Can you tell us how the band got together and what was the original concept and ideals of the band?

"Sure, I started welding instruments more than a decade ago I guess. I was studying sculpture and doing a lot of welding in different areas. But I wanted to do something that combined my other interests and I had become disatisfied with non-functional sculpture, so I wanted to make something that did something. I decided to make a guitar and the first one was horribly wrong in many ways. You couldn't play it without cutting your hand, it was too long and you could only fit a bass string on it. But it did actually make a sound, and that was really exciting to me to have produced it. I got a lot of good feedback, so I decided to keep making them. After a year I had enough instruments to realise I should get together with some musicians and do a performance with them. And I was thinking it would be a noisey one off show, a sort of joke. But the guys who came in managed to coax some musical sounds out of them and then we started to be asked to play more gigs".

Did you have ideas of how you wanted the band to sound before hand? And was it a difficult transition for you?

"I had been playing guitar for a while, been in bands. But I suppose the sound has partly come from the quirky sounds we have found from playing the instruments. We are open and embrace the weird sounds that come out. And for a couple of years now we have been incorporating electronics, thinking about ways we can use these new devices in the band. Mark the other guitarist has been building devices now and this is exciting that I'm not the sole instrument builder".

I can imagine the instruments and the devices can be highly changeable in terms of reliability and sound. So how set are the band's compositions?

"They are pretty set but we have been doing some improvisation lately, which is a new thing for us. Most of our songs are composed and they come off pretty much the same. The sounds themselves are pretty reliable believe it or not. On my guitar for instance there are certain fret places where it totally buzzes out but you can hear the note at the same time. I fell in love with that sound and have wrote songs around it. Sometimes the pick slips out so I have to get my screwdriver to fix it to make it wrong in the right way again".

How much does the look and feel drive what you write? Have you ever build things out of what you want to do musically?

"Yeah, it goes both ways. There is a trash picking aesthetic that occurs, like my guitar is built from a folding chair, one of the bass guitar's is built from a VCR. So there is this finding of shapes and making an instrument out of them, and that aesthetic is repeated in the compositional process were we find these sounds and make them into songs".

A lot of it sounds very theatrical and driven by the drama of what is on stage, the whole look. Is that important to you?

"We try to be very energetic, and there is a real emotion to the songs I think. But I'm not sure about the theatrical idea. Maybe we have different associations with the word. I mean, a band like Kiss I would call theatrical. Sometimes I see the songs in terms of rituals. They evoke from us certain feelings and emotions and I think we are good at focusing in to ourselves to get those feelings across. It's very rare that I feel we have gone through the motions with them".

Is this need to properly focus in the reason why you create music?

"Playing music is the only place where I feel like I'm doing the right thing. We tour quite a lot but we don't live off it, we all have to go back to day jobs in the U.S. But the day job feels like wasting time and when touring I have this deep feeling that I'm doing the right thing".

Your look and sound is pretty unique. Would you say this has been a hindrance to you? I'm gobsmacked that after seeing you live that Neptune are not much better known.

"I don't think so. Maybe in the initial reactions, in the short term. But in the long run it is an advantage to be very different. We have been doing this for a good while now and responses have been getting better as time goes on. This is very exciting. But yeah, I don't know why we are not famous right now (Laughs). Maybe we haven't been in the right place at the right time, but I suppose that is just a matter of persistence".

There is a lot to take in for an audience. The whole look and then the immediate shock of the music, do you think those two elements are working against each other a little bit?

"Sometimes when we play in a new town, for us, the audience looks completely bewildered. Then if we go back six months later they are rocking out with us. Yeah we do take a little getting used to. Maybe for some people the way the instruments look and sound does overtake the music but we do work hard to make sure the music is just as interesting. I hope we are accomplishing that. More recently the music we have been recording is less rock based and more down the soundscape road. For live we are not totally confident in doing this type of music. It is easier to be more confident with the rock structures but I'm sure the newer material will start to appear more in the live set. It's more a case of sneaking it in at the moment. Also the soundscape stuff requires a real focus on each other, in terms of listening to each other quite intently, almost a dialogue within the band. So it is not very geared towards live performance, by that I mean allowing an audience to feel grounded by what you do, strong beats and some kind of accessibility".

Have the band discussed maybe where the soundscape stuff could be performed, outside of rock shows?

"Actually we performed a complete improvised soundscape type set in Leeds recently, but it was the night after we had done a normal set there to pretty much the same crowd. And the Leeds crowd are pretty aware of us anyway. We had never done a whole improvised set before that. It is certainly worth considering doing that music to crowds who we know are already aware of us, stating before hand that we will be doing that".