"We recently played the Guggenheim, which was like playing in a giant empty silo...”

So says Zach Condon, the Santa Fe-based musical magpie behind the amazing Beirut, as he discusses his band’s predilection for playing unusual venues while backstage in Lisbon.

“I do tend to ask the folks booking shows to look for a few interesting places to play between clubs and festivals,” he adds, explaining why Eastbourne’s Winter Gardens is the unexpected location for his band’s only English show this year.

Originally a solo project established as recently as 2006, the band has grown and developed following Condon’s ever-changing musical interests.

These have encompassed Balkan folk on his debut album Gulag Orkestar, which was inspired by a trip to Europe but recorded largely in Zach’s bedroom, French chanson on 2007’s The Flying Cup Club, and Mexican funeral bands, as captured on last year’s most recent EP March Of The Zapotec.

He describes his musical wanderlust as, “Just keeping things fresh, I suppose. A good melody is a good melody. Show me one and I don’t care where it’s from.”

Zach’s sound is not solely focused on bringing the music of the world to his New Mexico home, as the accompanying EP to the March Of The Zapotec proved.

Holland was a much more personal, synthesiser and electronica-based collection of songs – but it was an experiment the musician is unlikely to repeat.

“It was most likely a one-off release,” he says. “I feel closure in that department.”

In the year since the release of the double EP, Beirut’s releases seems to have slowed down after Zach’s initial burst of creativity, but there is plenty more to come.

“I have been taking time off but I’ve never spent much time away from music before,” he says.

“It hasn’t changed this time. Most recently this winter I spent quite a few months upstate in New York in a farmhouse, chopping wood and writing music. I believe I’ll finish what I’ve worked on when I come back from Europe this time.

“Music is a compulsion of mine in some ways. I feel strange talking or writing about myself, but throwing a song out there once in a while is a nice way of leaving your mark.”

Zach has certainly left his mark, with Beirut’s music last year inspiring Beirutando, a Brazilian festival based around his songs – something he admits to feeling “flabbergasted” about.

There doesn’t look to be a striking new direction to Zach’s latest material, though.

“Consolidation would be a good word for it,” he says. “Over the past few years I feel as though I’ve been able to spot the thread that holds all my music together. I’m running with that.”

Despite drawing influences from his travels around the world, it is surprising to discover that Zach is not comfortable with actually writing and creating new material while on tour.

“There’s no way I could write on the road,” he says. “Not that I mind. It’s the duality of a career in music, and I like the separation.”

As for what fans can expect in Eastbourne, Zach cna’t even say what is to come tonight from his seven-piece band.

As he admits: “I usually don’t know what I feel like playing until the evening of...”

Support from Early Ghost and Jacob’s Stories.

* Starts 7pm, SOLD OUT. Call 01323 412000 for returns.