No fakers

When Glenn Hoddle made his recent ill-starred remarks about reincarnation, Crispian Mills must have had a slight attack of deja vu. In a previous life, the singer of Kula Shaker was similarly afflicted with foot-in-mouth disease, and he must have viewed the England coach's public with something approaching empathy. Mills didn't insult the disabled or anything like that: he simply suggested that the swastika was a beautiful and ancient spiritual symbol which had been twisted by the Nazis into an emblem of evil. His comments were subsequently twisted by the tabloid press, who made Mills out to be some kind of Nazi apologist.

Mills survived the storm - after all, he was just the singer in a Britpop band. He wasn't the first rock star to get into hot water over Nazi imagery, and he certainly won't be the last. He was, however, the leader of an obscenely successful band; Kula Shaker burst on to the scene in 1996 scoring a hat-trick of Top 10 hits with Tattva, Hey Dude and Govinda, and quickly bypassing the second division doldrums where Gene, Sleeper and Shed Seven dwelt.

In a matter of months, Kula Shaker established themselves at the forefront of the UK rock scene, supporting Oasis at Knebworth and topping the charts with their debut album, K. Sure, Crispian might have had some strange spiritual beliefs, but there was no denying that the Shaker were a class act. What may have really rankled with the hacks, however, was the fact that Mills was no working-class boy made good, but a privileged person with an enviable pedigree; his mother was the child actress Hayley Mills, his aunt was Juliet Mills, and his grandfather was the great John Mills. Looking back on the swastika debacle, it's hard not to suspect that Crispian was put through the tabloid mill simply because they wanted to take the cocky lad down a peg or two.

Two years later, Crispian Mills is sitting in the Clerkenwell House cafe in London's East End, accompanied by Kula Shaker's drummer, Paul Winterhart; Mills looks every bit the young Sixties swinger transposed into the 1990s: cool jacket, cool jeans and cool trainers, lean, mean and ready to rock'n'roll. There's a note of caution in his voice, however, as he prepares to embark on phase two of his band's world domination master-plan, a hint of hesitation in his demeanour.

The new single, Mystical Machine Gun, is being released on this very same day, a poptastic prelude to the band's second album, Peasants, Pigs And Astronauts, and this is probably one of the band's first interviews in support of their upcoming sophomore set. There's an awkwardness in the air, as though both band and journalist are unsure how to proceed, each equally aware of that shaky symbiosis which could easily collapse with just one misdirected question. So we start with the vague, and hope that soon everything will soon come into sharper focus. Now that Kula Shaker have found fame, chart success and even a bit of controversy, what is Mills looking for this time round? "We're looking for more music, actually," says the singer. "When we came out before, it was a hell of a lot more promotion and not as much playing as we would have liked. We're hoping to get the balance right this time. When K came out, it was just when the whole British band thing was peaking with Oasis and all that. So there was a definite movement, British bands as opposed to solo acts."

They got successful pretty quickly, didn't they, surfing in on the crest of a wave while the B-division British bands were still treading water. "It would be nice if it came across like that!" laughs Crispian. "Surfing in on the crest. I think the B-division doldrum thing happens when British bands get narrow-minded and just focus on London or England, and they forget about the rest of the world. That's when you have a problem, when you start thinking England is everything. And you do get that, especially in London, where the disease is rampant. An insular consciousness."

With songs like Radhe Radhe, Golden Avatar and Namami Nanda Nandana on the new album, you couldn't accuse Kula Shaker of being Little Englanders; they have, however, been branded rock's equivalent of vindaloo, a spicy mix of Indian flavours and English attitude, a bunch of rock'n'roll infidels appropriating Eastern imagery to make themselves appear more exotic. Kula Shaker's riposte arrives in the first minutes of the new album, a mad swirl of tablas, chants, guitar licks and Beatles-esque backing tapes. By the time you reach the heavenly choral chorus of Great Hosannah, you have to concede that these guys aren't fakers - they really mean it, man. "We like the new album better than K - we have a much happier feeling of achievement with it. When we finished K, it was rushed, and there were loads of Indian sounds and ideas that we never got to do. So there were lots of stones that were left unturned. If there wasn't anything Eastern on this album, it would just go to show that we didn't really give a shit. For us it's really part of appreciating music, it's something that we do naturally, and it's not a calculated thing. We were just doing what we enjoyed and what sounded good for us and what was getting us excited. So this album's a lot more honest."

It's also a lot more accomplished, blending Kula Shaker's trademark Indian psychedelic sound with some more progressive flavours, and adding in some aromatic arrangements. It was recorded on a Victorian houseboat on the Thames, with the legendary producer Bob Ezrin at the helm. In the great Zen tradition, the band took their time, taking a break following their 1997 appearance at the Big Day Out in Thurles, then decamping to Los Angeles to record Sound Of Drums with Rick Rubin and George Drakoulias. On their return to London, the band drafted Indian musicians Gauri Chaudri and Hariprassu Chaurasia, and added instruments such as the shenai and the sarungi into the musical melting pot. "We knew about Bob Ezrin as a mysterious producer, 'coz his name is on a lot of great albums (Pink Floyd's The Wall and Kiss's Destroyer to name but two) that we listened to growing up, and we got to see what he was like as a musician. But it's only since we've finished the album that we heard a lot of stories about him from other musicians and journalists. He's a true madman, and there's not a lot of them left in the production world. It was a challenge for us as well, because when we met him, he said to us, `I like what you tried to do on the first album'. When he said `tried to do' we felt inspired to work with him, because he had a sense of our potential and he could see our vision of where we wanted to go.

"It's difficult, you know: you do well on your first album and people think that's your definitive sound. We were a club band three months earlier, doing the odd festival, and suddenly we had people coming up to us and saying, this is your sound. You can't moan about when you have success, but it's a bit difficult when people pass judgment on you."

It can be downright disheartening, however, when people pass judgment on every inane remark you make to the music press. Did the swastika incident make them more wary of interviews? Mills takes a few moments to choose his words. "Well, I enjoyed being a little bit unconventional. You know, I was waving the freak flag high and all that, but when they started passing judgment on things that were being said in fun or with a little bit of heart, then you just say, I'm going to be really really careful of who I talk to."

Does he think journalists are afraid of people with mad ideas? I mean, let's face it, it's easier for everyone if the interviewee sticks to the standard rock'n'roll script. "I think there's a bit of paranoia, yeah."

But it doesn't make for an interesting interview, does it? If you have to watch your mouth all the time, then you might just end up trotting out the same old promotional cliches. Crispian's face breaks into a mischievous public schoolboy grin. "I'm in line, I'm boring, I've been stamped on my forehead, I speak when I'm spoken to, I've been reprogrammed while I was away!"

Peasants, Pigs And Astronauts is released on March 8th. Kula Shaker play Belfast's Ulster Hall on March 14th and the Olympia, Dublin, on March 15th.