UNKLE's 'Psyence Fiction' album was one of the year's most eagerly awaited releases, an epic opus of gargantuan proportions five years in the making, which Mo'Wax boss, DJ and UNKLE visionary James Lavelle compared to the making of 'Apocalypse Now'. Five months down the line and UNKLE are on the road, headlining the NME Premier Tour. The idea of UNKLE live is a strange one, especially when breakbeat wunderkind DJ Shadow is absent, replaced by the turntable antics of The Scratch Perverts, and when you notice that Lavelle himself has no writing credit on the album.

"It's very hard to describe what we did on the record," he explains, " and because I run the label and stuff like that I felt that it wasn't appropriate to take publishing credits, especially as Shadow's on Mo'Wax. The record was made through using turntables and samplers, so that's why I wanted to do the tour like this. It performs certain elements from the album and other elements are reconstructed in different ways. Going out with a live band wasn't appropriate, as the record was not made with a live band, I wanted to show it as it is. I would have loved Shadow to be on the tour, but he's really tired, so he just wanted to stay at home. But it was a shared vision and I wanted to see how people would react to it in a different context".

Also notable by their absence are the plethora of guest vocalists, whether they be current critical darlings like Mike D and Richard Ashcroft or future stars such as Badly Drawn Boy, their roles being filled by accapella cuts dropped in live by the DJs. Says Lavelle, "I wanted to get away from all that because it doesn't really show it for what it is, we never expected that we would go and pe a, rearranged, edited and changed".

This project has been extended by the forthcoming release of 'Be There', a reworking of the instrumental track 'Unreal', now featuring Ian Brown on vocals.

"I kind of had this thing after Reading...I was really into the Stone Roses and I felt that the way the press dealt with Ian was really really wrong and you felt that potentially that was it, you were never going to see him or hear from him again. I was trying to get hold of him - I kind of had this concept of John Travolta in Pulp Fiction, trying to bring somebody back that everybody thought was over, but he'd already got that back in his own head and was making his own record. And then, a couple of weeks after we finished the album, he called me again and said he wanted to do something. In retrospect, I think if Ian had been on the album as it was it would have been overkill. In a funny way it's kind of the best single track we did, even though it's not on the album. There probably won't be any more singles".

But if there won't be any more singles, does this mean that 'Psyence Fiction' was a one-off?
"I'd never do what I did again," agrees James, "but then I've done it and you want to move on. I remember when I started the record and 3D from Massive Attack told me I was mad to get involved with so many people, and in a certain way he was right. The further you go along you just want to be around your mates. If there was ever another UNKLE record it would be a lot more...based around a couple of people, more in-house. And I'd never do as much press as I did before". True enough, the press circus around the album's release was one of the more difficult to escape campaigns of the year.

"I don't resent doing press," he continues, "But I do resent the fact that people think I hyped the record because as a record label, unless you're like the Spice Girls and spend thousands and thousands advertising stuff, that's the only way you CAN hype a record. The press wrote about the record. They were responsible for hyping the record. I only did what I was advised to do, which was "you don't have a band, you don't have singles, go out and do the press, that's the only way people will know about the record". I feel I made a mistake on that level by trusting in that, because as a record buyer I never really bought records from reading about them".

As a result of the pre-release talking-up of the album, for some it was something of an anti-climax. However, Lavelle remains confident of its staying power. "Personally I think in the future, the record will be referenced back to rather than thrown away. When you look at who's on the album, all those bands are taken really seriously now, but when they started everyone was very critical of Verve, of Radiohead. Much as everyone seems to rate 'Paul's Boutique' as the best hip-hop record, nobody bought that record when it came out. And I hope that the UNKLE record will do the same thing."

James Lavelle was talking to Tim Sismey, in January 1999.