause I'm fat and bald and I eat a lot! And I like telly, my best friend is the remote control. And I like beer.”

Neil: “Can't comment. Don't watch it!”

Paul: “He's a Homer, definitely.”

Were you wary of working with guests on the album after the UNKLE album got slated last year?

Alan Weeks, via email

Both: “No!”

Neil: “It’s not working with them, it’s what you do with them. I don't think the UNKLE album was slated by punters anyway, a lot of people liked it.”

Paul: “It’s just something we've always done. We did it years ago with John Lydon... It is maybe getting a bit out of hand now, that’s why we decided not to have any big name guests on our album, apart from maybe Africa Bambaataa, but even he's not exactly on the cover of Hello every week!”

Neil: “If it doesn't work, it doesn't work, whether they're famous or not.”

Paul: “I’ve been very disappointed in the Oasis/Chemicals collaborations. But love the one the Chemicals have done with Bernard Sumner. But I really like the All Seeing I record, that works really well.”

Paul, why did you leave A Man Called Adam?

Poppy via email

Paul: “I was a paid musician in that band. I wasn't writing music, and it was time for me to do my own thing. I was playing for other people as well, for Brand New Heavies and Primal Scream – I worked on the ‘Dixie Narco’ EP with Weatherall.”

Neil (gently): “That was afterwards, mate...”

Paul: “Oh yeah. Well, everything has a life span. I just wanted something that was more personal, and then I met Neil which gave me an outlet to do it.”

What’s your favourite Bee Gees record?

Luke via email

Paul: “‘Staying Alive’ or ‘Jive Talkin’’. I’ve gotta say, I fucking think the Bee Gees are wicked. I have absolutely no affiliation with their musical style, but anyone who sits on Richard and Judy and gives us a shout like they did, fucking respect to them.”

Neil: “I do wish they had a bit more of a sense of humour about things though. I think they made a fool of themselves when they walked off Clive Anderson.”

What’s the worst argument you had while recording ‘Rhythm & Stealth’?

Colin McNeil, Glasgow

Neil: “We had quite a lot so it’s hard to say. It was less about specific things than just pressure and tiredness. Just a feeling of: 'Fuck, we don't wanna be here anymore’."

Paul: “Sometimes making music between people is a chemical thing, and sometimes it’s not. The creative process creates friction. It's yin and yang. Anyone who says they never clash on ideas is lying. Even Steps might like to pretend it's a fantastic holiday camp but I bet they go through worse arguments than any me and Neil have had!”

Why are guest singers on dance albums always bloody old or ex-punks?

Reiss Edwards, London      

Neil: “Cause they've got the right attitude.”

Paul: “But the people on our new album – apart from Bambaataa – are quite young. And Bambaataa's got the attitude of a 20-year-old anyway!”

Neil: "I think that's a very retro question. It's a pathetic attitude. Age has got nothing to do with people's ability to sing is the answer to that. Sorry, but get a life.”

What’s your fave other Guinness advert?

Crae via email

Paul: “I like all those Rutger Hauer ones in the 80s where he's swinging around in his leather coat looking like an android.”

Neil: “There was one which gets smaller and smaller... do you remember that one? The camera went right into the Guinness and got smaller and smaller, that was state of the art at the time.”

You're probably the best example of faceless techno artists. Do you ever get recognised outside the club environment and how do you handle it?

Sally Ordnall, Manchester

Neil: “I don't think we are the best example. There are much more faceless people and yes, we do get recognised outside the club environment.”

Paul: “Personally I’d rather be faceless. But the reality is if your picture’s in a lot of magazines and on television, people are going to recognise you and that goes with the territory.”

Neil: “We feel that it doesn’t compromise us too much, the way things are. We’ve got a middle ground at the moment.”

Britney or Christina –what's the best pop record?

Mandy Williamson, Manchester

Paul: “I definitely prefer the Christina record to Britney Spears. Actually that 'Genie in a Bottle' record, you take the vocal off and there's a fucking wicked backing track there.”

Neil: “Yeah, I like that record.”

Paul: “I find Britney Spears a little bit offensive, it’s a bit fucking paedophile, man...”

Neil: “I can imagine all sorts of record executives with erections watching her in her little gymslip. It's really seedy and horrible. It gives such a bad image to girls, young kids like my daughter that’ll think that's how they have to behave to get noticed.  I think it’s a really negative image for women in the sense of how far we've gone for sexual equality. It should be banned.”

Paul: “In a more subtle kind of sinister way, Britney Spears' videos are more offensive than the video [‘Africa Shox’] we did with Africa Bambaataa that got banned.”

Is Red Bull the new cocaine?

Pip, Birmingham

[laughter] Paul: “It’s not as good! It’s a bit too chemical for me. I’m sure it’s about as harmful for you as cocaine. It’s a bit of a live number though. It gives you a kick.”

Neil: “Yeah, but only as much as a cup of coffee, but you can’t get coffee in a club.”

Paul: “It’s a bit of an English thing, you’re not allowed to have tea in a nightclub.”

Neil: “It’s like you can’t have a glass of wine in a pub. You feel an idiot. Pro Plus – let’s go back to them, they work better than Red Bull.”

It seems you’re responsible for Chris Cunningham giving up promo videos. Guilty?

Mark Harris, London

Neil: “My answer to that is: ‘Bollocks’! That’s just Muzik stirring it up. Chris told us he’d come to an end with music video and wanted to get into feature films.”

Paul: “I think it’d have to be far more important than making our video. It was a bit of an epic, but it’s not quite like flying around the desert with Madonna, with her and her tantrums, you know?”

Neil: “We did change the track, but it still fitted perfectly with what he’d done.”

Paul: “The problem was, and this was unfortunate for Chris was that he had to make a video for a track that wasn’t finished.”

Let’s have a punky reggae party! What you bringing?

Christopher Sawyers,Wrexham

Neil: “‘Babylon’s Burning’ by The Ruts, always goes down well.”

Paul: “‘Mirage’ by Siouxsie and the Banshees, on their first album. Top fucking guitarist, one of my favourites. On a reggae tip, anything by King Tubby.”

Neil: “That ‘East of the River Nile’ album by Augustus Pablo. Then there’d have to be something by Subway Sect.”

Paul: “Emergency by 999...”

Neil: “I hate that.”

Paul: “’New Rose’ by The Damned.”

Neil: “I hate that as well.”

Paul: “’Shot by Both Sides’ by Magazine – that’s a brilliant record!”

Neil: “Back to reggae. I’d have anything by Keith Hudson. ‘Pick a Dub’ is a wicked album.  Mr Basie, the first release on Rough Trade, that’s Augustus Pablo as well.”

Paul: “We’re going back to punk times to choose our reggae!”

What swear words are you most likely to use in the studio?

Johnny, Dublin

Paul: “Cock was very popular on this album.”

Neil: “We were thinking of calling the album ‘Sea of Knobs’ at one point...”

Paul: “Shit Bollock was one that was used quite often. Shit Bollock Arse.”

Neil: “You’re making ‘em up. Nobody ever said ‘shit bollock’ in the studio, Paul, sorry!”

Paul: “You know when you’re looking for a new swearword and you do it by joining ‘em up. That’s what we did a lot. Like cunt-wank-fuck-bollock. Sometimes one swear word isn’t enough.”

Neil: “Remixing swearwords, that’s what we do.”

Has your hearing been affected by using such ridiculous sound systems?  I SAID HAS YOUR HEARING BEEN AFFECTED?

Mike via email

Paul: “Difficult to tell. Might know in ten years’ time. Bass end doesn’t affect your hearing, it’s mids and tops that do it. That’s why a lot of people like Pete Townshend have gone fucking deaf, cause they were using Rickenbacker guitars and hi-watt amplifiers, which are very toppy.”

Neil: “Something like Mogwai live – I fucking love them. I think they’re the best thing I’ve seen for years, but that kind of screaming trebly sound could really do your hearing damage.”

Paul: “Yeah, right. Bass doesn’t affect your hearing, it just affects your internal organs!”

You’ve soundtracked ‘The Beach’ and ‘Shallow Grave’.  What genre of film and director would you most like to soundtrack?

Thom Trindell, Exeter

Paul: “We haven’t done ‘The Beach’ yet! We’ve always soundtracked dark kind of things. You couldn’t see us doing those Honey I Shrunk My Penis type films... Halloween or something like that is closer to what we do. It’s not particularly scary but it’s got an atmosphere to it. Like ‘The Blair Witch Project’. ‘The Exorcist’ is a film that absolutely genuinely scares you. And ‘The Shining’.”

Neil: “It doesn’t matter how many times you see ‘The Shining’, it still scares you.”

Paul: “What makes ‘Blair Witch…’ so original is that it doesn’t have any music. It makes it more real in someways. But it’d be even more fucking terrifying with music as well. It wouldn't have been the same film but it would have been more frightening.”

Paul, as an Ibiza veteran, what five things would you ban to make the island a better place next year?

Linda via email

Paul: “I’d ban all nightclubs. And topless bathing. Obviously things change, and if you’d said to me seven or eight years ago that at the end of this decade Radio One are gonna be broadcasting from there and you’ll be able to walk into a newsagent and buy a magazine on it and then walk into Tower Records and buy a CD of the island’s tunes, I’d have laughed at you. But who am I to stop people from doing what they wanna do? My gig this year at Bugged Out! was the best gig I’ve done out there in eight years.”

You’re at a wedding.  What items do you hope are included in the buffet and what three slow records would you like to dance with your ladies to?

Ruth Stephen, Birmingham

Paul: “Scotch eggs. Wagon Wheels. Pork pie. Party Seven by Watneys.”

Neil: “A vat of wine.”

Paul: “Records to dance towould be ‘Who’s the Bad Man?’ by Dee Patten...”

Neil: “That’s not a slow record!”

Paul: “‘Ça Plane Pour Moi’ byPlastic Bertrand... you can dance in half time to all of these. Then the other one’s gotta be ‘Hi Ho Silver Lining’ hasn’t it?”

Neil: “‘O Superman’ by LauriAnderson. I’d probably have smooch to that in the erection section. ‘Energy Flash’ by Joey Beltram. ‘Uptown Top Rankin’ by Althea and Donna. ‘Man’ by Horace Andy, that’s a nice slow tune.”

Since you’ve been gone the Chems and Underworld have upped the ante on the visual front with Vegetable Vision and Tomato. How do you compete?

Rudyard Harris via email

Paul: “I don’t know. That’s something to think about. They’re all vegetable things, aren’t they? Form a company called Red Meat lighting!”

Neil: “I think candles might be quite nice.”

I heard you held a legendary party in the old GLC building to launch ‘Leftism’ and then the building couldn't be used afterwards. What happened?

Andy McKinley, Edinburgh

Paul: “Actually when we did that party, the builders had just gone in to turn it into a hotel. That’s how we got in. And they didn’t know what we were going to do. We told them it was a cheese and wine kind of dance party, we didn’t tell them it was a great big, massive PA rave!”

Are you physically attracted to each other?

Ped, London

Paul: “Oh yes, definitely.[Laughs] I think we can probably cancel that out.”

Neil: “It’s funny, there’s this thing going on on the internet at the moment about Queen samples on Leftfield records, and it’s turned into this massive debate about: ‘Are Leftfield queens?’ And no, we haven’t ever sampled a Queen record either!”

Celebrity Question

The Chemical Brothers

Is the one down method ofdoing a remix a myth – and what is it?

Neil [looking completely rumbled]: “That’s top secret!”

Paul: “It’s not a myth. It’s an accidental process of creating sounds on the computer. It’s a technical thing of getting the midi notes to play different instruments than they should do. It’s an easy way we’ve found to do remixes.”

Neil: “I don’t know how they know about it though.”

Jockey Slut: “Steve Dub told them.”

Paul: “Yeah, we’ve worked with him when we’ve been doing it. Well, in that case, they can work it out for themselves.  Thank you to the Chemmies for that sweet, nice question. Lovely boys they are!”

Celebrity Question

Mary Anne Hobbs

If you were stranded on a desert island in the company of assorted game show hosts and MPs’ wives, and had to resort to cannibalism to survive, whom would you eat first, Ffion Hague or Les Dennis?

Neil: “I’d make ‘em eat each other and then watch.”

Paul: “Les Dennis probably, because I find him slightly more irritating. Les Dennis and chips. It’s gotta be.”

Neil: “The thing is, whether you like the people or not, human flesh would probably all taste the same.”

Paul: “It tastes like chicken, apparently.”

Celebrity Question

Darren Emerson

When are you gonna do our remix?

Neil: “We don’t get a chance to talk that often these days, so this is the way we end up communicating, via the pages of Jockey Slut. I was listening to their record as I went to sleep. And they’ve had some wicked remixes done. The Micronauts one [‘Bruce Lee’] is outstanding. So, Darren, if you’re reading, let’s talk about it, man, we wanna do it.”

Paul: “It’s Not Forgotten.”

Celebrity Question

Sally Rodgers, A Man Called Adam

Have you left your loungecore days behind you?

Paul: “In the early 80s I was listening to a lot of jazz and easy listening at home. I think now electronic music has replaced that kind of retroness, in that it’s future forward. Stuff like To Rococo Rot, Boards of Canada... that’s modern sort of loungecore for me. If she’s asking me if I still listen to Sergio Mendes, then yes, but a lot’s happened since those days for me musically and again it’s probably part of me.”

Celebrity Question

Sasha

Did you put your DJ careers on hold in order to do the album? Is it possible to do both 100 per cent?

Paul: “No, not when you’re travelling all over the place. I did more gigs in London and Brighton. It’s just a physical and mental thing.”

Celebrity Question

Justin Robertson

What influence does your past musical taste have on your current output?

Neil: “A lot but in a subconscious way. Particularly the last one. I realised a lot of the sounds were really associated with the 70s.”

Paul: “People like Bowie and that, particularly the string sounds on Love. Anyone who makes music is influenced by things, you just try not to make those things too obvious.  You hear something and think, don’t they realise that’s exactly the same as everything else? And they probably don’t.”

Neil: “Then again, Bowie was using sounds that Eno had got directly from really weird German stuff. It’s a bit like ‘Do you believe in ghosts?’” 

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