"It would be cooler if it was called future rock," says Phil when probed about the predilection the music press has for attaching his band Trans Am to the ’Chicago Post Rock Scene’. Coming out of Washington DC, Trans Am have seen a lot more in the way of hardcore bands than they have ’math rock’ (or whatever you want to call it). Still, it’s a journalistic obsession they’ve come to terms with by now. "It used to bother me, but now I’m just numb to that whole thing - if I got mad, I’d just be mad all the time. But, yeah... we like to think of ourselves as more rock and not so much post. Even our electronic stuff we keep rock oriented - with the attitude and everything."

Which is where it all begins in terms of the music - Trans Am tend to make curiously evocative instrumental records that breathe life into their declared concept. "We’ve had that idea of ’Surveillance’ for an album concept for a long time, and we managed to gather together a lot of songs that felt really edgy... we wanted the sound to be kind of really aggressive and up-front". Which it is, but without undermining the Trans Am trademark atmospheric ebb and flow, and the aggression coming from the mood, rather than an abrasive sound. The completeness of the ’Surveillance’ sound was no doubt helped by the completion of the studio known as ’The Bridge’ - a place where Trans Am could work with themselves, and find those exact sounds they wanted to create pure Trans Am music. Phil has news on that front. "We had to tear down The Bridge, as it was at our friend’s house and they moved. We thought we’d put it back together in a bigger place when we get back from this long tour."

When they do re-convene their musical home, they already have some fairly serious plans to make a bigger and better record. "The new songs we’re writing are much more catchy - a bit less ’Sccchhhhsccccss’. It’s also interesting because the split between rock and electronic type songs is gone - it’s more of a synthesis somehow." The age old process of write, tour, tour some more, thrash out a new record, tour is not for Trans Am then? "Every time we finish a record, I’m like ’Man, I totally wanna do another one - right now!’ Part of that is because we kind of get ahead of ourselves. We finish a record but we will already have toured with those songs, so when we do another tour it’s with some more new songs."

As for the theme of this new move, "One of the new songs is called ’Future World’ which kind of fits with the new millennium and all that... so we’ll probably go for some variation on that. But we can’t be sure until we’ve finished nearly all the songs." One thing they do know is that the new record will also be moving back to the use of lyrics. "It happened kind of spontaneously. Rather than, ’Okay - now we will do a song with lyrics.’ And, yeah, it kind of fits in with that futuristic feel."

Don’t expect to see that new LP too soon though. Phil foresees a period of protracted gestation this time around. "I think we’re gonna take a really long time doing this one - the first record we did in two days, the second in about 2 weeks, and ’Surveillance’ took us about 4 weeks. So I guess this one will take us more like 2 months..."

Trans Am were talking to Drew Hird, in October 1998.