The back catalogue may be in the charts again, but Billy Currie's Ultravox actually has a new line-up, a new single and a new album. Could this finally be Goodnight, Vienna?

If you try and load a piece of equipment - say, a Fostex E16 - into London's Berwick Street Studios, chances are you'll step in something nasty. Probably ancient banana skin, or much-trampled grape. Chances also are that you'll be propositioned; not the most appealing of prospects with an arm full of multitrack and a shoe full of mulch. But this is because, apart from the happeningest little recording studio in town, Berwick Street also hosts a teeming fruit and vegetable market and a generous helping of Soho's sleaze-joints, making access something of an, erm, assault course.

Once inside, though, all is calm. Except in reception, that is, where an endless succession of impossibly fresh-faced employees rush hither and thither, giving the impression that they must be putting the finishing touches to a sizeable chunk of next week's chart material. Which, actually, they are. In recent months, The Shamen, East 17, PM Dawn, The Orb and The Grid have all recorded here, making the most of the central location, the mountains of hi-tech gear on tap, and the Berwick Street 'school' of young programmer/engineers who have shaped recent dance music - including Peter Lorimer, Tyrrell and Andy Falconer.

MD Rod Gammons is happy, but not just with the roster of dance hits seemingly pouring out of his studio. He's just finished producing a different, and rather unlikely, project: a new album from Ultravox, called Revelation. And indeed it is - a big, bold, hard-kicking thing which you would not expect to emerge from a pop-factory beat basement like this. It's given Rod a chance to push his technology and his ambitions a bit further: "The songs," he says, dodging phone calls in reception, "are more important than the token inclusion of hip effects just to please a few specialist DJs. You can make a record sound 'now' for about six months, and then it soon becomes 'last year's' record. I want people to be able to put this album on in three years time, or ten years time, and say, 'yeah, this still sounds pretty classic'."

Rod Gammons had been working with Birmingham-born singer and guitarist Tony Fenelle for about 17 months, writing songs for a solo deal for Tony, when Billy Currie turned up. That's Billy Currie, keyboards, violin, viola - the essential and only constant ingredient in Ultravox's long history, and a man intent on writing a new chapter of it. Rod spent a month with Billy on embryonic ideas for a new Ultravox, recognised the suitability for the project of Tony's voice, looks, and musical interests, and made the connection. Now, album finished, Billy Currie and Tony Fenelle can afford to relax - for a while - and catch up on just how it all happened. The rapport between them is almost tangible.

"When I started thinking about putting a new Ultravox together," begins Billy, "I began looking for a good production deal, and this was one of the studios I came to. I was interested in the dance people who've been working here, not just the rock people. The technology that's been used in that area is very interesting. What I like about this place is that there's a bit of 'street' to it. I'm a fussy bastard. I don't like bureaucracy, nor do I like too much of a 'family' atmosphere either. This place is just come in, do it and go. With nice people around you."

Tony chips in. "I liked the fact that, with there being so many dance people here, there was none of that rock competitiveness with our stuff; we didn't have to keep anything secret. They might put their heads round the door, but they'd be more interested in checking out the thirteen year-old kids upstairs knocking out a Number One tune. Most people in Berwick Street are geared towards dance music, and you can hear the connection between early Ultravox - the original four-on-the-floor-and synth basslines - and the rave stuff. The New Romantic-period Ultravox was powerful dance stuff - and I know, I used to get down to it as a teenager!"

Presumably, then, it helps to have a producer that owns the studio... "Not entirely; if you're producing the album, and you own the studio, you've got to run upstairs and answer the phone all the time." "But," adds Billy, "we're not a couple of babies, we could just get on with it anyway. If he did get sidetracked with business, much of it was for our benefit. Rod and his wife Helen took the whole project on board, and if something isn't working in your own studio, it bugs you. You're less likely to pass it by; you just want the thing to work."

The motivation to make it all work seemed to infect all the members of the team equally. For Tony, the first priority was to find out just who this bloke with all the keyboards was. "Me and Billy only met last year, we didn't know each other, so we got to know each other as we worked on the album. That was harder than actually recording, because we had no way of knowing exactly which way the other would go. When you've rehearsed with a band for years and years, you'll know where you're all going; the singer will go to G, and everybody goes to G without even saying anything. So we literally spent months learning about each other - going out drinking, asking 'well, where would you go if I went to B?', and Billy would say 'down the Wag Club, see you later.'"

Yep, they got to know each other all right. The first completed track was put out as a one-off single, to avoid the feeling of taking on the whole album straight away. "You can step back after one track, listen to it and think about the next step," explains Billy. All the same, as Tony reveals, good vibrations were immediate: "The first songs we wrote together are the ones that people like most; 'I Am Alive' was the first one we wrote, and that's the first single. I came in from New York, and three days later there was the song. We really fell into it naturally. But whether I'd got involved in this project or not, it was just great to meet Billy. I've always been a fan. I went to see them, in the John Foxx days, at these shitty little clubs in Birmingham. I was there!"

"That Kraftwerk sound is all a bit 'small'. I like it, but that solid down-beat that we used was one of the frustrations I had with Ultravox"

Later, Tony was almost there with an English band called Big Noise, who'd started life as Mr President, but who'd then got a break in America resulting in the whole crew being shipped out there. It was a sojourn which, Tony now says, "didn't really count for anything". But it did make for a solid grounding in the music business, and a good deal of teeth-cutting in the guitar department - which sure came in handy on this album. Billy explains: "It certainly made things less confusing when we discovered Tony's ability, because we were just at the point of wondering who we were going to get in as the guitarist. As soon as Tony began playing it just seemed to work. I don't think we needed another personality around from that point, it was me, Tony, and then Rod."

Rod, in fact, is following in some pretty distinguished footsteps as Ultravox's producer. After working with Brian Eno and Steve Lillywhite, the band found their biggest commercial success with German techno-fiend Conny Plank, who brought the influence of the Kraftwerk tradition very much to bear. They were pioneering times, as Billy recalls, but not without their own limitations: "That Kraftwerk sound is all a bit 'small'. I like it, but that solid down-beat that we used to do was one of the frustrations I had with Ultravox. I wanted to move the beat from side to side a bit, to give it a bit more of an American thing, really. I don't mean funky - that's a bit of a funny word - but looser.

"I think our rhythm section in the '80s bored themselves to death. Warren Cann did admit to me later that he'd just got sick and tired of drums. And to a certain extent, if that happens it's your own fault"

"I think our rhythm section in the '80s bored themselves to death. That's an awful thing to say, but they didn't look forward for new things. Warren Cann did admit to me later that he'd just got sick and tired of drums. And to a certain extent, if that happens it's your own fault. We'd always start with fours-on-the-floor, which just left me to dick around on top. And it would soon get top-heavy, because given half the chance I would fill in the spaces. Whereas now, I don't. I don't feel the need to.
Something has definitely clicked. I was already moving towards a 'stadium' way of writing; getting hold of the bare bones of the thing and coming up with a simple but sturdy structure, on keyboards. I did that with the chorus of 'Hymn'. But with such four-square rhythms, most of the time I had no room to do that, and just ended up being fiddly. I'd always wanted to work with someone who could hold a groove."

The new album certainly does sound more fluid than the Ultravox you may remember, but it's pretty damn solid and rocky at the same time. This, it turns out, was exactly the intention. Tony begins: "Rather than relying solely on the loop, we'd put the loop in, slightly lower it, and add an extra kick and snare. If you've a stereo loop, left and right, it can sound quite massive, but if you add real kick and snare, and maybe hi-hat, in the middle, you're talking about a whole different ball-game. That gives it a hardness, especially live, and we want it to sound as tough as possible live. It's got to be very, very tough. It's not a new concept, but for Ultravox our sound is 'stadium with loop'. Nobody's done it successfully, yet, and here we are.

"The drums were programmed like a drummer, not a machine. We used the Atari, and it was a great way to get things sounding massive while we were writing. Using the computer meant that we didn't have to have a drummer crashing away in the background, of course. We got some nice, big sounds, over which Billy could start whacking chords out, and we both really got into tracking, immediately." "I can be really honest with myself, here," admits Billy, "because I've been pissing around doing solo albums: I don't really tune in to just basic rhythm. I'm into rhythm, and it interests me, but Tony really has that going for him and it did help us get started. I found that it stimulated me, whereas in the past the rhythm was just done, it wasn't your area, you couldn't get involved, and as I said, I think the band suffered from that a bit in the '80s."

Rod, merely the producer after all, sums up: "It was a very conscious decision to get the best of both worlds rhythmically - live drumming and loops. If we'd just used traditional, big-sounding live rock drums, it would have sounded good, but not very different from anything from that genre in the last ten years. We wanted to show that Ultravox could encompass, intelligently, what people are excited about now - those kind of programmed, 'groove' rhythms. And some of the tracks could be remixed in a very interesting, dancefloor way."

Sequencing certainly played its part in the rhythm department on Revelation, but elsewhere Billy's instinct to rely on his training held sway. Tony explains: "All the keyboard overdubs were recorded live. Billy just plays them in, because he's old school, and he knows how to do that stuff. For me, and people my age, recording keyboards live is just so nervewracking, you automatically want to put it into the computer. I've worked with some great keyboard players, who are also fantastic programmers. Billy's not so great at programming; his assumption is always to play it. I did more of the actual programming, on the album. We'd sit together and do it, but Billy had a broader picture of the whole structure, while I concentrated on the details."

"I find it hard to keep on top of running a computer," Billy confirms, "and think about music as well. I'd like to try and do more programming on the next album. It might just do me good to try and be able to think in both ways. I'm interested in technology, but not necessarily for its own sake. I really got into the ins and outs of the first Pro 24, so I am interested - you've got to be. I guess it's less obtrusive, now, because it works! Originally, it was always exciting and coloured the way you did things, because you wondered if something was going to work or not. That was part of the excitement."

Billy used a lot of his old keyboards on the album - such as a CS80, or a PPG Waveterm - and believes that now is the best time to get the most out of them: "We know now that those instruments are much deeper than one album's worth." Rod goes even further: "Added to my stuff, Billy's old keyboards made an impressive collection. I'm not a fan of modern keyboards, actually. I don't need workstations; I don't like keyboards with built-in chorus and reverbs, because I've got those already, and if you take those effects off the sounds are pretty naff. I tend to design sounds for a specific track, so I like the user-friendliness of Moogs and Prophets - if it doesn't work, grab the offending knob and turn it till it does. I also like additive synthesis, where you're blending the best of different sources: strange elements of samples, some FM synthesis from a DX or TX rack, and then maybe a bit of Prophet. The aim is to make a 'stack', or a sculpted piece of sound.

"There are a couple of big issues with modern synthesiser design. Firstly, synths have been basically very unfriendly for nearly ten years - ever since the DX7 came out. Now, I can actually program a DX7 quite happily, but some of the more modern keyboards are really a bit of a nightmare. A lot of the things you immediately want to get at, such as switching off a built-in reverb, are not on the front panel - they're several menus down, deep in the programming of the thing. That's unacceptable. Secondly, I just cannot stand using keyboard presets, it does my head in. If I'm going to make a record with Ultravox, I want to fill it full of original keyboard sounds that we make together in the studio. And I want those sounds to be ahead of what everybody else is doing, by combining elements so that they sound different, separate from the current crop of, say, Korg 01/W, JD800 stuff. Working sounds is a lot more creative - and a lot more fun - than just pressing that button to get that sound. I've just bought one of the new, redesigned Microwaves, and it's wonderful. We did use Billy's old PPG a lot on the album, just because it sounds so radically different from everything else. And the Microwave is like that, in that it doesn't have drums; it doesn't try to be a reverb or a chorus unit; and it has a most unusual sound."

"All the keyboard overdubs were recorded live. Billy just plays them in, because he knows how to do that stuff. For people my age, recording keyboards live is just so nervewracking, you automatically want to put it into the computer"

Ironically, moving away from what he calls "state-of-the-art, technical keyboard stuff" has reinvigorated Billy's interest in sounds, particularly at the lower end of the spectrum. Here, the Berwick Street spirit really seems to have infiltrated his thinking. "I don't feel you have to 'impress' with technology these days; it's come full circle, and I really like the way younger kids, who can't afford an S1000, get a cheaper sampler, and do loops on those. Fine; there's no ego trip about it - if it works, great. On the album, we weren't thinking, 'listen to this technology', in an obvious way, but it's there. There's one loop under a slide guitar solo on 'Perfecting The Art Of Common Ground' which is taken from an early '70s heavy rock vibe - I won't tell you what it is - but it just comes through perfectly. And I'm playing games with Ultravox's history, a bit... I'd zoom in on this middle section with the slide guitar, set the picture, and it's real Rage In Eden period, about 1981, offset by this particular loop; so it's using technology to make quite subtle statements.

"Using the technology used to be more of a task. Nowadays, you sit back and wait for it to come from specific gadgets you get. You pass it through without any real thinking. There's nothing worse than trying to save a bad sound by using gadgets in the mix. You can only work with what is a good sound in the first place: it's pointless trying to doctor something up."

Billy Currie is one of those musicians who have been at the frontline of changing musical technology during many of its most exciting periods. But new priorities beckon, as they do, and now the band are on the road again in Europe promoting the new material. It was recorded in a small studio, and a lot of small devices were used, but the plan is to make a big noise in some pretty big places. Frankly, it's time to kick arse. Tony Fenelle: "One of the first things Billy and I discussed within ten minutes of talking to each other was playing stadiums. We'd both got to the point in our careers where we wanted to do major stadiums. And we wanted to make an album that sounded like that's where it would be played. Rather than living in '808 State', with a dance beat and ambient sounds, we were interested in a big sound. My thinking was to have hard, rock drums, rather than machine-like ticks. Different from the early Ultravox stuff, even. So it was a departure for Billy. Plus, it's not the old Ultravox, it's a brand new Ultravox; when I arrived I wasn't going to wear tapered sideburns and a pencil moustache. I'm always asked 'what about Midge?' - I loved Ultravox with Midge Ure, I was a fan, and I'm not going to sit here and compete with him. But Billy's the main man, and always has been. He's the keyboard player that put that stamp on the band from day one. It wasn't going to lose that."

Billy, at first, tries to deflect this accolade: "But I didn't want to make it like I was tying Tony to my style, that would have been wrong. You've got to create something new." And then, with a modest grin, finally acknowledges that, in the end, it still has to be a band called Ultravox. "Yes, because it's so much a part of my life. I've put everything into it, and it's still not finished."