Their first album pretty much defined the style we know as “bathtub reggae”, the follow up sounded like a swarm of hornets trapped in a funeral parlour, and now top beat combo Brute Beauty And Valour And Act, Oh, Air, Pride, Plume, Here / Buckle! are storming the charts again with their new release. It’s a box set of cover versions of the seven Sibelius symphonies, recorded in what might best be described as Ivesian pillow-talk progpunk doo-wop. Fatima Gilliblat talked to the band outside a kiosk on a crumbling seaside pier.

Fatima : It’s very windy.

Band : Yes. And have you noticed how the gulls seem tense, as if awaiting orders from some sort of gull-god?

Fatima : I am holding tight to my choc ice, for I fear it might be snatched by one of these rapacious scavenging birds.

Band : But that’s the point… you see how they are just hovering, not swooping down to the pier at all, despite that pile of discarded wafers and toffee apples and seaside resort cocktail sausages in puff pastry?

Fatima : Yes, that is curious. Perhaps they’re not hungry.

Band : [Hollow laughter.] Gulls are always hungry.

Fatima : Well, anyway, let’s talk about this new album.

Band : Wait! See, there is broiling and tumult in the clouds over to the west.

Fatima : So there is.

Band : The gull-god is come! Put aside your choc ice, Ms Gilliblat, and clamber on to this makeshift altar we have cobbled together from rotting pier-planks and seaweed.

Fatima : OK, if you say so. But why?

Band : Because we are going to sacrifice you to the gull-god of course, and tape the  blood-curdling savagery, and then pop back to the studio to incorporate the field recording into our next album.

Fatima : How exciting to think that I shall give my life for the cause of experimental sound art!

Band : That’s the spirit!

Unfortunately, soon after this interview, the band split due to “artistic differences”. The latest news is that they have called a truce and are getting it together in the country, so we may yet hear Fatima Gilliblat’s electronically-manipulated death throes.

UPDATE : Apparently, Fatima survived. She is in fact a descendant of mythical giant crows, and tore the gull-god to pieces with the power of her corvine brain.