ASF has been around forever & I don't know how to classify them.  At times it seems like they are to dance music what the Misfits are to punk rock.  Check out their song "Coma."

QRD – Alien Sex Fiend used to be referred to as "batcave," then "gothic," & now "space rock." is there any category of music you would like to stay in or do you like people to have trouble keeping you classified?

Mrs. Fiend – I think that journalists often like to be able to categorize music because I think it’s probably very difficult to actually describe styles without being able to use a category. so I think it’s something that we have to put up with really; there’s not much way you can change it. & it’s quite nice if people have trouble keeping us classified. that’s always good. difficult to pigeon hole, we like that.

Nik – we can be anything you like really.

Mrs. Fiend – Alien Sex Fiend really.

Nik – yeah, as long as somebody calls us something, even if it’s shit, & they write about it & spread it, right?  then that’s cool.

Mrs. Fiend – "as long as they spell my name right," as they say. but the category we’d really like to stay in is Alien Sex Fiend music really. cause that covers it all, doesn’t it.

QRD – what country are you most popular in?

Mrs. Fiend – everywhere really. it doesn’t seem to be one place where you can say, "oh, we’re gonna do 10,000 people there," & another one where you’re likely to get 200 people or something. it varies. you find that even in the states there are more people coming to shows in new york or LA than say Tulsa. but that’s more to do with the number of people that actually live there. so it doesn’t really matter.

Nik – doesn’t matter where it is, it just seems to be a turn on for a lot of people isn’t it.

Mrs. Fiend – mm-hmm.

QRD – you’ve had a lot of stuff released in 1995, three cd’s on Cleopatra & some appearances on compilations, is your popularity growing with the speed & immensity of a runaway freight train?

Nik – no, it’s the people who press the records up! their enthusiasm’s running away like a freight train to me! lots of different compilations all of a sudden. we’ve had ten, I think, in the space of as many months.

Mrs. Fiend – I don’t know, I’ve lost track. there’s something out every few months almost. there’s a new one that came out on Dino Nectar Masters or something, Songs from a Black Planet. & Dino’s kind of a tv compilation company & they’ve just obviously decided to jump on the bandwagon, for want of a better word, the "gothic" band wagon. there just seem to be a lot of those kind of compilations coming out.

Nik – Jungle & Mick Mercer were first &....

Mrs. Fiend – the Gothic Rock stuff.

Nik – yeah, & they did it really well with a book & everything. & then since then it’s been like a fucking endless turnover of interest from all different types of people. I must add that we don’t always have control over these compilations coming out.

Mrs. Fiend – all it can mean is they must be selling or these companies wouldn’t keep putting them out. the Cleopatra thing was a little bit different, because we were involved with that one quite closely. someone else picked the tracks, picking out what was hard to get in america. like Back to the Egg because that album wasn’t released in the states at all, which we didn’t realize. a couple of other things, like Stuff the Turkey, were hard to get & we weren’t aware of that. so it was good that someone else actually chose them, but we were involved in the artwork & the liner notes & stuff. that was a bit different, because not every album is available in the states, we’re aware quite a few people are missing big chunks of their collection & it’s always more expensive to get stuff that’s only coming in on import, we’re aware of that & do try to get records out.

Nik – Brian at Cleopatra encouraged it to be something different & it wasn’t just sorta what you would call a generic slap it out, like that’ll do. it was all done with sort of love & attention & a lot of back & forward faxes & artwork from us going out to him & also he was dealing with other people to put the tracks together & stuff. but I thought they were pretty good compilations because for anybody who hasn’t heard but one or two Fiend bits, but never bought a record before, they wouldn’t be upset with it. it’s just loads of different stuff on there.

Mrs. Fiend – I don’t know about "speed & immensity of a runaway freight train," though. it’s chugging along quite nicely thank you, that’s what we’ll say at the moment.

QRD – what bands would you like to tour with?

Mrs. Fiend – we did one time fancy doing stuff with the Cramps, but....

Nik – that didn’t happen, that was two or three times.

Mrs. Fiend – but that was years ago.

Nik – Divine.

Mrs. Fiend – we would have loved to tour with Divine, that would’ve been great. I don’t know really. it’s kind of difficult because a lot of bands seem to not want us supporting them! there seems to be a kind of problem. you get Alien Sex Fiend on & it’s like, "how can anyone follow that really?" with the whole show, the lights, the immensity of the whole thing is kind of too much to get followed somehow. so there’s not many people who would like to have us supporting them. Alice Cooper was brave though, but we couldn’t do the whole stage set. we could only play for half an hour. so it doesn’t really count. I don’t know, as far as support bands go, as long as they’re pretty good. it would be quite nice to do something with some of these dance groups coming up like Drum Club & System Seven & something entirely different. a whole different thing, I quite fancy that.

Nik – hmm. I don’t know, I think that we’re unto ourselves as an entity. we’re a bit like when we enjoy going to see the Orb. I always think Alien Sex Fiend is a bit like that anyway. one thing merges into another. wherever there’s dj’s playing or there’s tapes or there’s music that we’ve prepared before & then you get the show. & the show can go out to all different areas as well. I’d rather do like Mrs. F said, like mix with a weirder different perspective on it rather than just some normal rock & roll cabaret shit.

Mrs. Fiend – it can get a bit boring when it’s band finish band finish kind of stuff.

Nik – yeah. rock & roll’s great & all that, but there’s plenty of people doing it, so we’re just doing our own weird little show & I think that it’s going to have to be different. I think when we did the Zillo festival it was a different emphasis put on different stuff than in its early days.

Mrs. Fiend – we had a dj playing Inferno stuff first & I then started playing keyboards over the planet two mix he was djing with. because I knew that mix so well, I could just start playing over top without really thinking about it. so then as Nik appeared there was a huge cheer because they realize, "it’s Alien Sex Fiend," & bit by bit the rest of the band appeared. so the whole thing was kind of seamless & that was quite good. & we tried to reduce the gap between songs, kind of merge one song into another so it was like a whole piece as opposed to stop-cheer-next song. that was really good. that was the first time we’d done it that way. we’ll see next time that a show comes up for us to do, we’ll just see & take it from there I think.

QRD – my friend Berry had a question, why did you choose "Echoes" to cover on the Pink Floyd tribute?

Nik – why not?

Mrs. Fiend – there is a story behind it, because we did look at doing "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun" first.

Nik – yeah, several of Floyd’s songs.

Mrs. Fiend – what was the other one? "Careful with that Axe Eugene." we quite fancied doing that.

Nik – the weirder more sorta trippy flowy type stuff.

Mrs. Fiend – but because there was a whole load of bands doing different covers it was like once a band had picked a particular track....

Nik – no one was going to do "Echoes" because it was about a half hour long!

Mrs. Fiend – exactly!

Nik – it’s one side of a vinyl album long from the seventies or something.

Mrs. Fiend – the other bands had picked tracks that we were like, "ooh, that wouldn’t be bad." but they’d already kinda got first dibs on them so we were like, "oh, no." so we had to get this whole load of Pink Floyd stuff & we spent ages listening to all these Pink Floyd tracks. & Nik was kind of going, "I can’t sing that," because some of the lyrics are kind of inky-pinky-dinky-winky kind of hippie.

Nik – hippie-trippy. but then we thought, "sod it!" we did it our own way.

Mrs. Fiend – basically we had to find something with lyrics that Nik could get his teeth into a bit because he’s got to get into it a bit. & musically something that I could get my teeth into. so basically, "Echoes" was the only one that had both those sides, the problem was that it’s half an hour long & it has loads of tempo changes & everything. so we really kind of just had to tear the whole song apart & see what was there. it was a very interesting experience. & it was the first time we worked with Dave Dearnaley on guitar, so that was cool. he did a good job.

Nik – everybody did a good job. I mean the whole recording session was brilliant. I think the sound on it was really great. & I think we did justice to it because it doesn’t really, to a certain extent, sound fuck all like Pink Floyd!

Mrs. Fiend – which is good. that’s what I like about cover versions.

Nik – take the idea further instead of just sounding like them.

Mrs. Fiend – yeah. I can’t see the point. if we’d tried to sound like Pink Floyd, we would’ve failed miserably. because they probably recorded it in an enormous studio with weird spring reversed backward echo things that you can’t even buy now because it was 1971 or something when it was originally recorded. it’s just hopeless trying to sound like that.

Nik – but the song isn’t just a load of geezers going off on one, smoking fifty spliffs each laying in a corner type approach like I thought it was. it’s very worked out.

Mrs. Fiend – we were quite surprised, because we thought the original track did sound like they were just, as the expression goes, noodling. like the guitar was just noodling & they were all just kinda having a bit of a jam with it & noodling basically. but when you really strip it down, it’s like a very very strong verse chorus verse chorus type structure. we had to lose one of the verses because it would’ve been too long. I think the whole thing had to be under about seven & a half minutes long for Brian at Cleopatra to actually fit it on the cd.

Nik – we were going to do mixes as well, but the u.k. record company, the old wanker record company, decided in their own infinite shagging stupid fucking wisdom not to give us a couple more quid, pounds, sterling so we could’ve done god knows what with that. so instead we did it with "Evolution."

Mrs. Fiend – we could’ve done a submarine mix & all that & we kept going, "ooh, that sounds great."

Nik – "Evolution" is kind of a throwback from "Echoes." from our frustration having not been able to take "Echoes" infinitely further.

Mrs. Fiend – this new 12" we’re putting out, "Evolution," that kind of ties up the "Echoes" thing; because like Nik says, we couldn’t really do additional mixes. it was like, "go in, do ‘Echoes,’ finish, get out. we’re on a budget." so "Evolution" was kind of a week in the studio going mad. no holds barred. it’s the first time we’ve really been able to do that. the rest of the time it’s been, "you got to go in, do a single, you got two days to do an A & B side," or "you got a month or whatever to finish a whole album off," or "you’ve got six hours in the editing suite to get something finished." so it was always pressure for you to actually come out with the finished item. so doing "Evolution" was really good. it was our own money, so we could go mad.

Nik – do what the fuck we wanted! if we’d come out with nothing other than just having had giggled for a week, that would’ve been cool. (squeaking noise) my boots are squeaking.

Mrs. Fiend – he’s rubbing his feet together.

Nik – yeah, I’m getting excited.

Mrs. Fiend – & also an interesting point is that Dan Zamini who was the engineer for "Echoes" track, he came & worked with us on "Evolution" as well. so that was really good. at the time of doing "Echoes," Dan did not show any signs of being a closet wibbler, a man severely into analog & wacky noises. there was no sign of this at all! he was very very sensible; he kept his sensible head on. & then we started "Evolution" & we said, "Dan, if you want to go mad, go mad." then it was like everything went weird. his other side came out then & he really had a good time, so that was good. so "Evolution" & "Echoes" kind of tie up there.

QRD – do you think a tribute to Alien Sex Fiend will come out?

Mrs. Fiend – I don’t know.

Nik – I think it has, hasn’t it? it’s just called different names!

Mrs. Fiend – people steal ideas from a song & put a different name on it or sounds or whatever, samplers.

Nik – yeah, but we have had enough people go mental for Alien Sex Fiend, for whatever reason, over the last three years in particular. we’ve met all these people – techno-heads, ambient people, etcetera etcetera, from whatever area of music – & they’re all into Alien Sex Fiend, have been into it for ages & that’s really freaked our heads out because didn’t know they cared &/or listened. I mean it....

Mrs. Fiend – it turns out we’ve actually been quite responsible for a lot of dance music that’s come out.

Nik – sorta like we could take all the blame....

Mrs. Fiend – we couldn’t take all the blame.

Nik – no, we couldn’t take all the blame, but we’ve had enough people credit us & respect is due & all the rest of it. we have sorta had people producing stuff that turns our heads on. so that’s the whole reason for doing Alien Sex Fiend, not necessarily for just an album of covers or whatever of "R.I.P."

Mrs. Fiend – if somebody did it, I’d like them to be really different versions, or maybe remixes would be cool. actually I think a remix tribute would be kind of cool. because it might be really difficult to cover some of our songs.

Nik – yeah, because we don’t know what we’re doing!

Mrs. Fiend – sometimes the whole emphasis of the song is just on some kind of weird noise.

Nik – yeah, & that weird noise ain’t at all gonna be in this fucking stratosphere in the near future.

Mrs. Fiend – we should see, send suggestions on a postcard please.

QRD – what constellation would you most like to be?

Mrs. Fiend – have to be cancer wouldn’t it? seeing as we’re cancer people. probably have to be cancer, although cassiopeia would be quite good because it’s a "W" shape & you can see it quite easily. it’s easy to find in the sky.

Nik – venus

Mrs. Fiend – that’s not a constellation.

Nik – no, but his eyes were red & so was his....

Mrs. Fiend – penis.

QRD – what is the coolest suit jacket/sports coat you own?

Nik – my poodle jacket.

Mrs. Fiend – yeah, Nik’s got what calls his poodle jacket.

Nik – like a shaved poodle dog.

Mrs. Fiend – I don’t know if it would be classed as a suit jacket or sports coat, but casual. it’s a casual jacket, the jacket of choice.

Nik – my all nighter jacket.

Mrs. Fiend – & I’ve got this really really good padded jacket because it’s very cold in england right now. it’s one of those kind of tour type jackets. & it’s very very warm & it’s impossible to get cold with it on, the top half anyway.

Nik – they’re both quite authentic looking.

Mrs. Fiend – they’ve been around a bit. well molded.

Nik – at the moment you kind of need every item of clothing you possess; it’s so cold.

Mrs. Fiend – we’ve got some interesting weather out here. I’m gonna stick the recorder out the window here (wind noises & banging). that bang was the door banging because it’s like force nine gale out there. so that’s the weather & why we’re cozy in here.

QRD – what did you want to be when you were nine years old?

Mrs. Fiend – probably a nurse actually. I had a nurse’s outfit.

Nik – yeah, so did I.... no, it was a Batman outfit. Batnurse.

Mrs. Fiend – you wanted to be Batman or Tarzan you told me.

Nik – yeah, I did. I used to wear my swimming trunks with two little pieces of fur at the front & the back. with a little belt around it & a little sharpened ruler. & no where to carry my money or sweets.

Mrs. Fiend – I bet you didn’t play that in winter. that was a summer fantasy.

Nik – I can only remember one winter when it snowed loads.

Mrs. Fiend – I think I wanted to be a nurse. my dad has got somewhere this really ghastly photo of me in this terrible nurse’s outfit. it’s awful. I’ve improved since then.

QRD – what’s your favorite Alien Sex Fiend song?

Nik – all of them.

Mrs. Fiend – I don’t know, I like "Evolution" in a way. it’s always weird to try to look back & think what your favorites are. because, like Nik was saying the other day, you find yourself singing some lyrics or something & you’re like, "god, they’re still relevant now & I wrote that like eight years ago or ten years ago or whatever." I think certain songs come back to you at different times. "Get into It" was really good when we played it at the Zillo festival.

Nik – yeah, they’re all good for different reasons. otherwise we wouldn’t have bothered doing them. none of them are commercial or going to be in the top thirty ever.

Mrs. Fiend – that wasn’t the intention obviously with a name like Alien Sex Fiend. it’s not like, "oh, I’m gonna be number one, top of the pops." that wasn’t the intention really, the intention was more to like....

Nik – experiment.

Mrs. Fiend – yeah, do anything, go mad & hope that the people like it. that was it. so it’s very hard, like asking someone to name their favorite baby & they’ve got six kids. "which is your favorite child?" they’ve all got their own characters. they all mean something to you.

Nik – yeah, if you lost any one of them there’d be an element missing from the collective.

Mrs. Fiend – we have to keep them all.

QRD – does the song "Coma" intentionally have so much deep metaphysical meaning? is 999 666 upside down?

Nik – now there’s a question.

Mrs. Fiend – you might not actually know this, but over in america if you’re in trouble & you need the ambulance or whatever you call paramedics, 911. whereas in england you actually call 999 whether that’s police, ambulance, fire, whatever. generally the emergency number is 999, so I don’t know who would’ve invented that, probably a government somewhere. so probably the government’s responsible for that being 666 upside down.

Nik – yeah, but they do that don’t they? pyramids & all the rest of it. the government knows all the symbolic meanings of things. enough said.

Mrs. Fiend – with a song like "Coma"....

Nik – it’s a weird song, because that bloke came in when we were recording it & he was with this mad party & went, "do you take E’s?" & at the time we hadn’t & didn’t know what he was talking about. "blimey," he goes, "this is blinding." & he was wibbling all over the place & wibbled back out of the room again as they do. & I hadn’t really thought about the connotations of it, because those lyrics were from 1984 & I had strange feelings then about what the fuck I was going on about. I still don’t know what I’m going on about, but it’s pretty cool that you can make all these ideas from one idea of a song. you know you can turn this upside down & it’s 666. you turn this & nine is the number of blah-blah-blah, because I’ve gotten into numerology. it’s just cool isn’t it? there’s no meaning to fuck all. it’s just a little story; journey things are what the songs are. that’s why we keep doing it I guess.

Mrs. Fiend – the lyrics are basically open to interpretation by whatever listeners & it’ll mean one thing to one person & something else to someone else.

Nik – same as pictures. & it means fuck all to some people & that’s fine.

Mrs. Fiend – some think it’s all rubbish or whatever & other people will start writing it all over their jackets & walls & stuff. so they mean different things to different people & I think that’s the same with poetry. if you read a poem then you can interpret it in different ways. it’s the same with lyrics & sometimes, like Nik says, he doesn’t really know what he’s getting at. I think a lot of stuff in his brain, which is like a blender, a food mixer, & the same with the music really; it kind of whirls around in our heads & pops out, "plop," later on. & you’re like, "well what am I on about?" & two years later you’re like, "ah-ha." & it makes another sort of sense to you later on.

Nik – that’s why we keep doing it though basically. because we don’t know what the fuck we’re doing or anything, but we enjoy it. so if we sat there & knew the theory of everything, we’d just sit there like we can’t be bothered & stay somewhere warm.

Mrs. Fiend – yeah, we don’t rally analyze too much what it is; it all seems to come from somewhere else beyond us.

Nik – the only time we seem to think about anything like that is when we’re asked about it in interviews. otherwise we’re like, "this is ‘Evolution’ & this is what we’re doing"

QRD – what bands/music have been most influential & what are your current favorites?

Nik – there’s too many bands & stuff to mention & you always end up forgetting loads.

Mrs. Fiend – well, you know initial influences were things like the Cramps, but for me that was not the sound but more the fact they didn’t have a bass player. the Cramps were nothing to do with drum machines, nothing to do with keyboards & synthesizers, but....

Nik – they were funny as well.

Mrs. Fiend – also there’s a girl in there & there weren’t many girls around, Gillian of New Order & Ivy in the Cramps from what I can remember. the rest of the time if there was a girl in the band they were a singer. so that helped me.

Nik – the humor of them, they were great fun.

Mrs. Fiend – Iggy Pop who likes to stick to his gun. early on stuff like that, Suicide, Bauhaus, Killing Joke, Alice Cooper, that was early on but also mixed with stuff like Pink Floyd, Hawkwind, spacey stuff.

Nik – Rolling Stones’ Satanic Majesty’s album & all that.

Mrs. Fiend – yeah, & since then so much other stuff.

Nik – there’s shitloads of it.

Mrs. Fiend – yeah, our record collection’s kind of gone off in all sorts of directions. & favorites now, what were you playing earlier?

Nik – I played Hallucinogen.

Mrs. Fiend – that’s Simon Posford who actually did some of the work on the oscar madness remix of "Inferno." it’s massively long. it’s seventeen minutes long on the double vinyl album.

Nik – we’ve got one of "Evolution" now that’s thirty-two minutes

Mrs. Fiend – you’re forgetting the vocal version that’s fifty.

Nik – anything that’s good & we hear it, we’re up for it.

QRD – do you believe in extraterrestrial biological entities?

Mrs. Fiend --probably. I think they’re out there somewhere.

Nik – I believe in everything really. you can’t not believe in anything can you?

Mrs. Fiend – well, I reckon you go out there at night & you look up at the sky, all those stars, all those stars have got potential planets like our sun has. so you have to admit it’s a bit outrageous & big headed for human beings to think they’re the only intelligent life in the universe.

Nik – but most human beings are like that aren’t they?

Mrs. Fiend – well, there may be a shock coming. & it would be really nice to think that they’re more intelligent & more advanced than us. more higher conscious & less materialistic & evil & nasty. & they’ve figured out a way of not having wars or something, that would be cool. as long as they aren’t like those ones in V, do you remember that? those lizard people, do you remember that thing? as long as they’re not like that.

Nik – they can’t be any worse than what human beings are anyway.

Mrs. Fiend – those lizards in V were pretty nasty eating everybody.

QRD – are there any particular authors who influence you or your music?

Nik – William Burroughs I think had a big effect on me, whatever it was.

Mrs. Fiend – I like a lot of science fiction, anything with space ships. not really sword & sorcery & fantasy, but spacey stuff. other planets, that kind of thing, I like all that. & I like Franz Kafka, just kind of weird. & the Gormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peake, quite trippy.

Nik – we’re influenced by everything really. comics, like Mister X is a really good comic. Stray Toasters which is completely mental & out the window.

Mrs. Fiend – Bill Sienkiwicz.

Nik – there’s so much of it.

QRD – what do you use for the missile effect on "Now I’m Feeling Zombified?" I have a keychain that makes a similar noise.

Nik – probably one of them then.

Mrs. Fiend – yeah, I think it was a little thing, where did you get that Nik?

Nik – from a service station, Benny had one & I kept pinging it.

Mrs. Fiend – we sampled it up didn’t we?

Nik – I’d run out of words & then just set it off.

Mrs. Fiend – so, yeah, it’s probably exactly the same thing you’ve got.

QRD – do you have a chemical influence of choice?

Mrs. Fiend – well, what are we sitting here with now? a cup of tea.

Nik – a cup of tea, cigarettes.

Mrs. Fiend – a cup of tea, cigarettes, I think that’s probably most of the time.

Nik – chemicals as well, now & then.

Mrs. Fiend – now & then, but nothing too heavy really. not nasty stuff. I think we really look upon it....

Nik – as a bit of a treat.

Mrs. Fiend – we look upon it like that book, Recreational Use.

Nik – too much of anything is not good for the old wig.

Mrs. Fiend – well, yeah. the head is going to get severely screwed up if you do to much of anything. probably could drink too much tea.

Nik – you don’t have anytime to reflect if you’re completely monged off your tree all the time.

Mrs. Fiend – we knew somebody who was spliffing all day every day. like chain smoking cigarettes. & really it was having no effect in the end. so it was kind of weird because his reality actually became a stoned thing if you see what I mean. his reality was not reality at all. & so when he stopped, because he realizes he was getting a bit lost, normal life was more sort of weird than... you know what I mean. so be careful out there kids, that’s all I can say.

QRD – what’s the biggest crowd you’ve ever played for?

Mrs. Fiend – that’s about 10,000 I think.

Nik – yeah, 10,000 in spain & in Zillo festival in germany.

QRD – are you involved in any side projects?

Mrs. Fiend – not now. Inferno was kind of a side project.

Nik – we did Inferno & The Bat Cave Tapes album. we had to get all the dusty cobweb tapes out & find different takes that hadn’t been used before & the Cleopatra stuff. I was doing paintings for them too. so actually we have been quite busy with the normal fiend world! & I think with "Evolution" setting the record label up, it’s very hard to find time other than just to work on Alien Sex Fiend & the record label. get all that going & do some more mixes. you know, do some things that want to do with that, so our side projects are Alien Sex Fiend.

Mrs. Fiend – yeah, I think we’ve done enough side project things. so now we’ve got to work on running the 13th Moon label, getting the "Evolution" 12" out, getting the cd album version of that out, which will be a few months, & then we’ve got ideas for a proper Alien Sex Fiend studio album.

Nik – that’ll be coming out september/october.

Mrs. Fiend – yeah, we hope so. cause we’re really concentrating on pure Alien Sex Fiend at the moment. & hopefully doing some shows this year & concentrating on that as opposed to getting diverted from that. which really we have been diverted from that for a few years with the live album (Altered States of America) & the Batcave album & Inferno.

Nik – yeah, but we wanted to be diverted though. because for ten years we were touring. which was no problem & we don’t have any regrets about it. but we, like all people, not so much need a holiday as much as to be in one place for longer than ten days! for ten years all the time we were continually all over the u.k., all over europe, all over america, canada, japan, & stuff. & in between that filming videos & recording. so were never actually anywhere for long & we wanted to put some roots down. get shit sorted out. find out what we want to do & get back on course. which we now seem to be underway, first step taken, big step & all.

QRD – is there anything else important going on right now?

Mrs. Fiend – "Evolution" really & 13th Moon, the record label.

Nik – that’s what we really want to do, so that’s what we’re concentrating on. when we did Inferno we were contractually bound to a record company. we were still under obligations to the computer company, Ocean Software, so we couldn’t actually move or do anything until they deemed it was ready. so we ended up getting caught up in a lot of contractual shit.

Mrs. Fiend – it was delayed by about a year past what they originally planned. so that meant that we couldn’t actually put Inferno the album out. & it would’ve been a lot easier if they’d said....

Nik – "get on with your life, we’ll give you a ring in a years time!"

Mrs. Fiend – then we could’ve done something! but what happened was it was delayed for a month, then two months, then three months.

Nik – but we were still mixing all that time.

Mrs. Fiend – but each time it was delayed for a few months. so when they’re like, "oh, it’s going to be out in a couple months," there’s no point in starting to put a new Fiend album out because once that’s ready, it’s going to follow the Inferno thing. & they just kept delaying, & that’s the story of that, so now with our own label we’re sort of totally in control of our own destiny. as much as one can be! so we just keep our fingers crossed that the whole thing works.

Nik – I’m just happy that we’re doing our own thing. we don’t actually have any stipulations put on us & it’s proven to be successful because it feels successful to us. at any rate, with what we’ve learned since ’92 coming off the road full time, we’ve been able to get a new lease on life, & a new perspective being able to read & experiment & learn & do different things. & therefore make Alien Sex Fiend still interesting instead of just plopping along basically until it got fucking ridiculous. I think we had to break things up & stop & do something where we got our energies back. & do that in a positive direction. it was getting, not tired, but....

Mrs. Fiend – sort of predictable. & the minute it becomes too predictable, it’s too safe. & if anything’s too safe it starts getting, not boring, but safe, you know.

Nik – it’s a bit like a supermarket approach. what they did was stock the shelves with the same things every time at the same time each year with the same size & not really be bothered about it. whereas we do care about what we’re doing. & we found we were doing all this work anyway, on behalf of Cherry Red, who just put the thing out. & then we couldn’t get copies of our records or cd’s for people to review or for our friends or people who worked on them or for anything.

Mrs. Fiend – it was just getting crazy really.

Nik – so we had to create our own little weird world even more so.

QRD – if you were a cold medicine, what kind would you be?

Nik – Tixlix!

Mrs. Fiend – I don’t know if they have that in america. that’s a cough mixture.

Nik – it kisses your throat.

Mrs. Fiend – it’s for babies. I know what I’d be, my patent cold remedy: honey, lemon....

Nik – brandy.

Mrs. Fiend – whisky. you’d have brandy in yours Nik. I’d have whisky in mine. that would do me nicely.

Nik – just stay in bed & have a big spliff going on!

QRD – if you were the child of god, what would you say to get a date?

Nik – well, I am the child of god! we all are aren’t we?

Mrs. Fiend – yes, but what would you say to get a date?

Nik – to get a date? what, with god?

Mrs. Fiend – no, I think with somebody. I think that’s what he means.

Nik – my belly’s rumbling. no, vampires never eat.

Mrs. Fiend – what would you say to get a date though? "I’ve got a big one?"

Nik – "I got a big knob & I know god." "what star sign are you baby?"

QRD – how long have you been planning to form your own label? is it really worth the extra work?

Nik – well over a year, we’re getting ready to mix the next record as well. which is & has been brilliant. but mixing & everything else & getting this off the ground, of course it’s fucking hard work. everything’s hard work isn’t it!

Mrs. Fiend – whether it’s worth it or not we’ll only know afterwards. "Evolution" isn’t out until february 12th, so once it’s out & it’s in shops, because we got distribution & export & all that tied up. it’s all in place already, so hopefully there shouldn’t be too much difference between getting 13th Moon release & the Cherry Red ones. it should be in the same shops; it’s being dealt with by the same companies. so until that’s out & that’s selling, we’re not going to really know if the extra work is worth it. because obviously we have to sell records in order to make the next one. but so far so good. it used to be that we had to do a lot of work around a release anyway with Cherry Red, so so far it hasn’t really made a lot of difference. we’ve taken quite a bit of time. it’s taken like three months or something like that to get pressing sorted out, distribution, bar codes, all the legal stuff you have to do.

Nik – copyrighting.

Mrs. Fiend – application for license to manufacture, all sorts of strange things that you know nothing about when you start. so it’s been quite a while working it out, I think. when did we decide to definitely do it?

Nik – july.

Mrs. Fiend – in july, we called up the record company & the publishing company to make sure that we were free of all legal obligations. & basically they said, "yeah, you are now clear." so at that point we went in & recorded "Evolution," so we had the material, we knew we could make a record from that.so, okay we’ll set up the record label. one of the hard bits was thinking of a good name., it took ages. & the next hard one was working out a catalog number that didn’t confuse our label with anyone else’s. about three days in a row I’d call a guy who’s in charge of this kind of stuff & say, "can you check full, dark, blue?" & he’d go, "no, no they’re taken." go back to him the next day with another three variations. so eventually we settled on full. the first one is full t for twelve inch 001. but we thought about doing a label around Inferno, the only problem with that was the computer company was expecting it to be a rather nice package, a good lot of color artwork, the whole thing had to sort of match up to their game. & also they wanted release in the states & germany & so on. it would’ve been rather a lot to do. & I think what’s really cool about doing it now is, because of the opinion poll amongst fans, twelve inch vinyl was there preferred format over all & cd for album. so it meant we could start off things with just one format, get distribution in place, set up all the things I mentioned, like bar codes, bit by bit gradually without really going completely crazy racing trying to get something in. so just fingers crossed really. as long as it keeps going as well as it has been so far we will be around for a while.

Nik – laughing.

Mrs. Fiend – we’re not finished yet. this is the start of the new era. the new Fiend era. the "Evolution" starts here & all that, so off & running. I think we’re nearly at the end of the tape, so we’ll say, "cheery bye Brian."

Nik – cheery bye Brian.

Mrs. Fiend – hope you can understand all this!

Nik – of course he can, he’s got ears hasn’t he?

Mrs. Fiend – say "hello" to america.