WITH the Christmas festivities well and truly over, and the penniless wasteland that is the month of January stretching for a seeming eternity before us, Babylon Zoo (remember them?) return with a stonker of song, All the Money's Gone. It's the band's first release in 18 months and follows the multi-million selling, Spaceman, single and the accompanying gold album, The Boy with the X-Ray Eyes.

So what's Jas and co been up to over the past couple of years?

"Basically a bit of everything, " Jas says, making me none the wiser.

He goes on to explain that after the phenomenal success of Spaceman, which was number one in 20 countries, he returned to the UK with between 50 and 60 songs, which he'd penned during his travels around the world.

He then rang up his record company and told them no more radio, television or "shiny faces".

"I just wanted to make my next album. And since then I've made a concerted effort to do nothing. I went into the studio and it took nine months. Which it would do because I was doing everything, engineering and producing."

He reminisces: "I started writing and playing music from the age of 11. Making music is my main thing. The television and radio is great but it's secondary to making records. "

He also reveals that he's started to make inroads into another musical arena - movie soundtracks.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.