British Sea Power Brave Freezing House to Record 'Valhalla Dancehall'

British Sea Power didn't spend a full 18 months holed up in a farmhouse in England's South Downs region making its forthcoming fifth album, 'Valhalla Dancehall,' but it was close. "It was kind of a continuous process of recording and writing," with occasional breaks for gigs, guitarist Martin Noble tells Spinner.

It wasn't always comfortable, either. "The oil that provided the heat ran out in the middle of winter, and it snowed quite badly, so the delivery truck for the oil couldn't get there for ages," Noble says. "We were freezing, wearing all our clothes and still recording. You put two or three lots of trousers on and you can still go."

The band's house-bound rock 'n' roll heroics came as part of a strategy to try a new approach in the making of 'Valhalla Dancehall.' "Part of the idea of the last record was to play them live a lot, and then when we recorded them, we would record them all live together," Noble says. "This time it was more studio-based, and we didn't move around at all. We just sort of stayed in one spot. We knew that by changing the circumstances, it would influence it. We couldn't predict in what way, but we knew we were setting ourselves up for something different."

They started slowly, accepting a commission to write a score for last year's DVD release of the 1934 movie 'Man of Aran.' "That was the first recording we did in the farmhouse in the South Downs," Noble says. "We brought all the microphones and were working out how to do it all. That was like a test to see if we could actually record ourselves, and the type of music we were doing then. I think that definitely crossed over to this new record."

'Valhalla Dancehall' is due Jan. 11 on Rough Trade.