Congratulations on your album, Headache Music. Is it your first? Well, it’s the first Torpedo Boyz album and my tenth in total. What releases might we know you by? Ah, I don’t think any have been released in Australia, but I’ve had a few under the name of Space Kelly. It’s kind of a power pop band in Germany. It did well in Japan but no, not in Australia. Japan is great that way. They’ll accept anything regardless of origin… Yeah, I’ve spoken to a few Japanese people and they say that as long as the music’s good they can get into it, no matter if the language is English, German or French. Most Japanese people don’t even speak any of those languages but they still like it. Between the two of you the Torpedo Boyz have a varied background – Berlin, Paris, and Tokyo. How does each different scene influence your music? Since I’m half Japanese I also lived in England and Japan and my fellow musician Rolling Hand, his family and his wife are French and he used to live in France as well. We absorb all kinds of music wherever we are. We’re the kind of guys who travel a lot and meet lots of people from all different countries; this is why we have so many different singers on the album. There’s English, French, Japanese, Russian, even some Portuguese. So basically when it comes to music, we like lots of styles, no matter what language it’s in. Rolling Hand used to be a house DJ so obviously he was really into Detroit and French House when we started recording Headache Music. So are these just friends you’ve decided to collaborate with? Well, it’s different. Some of them were friends before and some of them became friends after that. There’s a Russian guy, he’s a big bloke from Armenia, I’m sharing an office with and the guy who sings the Portuguese song is actually a bartender in my favourite bar here in Berlin. Your bio is quite a tale. I was wondering which of the following stories are true: was Rolling Hand nominated for the Tour de France? No, but he’s really into the whole racing bike thing. When he lived in France he was actually riding the same roads as the Tour de France. Is MC Returner a Cuban shark hunter? That’s true. Yeah, it’s really cool, he’s written a book about it and everything. Your album has a lot of diversity – did you guys ever hesitate about the contrasting styles? When we started recording we had “Give Me A Bass Line” as a 12 inch track, just for fun, and then Lounge Records came up to us and said we want you guys to do an album because “Give Me A Bass Line” peaked at No. 5 on the German pop charts and everyone was like, who are the Torpedo Boys? We want to hear more. So we were just starting to record this album. With our background and our various interests in music we couldn’t really stick to one style. At the end of the day we had this tracklist of 12 to 14 songs that weren’t really matching and we were looking at it thinking jeez, some people will look at this and think it’s 12 different artists doing different styles. So we were a little bit afraid. But at the end of the day it worked out and even if you have tracks like “Give Me a Bass Line”, followed by “Spiders In My Brain”, then “Au Jour Et A L’Heure”, people seem to like it that way. You recently scored a Cheerios commercial. Did they come to you and say we want this particular song, or did you tailor a song and do some remixes? The enquiry actually came in even before the album was out, so we were wondering how they actually got their hands on the track. They told us that they found it on the internet, which is basically impossible, but on the other hand we said well, we don’t care where you found it, just take it. Exactly, and spell our name correctly on the cheque. (Laughs) Yeah, yeah. Well, can we expect to see you down here in Australia any time soon? I hope so! It all really depends on record sales. But it’s all very promising at the moment and we’re getting good airplay so anything’s possible. But I’m counting on your support, man. Yeah. Yeah anytime mate. Headache Music is out now through Creative Vibes.