Universal had a vastly different sound to Sugar Tax and Liberator. Do you think the timing was just wrong for that album?

I don’t know. I mean I spent the 3 years making Universal wondering what it should sound like. Should I sound more acoustic? because in the mid-90’s there was such a backlash against 80’s electronic music and everybody seemed to be going more traditional and, you know, every time I did something it was like 'Oh that sounds too much like OMD'. I didn’t know what to do. So I tried a different direction and I’m not sure why it wasn’t successful. I think, if I’m to guess, it was a combination of the perception of the band in the media as much as anywhere as being past its sell-by date. No support from radio and therefore no support at retail from some of the major stores.

I think if Walking On The Milky Way had been a top 3 hit you would have seen the album sell very well. I mean I’ve said before, if Oasis had released Walking On The Milky Way, it would have sold all over the world. You can’t separate the actual music from the perceived credibility or perceived fashionability and music goes in waves; what was recently in fashion, quickly becomes out of fashion and I just think that OMD was out of fashion and nothing I could have done - I could have gone techno, I could have gone hip hop - nothing I could have done would have actually made Universal sell more.

Assuming Universal had sold really well, where do you think OMD would be today?

I don’t know. Probably still going unless the next album had died a horrible death. I have to say that part of me is quite relieved not having to keep alive this chain of history . I’ve said it before, it was becoming a bit like an albatross round my neck, OMD. It was like something that’s been going that long is just full of history and preconceptions and pressures. I’m enjoying not having to deal with that. And I also think that having a fresh canvas again with writing for Atomic Kitten has really improved my songwriting. I’ve found a whole new way of doing things, listened to a whole new type of music. Whether OMD fans like what I do now or not. I know some don’t. The bottom line is I am very pleased with the choice I made.

I was relieved in the end to release myself from what had become the burden of being in OMD. I don’t want it to sound like it was terrible and I hated it, but it was just hard. The pressure of expectation and pressure of expectation on me. I mean it’s all relative, but when you’ve been in a band that was hugely successful, it hurts extra when you release records that aren’t successful. If the Kittens had come out and failed, well there would have been no precedent of success so it wouldn’t have hurt so much if they hadn’t had any success. And there may well come a time with the Kittens if they release records that aren’t successful and that will hurt then following on from things that have been successful.

How would you feel about the OMD back catalogue being remastered?

I’d be delighted because particularly when it comes to CD’s, the technology for making CD’s in the 80’s compared to now is dreadful. I would love to see them remastered. I know how much better the Singles album and the B-Sides album sounded from being remastered from the original analogue master tapes rather than the 80’s digital masters. So yeah, I would love to get new copies of the CD’s remastered. But, you know, asking Virgin to do it and Virgin actually doing it are 2 different things. Unless they think there’s an actual market they won’t bother going to the expense.

What do you think about the idea of including extra tracks on remastered albums?

For the avid collector I could understand why that’s a bonus. But to me that’s just kind of messing around with the past. I’ll make an analogy, but it’s perhaps not to sound big-headed, but imagine if the Louvre decided that to increase sales or to revamp its image, they were going to get the Mona Lisa, clean it off again - as in remaster it - and to make it extra interesting they were going to glue on a couple of Da Vinci sketches in the corners as well! Not quite finished pictures, but just to spice it up a bit, make it more interesting! (laughs) Because everyone’s seen the Mona Lisa once but you haven’t seen it with the sketches stuck on!

I think Architecture And Morality has a great running order and is not going to benefit from having a few extra tracks lobbed on the end and you could say that for several of the albums I think. So, yes, do you like my analogy?! (laughs)

I mean, I’ve got to be perfectly honest with you Paul, I’m very happy with the site because the site is what I want - the OMD archive. If it offends people it’ll offend people but I just don’t want to spend the rest of my life reworking my history. That’s why I do Atomic Kitten, that’s why I’m developing local bands. I want to - I’ve said it a million times - I want to go forward looking forward. I don’t want to spend all of my time, or even much of my time, looking backwards. It doesn’t matter how happy you are with the memory or fond of it and proud of what you did. We’ve all got things we want to keep doing in the future. I’d rather spend the day writing a new song for Atomic Kitten than spend the day wading through tracks and cutting them and reorganising them and talking to Virgin about which pictures are going on an OMD box set blah blah blah. The B-Sides thing was one thing, The Id thing, you know, they are particular projects which I think have a reason, they’re a couple of little untied little loose ends there that could be tied up. And also, frankly, it’s a way of keeping people happy who are still interested in OMD and also it’s a way that if we sell these things it helps make a bit of money for the website so that the website effectively costs nothing to run. But that’s it. So if Virgin want to remaster things, great. If they want to make a box set, great. But I’d rather spend my time doing now stuff rather than old stuff. If that offends people who think OMD are wonderful then I’m sorry but I hope that they’ll understand.

Sure, but that’s the questions they will ask

But it does seem to offend people though. I mean some people are well pissed off that I’m doing Atomic Kitten instead of making another OMD record but, you know, tough.

Regarding the as-yet untitled unreleased material album, can you describe your thoughts on the choice of tracks and maybe give a few descriptions of what’s actually going to be on there?

The bulk of it is from the very late 80’s and first half of the 90’s because that’s when I had demos of things on DAT’s that I still have access to. There’s a few older and a few newer. It’s a real mixture. I mean they’re all basically mostly finished songs with vocals on. There’s a couple of instrumentals but they’re just songs that for whatever reason or another didn’t seem to fit onto the body of work I was working on at the time. And yet having said that, I actually think that the vast majority of them are very interesting and pretty good pieces of music in their own right. And I’m sure people will listen to them and go "Oh, why wasn’t that on Liberator?" and "Why wasn’t this on Sugar Tax?". So as you yourself have said about a couple of the tracks that you’ve heard. I can’t really describe it.

There’s Sister Maria Gabriel which is kind of like a 90’s techno-pop version of an OMD track. There’s a track called Jerusalem which is quite abstract and experimental , but is actually like a techno track. There’s a couple of late OMD songs like Never Let You Go which is the last track that all 4 of the original band worked on. And it’s a finished song. It’s a totally finished song. There’s one line of lyrics I think which are sort of scat vocal because I didn’t actually have the words then.

It’s quite broad actually. There’s quite a lot of stuff from Ireland of things that were done during the Universal sessions which didn’t get onto the album. Interestingly enough, in the 80’s because we were churning albums out basically annually and we were touring for 4/5 or 6 months of the year, we would write 10 songs and that was the album! (laughs) And usually we were scrabbling for the last track in the studio and putting together a weird instrumental, abstract thing. So, I seemed to have more to spare later on and that was partly to do with I was trying out different directions and going Oh I don’t think I should do that and Oh I don’t think I should do this, whereas in the 80’s, with that clarity and confidence we had, everything we did we thought was the right style and we didn’t have time to write 20 songs and pick 10, it was like we wrote 10 and that was the album! (laughs)