It's kind of fun, interviewing another music writer. It's probably more fun for me than it is for Chris Hollow - who writes about other people's music for Rhythms and In*Press when he's not writing soap with his Sand Pebbles band mates, two of whom are fellow Neighbours scriptwriters - to talk about his own music. "With other people's music, it's just your take on it," he explains. "Whereas with our music, I know exactly where it's come from, so my comments tend to centre on what we were trying achieve, or who we were trying to rip off."

Sand Pebbles have just released their debut long player, Eastern Terrace, a sprawling and beautiful disc which doesn't rip off, so much as rip into its influences. The band throws itself rather joyfully about, with sleek 80s synth-pop moves, Krautrock flirtations, "mogadon pop", filmic wig outs and neo-psychedelic layerings and swirls, amidst samplers, effect pedals and loop excursions aplenty. There is also a bonus disc which offers a glimpse of the ever changing Sand Pebbles live experience, featuring material recorded live at 3CR, RRR, the Erwin Rado Theatre, and Cornish Arms, and a "Phillips fashion parade" that I didn't want to embarrass Hollow by asking about. Besides, there are more interesting questions to ask of the Sand Pebbles, starting with the size and contents of their record collections.
"I've got a big collection, and I'm not afraid to use it," Hollow admits. "It's not that I'm the only music nerd in the band," he adds. "Ben is a collector too; we both go out and spend a lot of money on records, whereas Andrew and Piet don't, so they're coming from different angles. They tend to latch onto the emotional side of music, and that's something I appreciate, because my take on songs, including our own is always more analytical. As a music fan, you always know where your roots are; I'm constantly aware of exactly which part of the 60s I'm re-hashing, from various records in my collection."

The differing music-fan sensibilities within the Sand Pebbles mean that there is an unusually diverse ser of influences within the group - "the only band all four of us would agree on, straight out is Blondie," says Hollow. It's that very diversity of musical tastes, however, which makes Sand Pebbles such an interesting band to engage with - since the musicians don't necessarily share the same reference points, the band tends to kick over traces of each individual influence.
"A song might sound like the Velvet Underground to start with," says Hollow, by way of example, "but Piet would never play a Moe Tucker drum beat to top it off. He'll come at it from a completely different point of view; everyone is coming at the song from different places, and that's why it doesn't end up sounding like any particular thing. And we've always embraced that - we realised it was something that we needed to be happy with, that we're never going to make a Loaded or Exile on Main Street, because people in the band aren't tuned into the same influences. It shouldn't work - but it does."

Hollow describes Sand Pebbles in this way - as a band that has made more of their limitations than their strengths - not just in terms of their musical tastes, but also their abilities. "For a long time, Ben could only play guitar in open G, which is a weird tuning and we just had to play around it. That coloured a lot of the songs, and that limitation became a strength. Because it's totally different way of playing; you can't just watch the guitarist's fingers, you have to play with them for a long while. Ben and I have been playing together for eight years, so it was quite a revelation, when he changed into a normal tuning.
"The other thing is that at the start, none of us could sing - that's why so much of our stuff has been instrumental. When Andrew (Tanner) came into the band, we were mucking about with 'My Sensation' (the 'single' from Eastern Terrace), and we asked him to try and sing in a higher voice. And this falsetto that he'd never used before came out - and all these songs suddenly sounded a lot more emotional and fragile. So we wanted falsetto on everything, and we wanted to keep the vocals so much louder than everything else."

According to Tanner's version of events in the liner notes, this was undertaken with some reluctance on the singer's part: "Chris and Ben convinced me this would sound great if I sang the whole shebang in a girlish falsetto - I personally had opted for a gruff lower register performance, but they said they liked it 'castrato-style'. I still reckon I heard nasty sniggers every time I left the mixing room, but there you go. Pop history is littered with mannish boys singing like girls."
"Andrew wasn't comfortable with it," Hollow confirms. "Once again the limitations became a strength, though - because I have always loved the idea of a Byrds-sounding record with beautiful harmonies, but no-one in the band can really sing except for Andrew. Singing falsetto has really pushed his limitations, and he's found something, and utilised something, that he never realised he had."