Mothlite's fantastic debut album 'The Flax of Reverie' is out now. The band recently played shows with Earth at The Scala and with Magik Markers and Howlin Rain at Corsica Studios. Robert Sanders talks to Mothlite's Daniel O'Sullivan...

Who are you and what do you do?

Daniel O’Sullivan. Mothlite is one of the things I do.

From what I’ve read Daniel composes and Antti produces. Is this how it worked? Was it a separate process or more of collaboration? How important is the studio to what you do, other than in a recording capacity?

It’s not quite as clear-cut as that. But it is generally how it works out. However we both impinge on each other’s territory quite frequently with little risk of being shot down. The “studio” is a tricky term for us, as it implies a specific place. We use a lot of field recordings and have worked with everything from 2” tape in high end London studios to Mbox and laptops in low-end London living rooms. Copycat, Space Echo, Analogue synths and various other antiquities are where our clouds live.

I hear (wrongly?) Arvo Part in your music, actually in lots of music these days, and you’ve namedropped Giacinto Scelsi elsewhere. Is classical music an influence? Or just a favoured listen? Or just an attempt to disguise your Motley Crue lifestyle? With shepherds pie instead of taco’s.

Part and Scelsi are in there for sure. In fact, Antti’s mother is kind of a mystic, so he grew up with Tabula Rasa swimming around his house quite frequently. It’s difficult for favoured listens to avoid being influences on some level.

Instead of asking the generics - influences, what are you listening to etc - I’ll go for some huge, probably unanswerable, question. What interests you in music? What draws you to an artist or band?

A love supreme.

The record sounds pretty layered and complex. How do you go about playing the songs live? Has it gone well so far? Do you prefer live to studio?

There’s a good number of us on stage and a few other versions of us hiding in our nightingale box. They are compositions after all and can be performed as such, even if they sound different. Mothlite has a lot of mercury in it.