RE-MISSION

Mission of Burma lasted only three years before they split in 1983. But their reputation outlived them. Their songs were recycled by the likes of REM and Moby and the new wave of art rockers - Franz Ferdinand et al - regularly namecheck them as inspiration. Back with a new album, bass player Clint Conley talks to Brian Boyd about the band's renaissance

For a band who really only ever released one EP and one album, Boston art-rockers Mission of Burma have had an influence totally out of proportion to their recorded output. An essential early 1980s post-punk outfit, Mission of Burma were mining the same ground as bands such as Pere Ubu, The Mekons and The Gang of Four. Sonically, they were all jittery rhythms, shouty vocals and strange key and chord changes. Breaking up in 1983, a mere three years after they formed, the three-piece drifted into various solo projects with not much commercial return. Over the years, however, they watched on as a cult developed around them. REM covered one of their songs (Academy Fight Song) as did Moby (That's When I Reach For My Revolver) and they are now the band most name-checked by the new wave of art rockers - Franz Ferdinand et al.

They couldn't even manage to break up in time-honoured rock 'n' roll fashion - lawsuits, drug abuse and venomous personal acrimony - they only stopped playing because their guitarist and singer, Roger Miller, got a bad case of tinnitus.

"We actually never officially broke up," says bass player Clint Conley. "We just had to stop playing because of Roger's ear problems. There was never any split, musically or personally, so with recording a new album and going back on the road again, we see this as less of a reunion and more of a continuation." (They have circumvented the singer's ear thing by having him wear industrial style headphones on stage and sequestering the drums behind a plexiglass shield.)

The release of the new album, Onoffon, was a prerequisite for the band playing again. "It was our one big rule," says Conley. "We had to have new stuff available to play. We feel this makes it all a bit more vital and a bit more legitimate. You see a lot of this historical re-creation out there on the music scene now and we were determined we weren't going to go down that road - just standing there bashing out songs from over 20 years ago."

The added problem would have been that there weren't that many Mission Of Burma songs to begin with. "I know, it's pathetic," he agrees. "I can't believe how little we released, it's embarrassing actually."

Like the second coming of Wire and Television, Mission of Burma have been greeted enthusiastically this time around for the simple reason that they didn't wear out their welcome the first time around. Their stature has grown hugely over the years when they were dormant.

"I think the pilot light was still burning all those years," says Conley, "and we never seemed to go away in terms of being an influential band. It was sort of strange looking on as we kept getting mentioned and other bands covered our songs."

The new album finds them still nestling somewhere between pop, existentialism and avant-garde experimentalism. Although nostalgia is very much a four-letter word for them, there's a seamless connection between the first album, Vs and Onoffon. "I think the playing is much better on this album," he says. "We're not so much in a blind-rush fury any more. We used to have the idea that three-part vocals was to have three guys yelling. A lot of our vocals used to be more declaiming than singing. But we're using our voices to better effect now.

"The really strange thing for us is that we were always so conditioned to having nobody liking us and that our music was never really for a broad audience, but since we started playing again, we're doing bigger and bigger rooms and I'm just wondering who all these new people are - where have they come from? They certainly weren't there the first time around."

It could be argued that Mission of Burma's return has been perfectly timed - given that the art-rock sound they patented is back at the top of the charts again. Surprisingly, Conely is not a fan of the current crop of art-rockers. "I really don't think it's healthy. You have these bands from now using the sound of so long ago. There's a certain amount of mimicry there which doesn't interest me. I really believe in progress. I'm a modernist in that I think things should move in a straight arrow. It's almost decadent - and by that I mean that the appropriation of earlier musical forms can not be a good thing for the development of music."

But what it all means for Mission of Burma is that while their sound may have been cutting-edge back in the early 1980s, it is now on the fringes of the mainstream. "It's a strange thing in that we haven't moved, but the musical world has," says Conley. "We were thinking of this when we were doing up the set-lists for the tour and we decided we wouldn't just spoon in the new stuff like medicine before doing the old stuff, instead we'd just mix the two albums in together."

While the band are happy with the critical response to the new album and the amount of people turning up to see them play, there's still a scepticism there. "When we started back in 1980," he says, "all the bands we loved and really admired were from the rock underground, there were these really obscure bands that nobody had ever heard of. And then, suddenly, we became one of those bands ourselves. And now, after all this time, we're the beneficiaries of this new found fascination. . . You couldn't make it up."

Onoffon is on the Matador label. The Mission of Burma play the Temple Bar Music Centre on July 6th