The new Woodentops album may well be massive. It should be, it's called 'Giant'. Top man Rolo McGinty expanded on the subject.

"It's called 'Giant'. This bears relation to the size of the band, the size of the musicians and the amount of time put into it which is actually very minimal."

These are the words of Rolo McGinty, singer and creator of the Woodentops, talking about their new album, which is released any day now, and chock full of his idiosyncratic tunes.

So how does he go about creating a song?

"It's a result of doing things on the Portastudio at home and then looking at them a couple of weeks later and reassessing what's missing — in terms of character and whimsy rather than arrangements, because that's something I leave up to the producer.

"I just do it how it feels and it doesn't necessarily go onto plastic like that. I feel a producer is someone that is really important but at the same time you should have to come out feeling really exhausted by the whole project.

"Quite often people have to prove their point in the studio which I love because you get these nervous little intense performances from people when they're trying to really convince you and that's where all the excitement is, I think.

"Also, I think studios are some of the best discos around if you've got a reasonable danceability to your music — with those massive speakers it's the best disco sound possible. Every time we record we dance."

The Woodentops studio sound is made up of old, low-tech instruments with a hi-tech injection to sharpen the corners and make the sound cleaner.

"We've got this mixture between 'olde world' traditions, like we use handclaps. There's a slight folkiness and although it's not always easy to justify, we feel it's quite a noticeable part of our character. We try to do lots of different kinds of song and lots of different kinds of shapes but there's always this acoustic guitar and lots of backing vocals so it always has that kind of folkiness.

"But the guitars, I think, rather than being a Sixties guitar sound should be really Eighties so now we've got one of those..."

Simon, the guitarist, used to use old, secondhand Hofners, a Fender Telecaster and a Gibson Les Paul copy but he's just been bought an active Strat.

"Occasionally if it goes wrong it sounds like Mark Knopfler or something."

So how would you describe an Eighties guitar sound?

"It's got a very transistorised sound about it. It's very clear. It's almost like if you've got a cassette that's recorded with Dolby on it and you listen to it without the Dolby on it, how really trebly it is, it's kind of like that. I really like it."

Bass player Frank De Freitas, brother of ex-Bunnymen drummer Pete, plays a Fender Jazz.

"We like a lot of black bass sounds, not so much the funky, slappy ones, more reggae or soul. Tamla sort of sounds. Frank plays with a pick. He's trying not to," Rolo laughs, "but his fingers won't move fast enough.

"Alice uses a Casio," he continues, "which is the 101 — the little plastic one — or the 202.

"I've got one of those tiny little Yamaha sampling keyboards. It's brilliant, my God! And a piano. Oh, and a Korg organ. But live we just use the Casios."

To get that running, steady drum sound they use a click track and trigger the snare.

"We've always used this piccolo snare drum which is really thin. We get this Roland tom which we use like a hi-hat and the snare is cutting and crisp and short so the heaviness comes from the tom tom.

"We've also got a Volkswagen hub cap and a Mercedes hub cap. We use a tiny wooden bass drum that we sync to one of those little bass drum samples which we use to get a really uniform sort of drum machine bass drum. This drum is where the hi-tech/folk crossover is, because in the rhythms it's like we're using a Yamaha drum machine so you get a real cut on the bass drum, like science-fiction almost, and then all around it we've got all these things like cheap tom toms."

Rolo himself plays a miniature Gibson acoustic guitar which he says he chose to match his own size. He's also got an Ovation but wants something a bit more metallic. Unfortunately, all the money went on Simon's active Strat. Rolo plays his acoustic in a percussive role, like the tom, used as a steady rhythm. He also has some unusual ideas about the guitar.

"It hides different moods, different rhythms, different spirits, and souls. The acoustic guitar is hiding a ghost."

What he means is...

"The music of the drums, the bass, electric guitar and the keyboards is almost like a dream behind the acoustic guitar so the vocal and guitar are like Bob Dylan leaning against a tree, singing a song and the band is like a dream of the backing that's going on inside Bob Dylan's head when he's singing.

"He's not hearing this acoustic guitar, he's hearing this orchestra or something and he's singing with that. The acoustic guitar is just keeping his rhythm for him. He's not really taking his tuning off it. It's like that.

"Which is why we always blow it if we put the acoustic guitar in too quiet and if we put it too loud it covers everything up too much. It's a very difficult thing to mix."

So the acoustic guitar is obviously the most important instrument in the band.

"No. I think the bass is."

Why?

"Because the bass guitar is the mixture between rhythm and melodic link."

OK. So he seems to have his studio ideas very clearly mapped out but when it comes to playing live the Woodentops have, by Rolo's own admission, turned in some pretty horrendous performances. This he puts down to a combination of nerves and a lack of time and facilities on stage.

However, it was at one of their better performances that producer Bob Sergeant decided he wanted to produce their album. Rolo describes the result as...

"Unique, vital, modern, unmanufactured, warm, soulful, in tune, out of tune, lots of singing on it, lots of amazing drums on it. All the grooves on the tracks are great. The whole thing sounds really complete and when you've heard it you can't think of anything that's missing. At no point is there anything on the album which is there to be ignored."

Did the Woodentops achieve this goal? Buy the record and find out!