Such as pondering if this album might be their most coherent to date? "Possibly, it's difficult to say," says Nick. "I guess it only sort of makes sense after you put the tracks together, and it was done in a short space of time. We almost didn't have time to get sick of it! It represents a forward move for us; we've changed record company and management. We'd reached a stagnation period with people we'd worked with for a long time, we were pretty much stuck."

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Not only stuck, but also caught up in several unpleasantries, not least of which was a row with their manager. "The music business sausage machine rubbed us up the wrong way!" says Nick, cheery about it all now. "After Connected, everyone said "what did you do for nine years, where did you go?" We just fucked up and stuff to be honest. And in a few ways it's harder with the album now, there's no promotional budget of £1/4 million behind us. The new album is a start of getting back on course, building into a place where we can sell a lot of records, but under our own steam. We're reinventing ourselves!"

Nick co-writes most of the songs with principal vocalist Rob Birch. "I think it's been pretty strange a lot of the time, it just happens. Often Rob will just do a track without me even being there, he'll stay up until 8 in the morning because he's had an idea. We're a couple of mates who wanted to do this, we both have the same intention and love this group!"

Such domestic bliss, but the album, in spite of its Paradise title, deals with lows as well as highs. "In general it's just kind of, well, life. We wrote the lyrics to do with mentality, a bit about how Blair and Bush are warmongering, and a lot on the general air of aggression that's around these days. People just want to pick fights with you, there's a complete lack of tolerance going on. Technology's moving on but there's this real animal instinct around. I think the Sun and all those papers really kind of enhance that, like when the whole Falklands thing was on, and now they've done it with Muslims."

In the light of this current affairs observations, what counts as 'paradise' for Nick? "Well the idea of Paradise is on the cover - it's where we live, just down the road. And it's saying, "stop sitting around moaning about everything, don't dream about winning the lottery or what you're gonna do when you retire. Live for the moment, live for what's happening now. It's still great and exciting! There's nothing ironic about that either - we don't really do ironic!"

The band head out on a European tour this Autumn, and both Nick and Rob have family to think about. "I have a daughter who's fifteen, she's into music. You're almost listening to the same music, which is different to when I was growing up. I wanted to listen to stuff my parents didn't like! We try and pace things now so the band aren't away too often. When Connected was out my daughter was one or two and we were away pretty much solidly for a year and a half. When we were back I consciously wanted to give her time, as I'd been away for so long. Rob's kids, they're still pretty young too."

We return to the music, exploring the possibility that Paradise looks to the East more than in their previous work. "Well we work with a broad range of source material, listen to a lot of records to get samples and stuff. We've always had a bit of the Eastern/African thing though. I think that goes back to the 'B' side of Connected (Fever) where Steve Hillage did a remix that had a Moroccan feel to it. We're also influenced by things like in Brixton, where you walk down Atlantic Road and all the butchers' shops are blaring out a cross between R&B and house beats, with Bhangra mixed in. I think what people used to call 'world' music has changed, it isn't pigeon holed half so much now."

I suggest the Stereo MCs have influenced quite a few of today's newer bands, the Audio Bullys among them. "We've just done a gig with them, actually. I kind of like what they're doing. It's just part of the chain really though, in the late 1980s and early 1990s there was a whole change in the music scene, there was the Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, us, Public Enemy, Orbital, we were all part of the same thing that was changing. People didn't know what we were exactly. I don't think we've been all that influential though!"

Have they become more emotive though? "Er, yeah, I guess. There's definitely aspects of that earlier on though, tracks like The End on Connected. With this one we needed to make ourselves go for it, and the soulful side of us came out a bit more. We wanted to push the songwriting side of things, and Rob and me were muddling through. We've already started a new album; we're locked down with it and should be finished by the end of the summer. I'd like to get it out next year - it's good to just keep rolling. We have more energy than we've ever had!" And modesty by the bucket load too, as the charming Hallam demonstrates. He has every right to feel satisfied with the way the band are countering the critics, many of whom said they'd never recover from their nine years away.

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