"I get fed up with playing the little black holes where gigs normally are. The big windows and ocean are better than any light show."

British Sea Power singer and guitarist Scott Wilkinson, known on stage as Yan, is talking about his reasons for the four-piece's choice of venue for their first Brighton-based show since they performed a storming set at this year's The Great Escape festival.

The band, who hail from Brighton, are playing at Whitecliffs Promenade Cafe as part of a short tour of unusual venues to test out some of the new material from their long-awaited third album.

The other venues set to be treated to tracks from Do You Like Rock Music?, which is released in January, include the highest pub in England, The Tam Hill Inn, in Swaledale, Yorkshire, a burlesque-style show at London's Scala and a Liverpool ferry called the Royal Daffodil.

"At the Tam Hill we will be playing to about 80 people, and sheep and chickens," says Yan. "Some people have said they will be camping, I don't think they know it is just an exposed moor!

"The Liverpool trip is just an excuse to sing Ferry 'Cross The Mersey."

Last summer, when British Sea Power played another unusual venue, the Newhaven Fort, they were talking about their soon-to-be released album.

Yan confesses the album had taken a lot longer than they first thought.

"We made it in three countries for a start," he says. "We started out in the New Forest, then a water tower near Ipswich, then Montreal in minus-20 degree temperatures.

"Then we went to a Cornish fort, surrounded by Army helicopters, and finished in a forest near Prague in the Czech Republic.

"It was hardcore. We thought it might help if it wasn't such an easy ride as going into a studio. We thought a bit of hardship might come through on the record and give us a new maturity. It gave us something certainly, it was quite hard going."

Brighton fans heard a taste of the new material with a couple of instrumentals during the band's gig at the Udderbelly in May, closing this year's Great Escape Festival.

Yan can only remember one aspect of the gig though, when fellow guitarist Martin Noble "dumped" him headfirst into his guitar pedals.

"I thought I had broken my nose," he says. "But it was just a bit of a gash. I tried to cover my head with a bit of cloth that was lying around, but I could see the blood dripping down to my shoes.

All these people in the front row were looking at me horrified!"

It is symptomatic of British Sea Power's frenzied live show, which in previous tours has seen them dancing with a 10ft bear called Ursine Ultra and raid nearby forests for foliage to decorate the stage.

"We've stopped bringing things back from the woods," says Yan. "The trees grew in size and there were more and more of them so it got a bit dangerous."

In particular people were falling out of trees, including the band's bassist Hamilton who caused a series of shows to be cancelled in 2004 when he hurt his wrist after a treetop tumble.

Now the band's show centres around a series of flags collected by guitarist Noble.

"They are nautical flags so they can mean things like My engine's on fire'," says Yan. The flags fit with the different customised military uniforms the band wears on stage.

"We started off with this idea that we were decommissioning military things and putting them to better uses," says Yan. "But people thought we were just war fetishists.

"I think we're going to have to get out a flip chart and pointer to educate them!"

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