If all Add N To (X) music onwards from their NME championed debut singles in 1997 sounded as if the synthesisers had been given as much input as the humans (assuming the synths were of a horny and unstable seditionary inclination) the third album, 2000's acclaimed "Add Insult To Injury" indicated that the compromise did not always have to be fractious.

The singles 'Poker Role' and 'Plug Me In' revolved fluidly and flirtingly. Now, after a two year gap, the band have returned in 2002 with an album that makes an even clearer case for the advantages of integrating innovative noise and thrilling form. "Loud Like Nature" is their most accomplished album to date, a fact all the more remarkable given the circumstances under which it was made.

With the international touring of 2001 completed (excepting a one off London South Bank show with Hawkwind (!) in October), Add N to (X) decided to go ahead and record the next album despite the problems posed by living in different cities. Barry was in Sheffield, Steve was in London and Ann was then in Idaho. The album was put together over the next year with each member recording separately.

"I think it's the best thing we've ever done," says Barry. "And strangely we've all done it separately but it sounds like its coming out of the same band. I don't think there's any other band apart from maybe Fleetwood Mac or Pink Floyd who've done that, working in isolation."

"We all came back together and listened to the material and were all surprised that it was all still part of the family of Add N To (X)." says Steve. "It was all within the spirit of Add N To (X). In a way, it wouldn't matter if we got someone else to make the tunes as long as they had the spirit of the enterprise about them."

The spirit of "Loud Like Nature" is as risk taking as ever, but a natural movement towards concision has come into play alongside more vocally centred tracks from Ann and Steve. Its still nothing like normal pop music, but it is definitely what great pop might sound like in an ideal world, run by mad inventors, rare vinyl junkies, sci fi punks and delinquent rock 'n' rollers.

"Investigating noise was what Add N To (X) was about and gradually you more or less become a musician," says Steve. "So this album was about exploring what would it be like if, without compromising the integrity of Add N To (X), we used these sounds in as powerful and as punchy a way as possible. "We always used to say that it would be the most experimental thing for us to do, to make a pop song, but what is important is to get this kind of sound across to more people. We've always wanted to do that. We want more people listening to it. Little kids love it. Tiny kids!"

With recordings taking place in London, New York and beyond, and individual members joining in on each other's tracks, "Loud Like Nature" came together gradually. The album also features contributions from Dean Honer and Jason Buckle from All Seeing I, Pulp guitarist Richard Hawley ('Sheez Mine') and drumming from Goldfrapp's Rowan Oliver and photographer/musician Joe Dilworth. Perhaps the stand out guest appearance, however, comes from legendary American producer Kim Fowley, famous for having 'discovered' The Runaways. Fowley continues to make records despite his advanced years and Barry 7 was moved to ask him to contribute a spoken word piece to the eerie 'Invasion Of The Polaroid People' because of Fowley's 'other' history as a great sonic eccentric.

"It was quite late at night when I phoned him and he was just frightening," says Barry. "It was like having Dennis Hopper on the other end of the line. He was screaming at me, 'You young motherfuckers!' and I was like 'Sorry, Mr Fowley, I like your work'. "I think the personality of his voice is fabulous and there's a depth and breadth to his work. Part of him has been maybe pigeon holed in the 'novelty' area, but I think as a producer he was a fuckin' genius. Also it's against this young vocalist tradition that we have in this poxy country where you can't make a decent record unless you're under 19. I like the fact that I'm using a man who's nearer 75."

With its stomping glamtronic pieces ('Total All Out Water', 'Take Me To Your Leader (Make Me Really Happy'), frenzied, guitared rock'n'roll lobster chant ('Sheez Mine'), p-funk surrealism ('Party Bag'), pastoral analogue suite ('Up The Punks'), the distracted cradle snatch instrumental ('Pink Light') and trash synth thrasher ('Large Number'), the album gathers up the bands history and spins it into gorgeously twisted nuggets, hinting at connections with everything from hip hop to fifties rock 'n' roll (Lionel Bart commissioned by David Lynch) but never settling on anything you'd recognise, unless you'd been picking up radio stations from deep space.

"We've been listening to a lot of rock 'n' roll but then we always did," says Steve. "We had been listening to blues and stuff, like Slim Harpo, when we did 'King Wasp', it's always been there that idea. Other people categorise you as 'electronica' or whatever moniker is currently in use, but we've always had tremendous difficulty in trying to assess ourselves. When we sit in interviews in foreign countries where you have to be quite concise, we just say 'we're into electronic rock 'n' roll'. We've never espoused this Kraftwerk man-machine thing, I think its been the opposite, I think through synthesisers it's made us very aware of ourselves as animals or as natural beings. We realise how dirty and filthy we are and how animalistic, and I think in a way how animalistic some machines have become, almost as if they're trying to become human."

While "Loud Like Nature" extends the scope of the band, it doesn't contradict their earliest intention of aggressively mowing a path into the future. Meeting in London as fellow enthusiasts for old school synth gear, the trio took their name from a computer command that creates an unknown electronic force, but swiftly moved beyond straight circuitry lead music, working with live drummers on their groundbreaking first album "On The Wires Of Our Nerves".

Their debut album was recorded for Satellite records and released in 1998. On signing to Mute in the same year they issued the extreme bass analogue acid bath single 'Little Black Rocks In The Sun', playing a live show in a disused nuclear bunker to coincide. Six months of touring in America and Europe saw them turn into one of the most stimulating and unpredictable live bands. In 1999 they released 'Metal Fingers in My Body', the first single to be lifted from their powerful second album "Avant Hard", soon followed by 'Revenge of the Black Regent'.

Partly written in the south of France, the next album, 2000's "Add Insult To Injury" kept true to their anarchic fusionist inclinations while producing two kinetically pleasing singles 'The Poker Role' and 'Plug Me In'. The latter continued a tradition established with 'Metal Fingers' by inspiring a humourously erotic video about electrically powered sex.

While successive waves of musicians have turned their attention to vintage machinery and sought to revive the sounds with grafted on attitudes few have come close to Add N To (X) in terms of a fully realised dialectic. This may be because the trio's interest is not in machines, or just in what can be articulated from the meeting of soft and hard technologies, but in the wide spectrum of human expression. Steve Claydon frequently shows his installation art in UK galleries. Ann Shenton publishes a satirical newspaper called the Dedworth Echo. Barry 7 runs the New York based Horseglue label and Destroy It Yourself club night and maintains a fiercely esoteric vinyl habit.

The energy levels and innovation peaks within "Loud Like Nature" are a vindication of their determination to keep the firey human synthesis rolling. "We're all pretty volatile, emotional people," says Steve. "There's a lot of attempts to take one another's lives. Clashing egos. But that's what makes it exciting. If we all just had exactly the same ideas it would be boring. What's interesting is this particle accelerator idea which we've always tried to employ, where you shoot opposites at one another, or try to embrace things you don't know how to do."
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"I think there's some amazingly challenging stuff in this record and maybe what's good about it, is that it's almost concealed the volatility within an understanding of how to properly marry these instruments together. And it's a great time for us now, because there's so many other bands out there, using electronic instruments. In a way the rest of the music industry has caught up with what we're trying to do."

Time to get forward to 'Nature'.