Listen in real audio : Eon South

One thing about Bristol, England that is patently true: It's Britain's capital of gorgeous, spectral blues, of music for which the word 'evocative' was doubtless coined. Portishead and Massive Attack may have got there first, but Alpha, too, create a sound that sounds best at night with its heartbreaking blend of moist-eyed film scores and torch songs.

34-year-old Andy Jenks and Corin Dingley, 28, are retro-futurists whose music alludes to classic singer- songwriters like Scott Walker, Jimmy Webb and Lee Hazelwood as well as hip hop, backroom groups like Bent and Lemon Jelly and '80s experimentalists 23 Skidoo. "I can hear both - old and modern," says the Southampton-born Jenks. "We're trying to find elements of both that work together, rather than do a Bacharach thing with a beat. We want it to be steeped in our influences but not merely retro. Picking up on the production and song writing techniques of the past but without getting into the nostalgic, kitsch thing."

Judging by their new, second album, they've succeeded. The Impossible Thrill is an impossibly poised reminder of the Bristol boys' prowess, following 1998's debut Come From Heaven which alerted David Bowie, Radiohead's Colin Greenwood, Madonna and Pulp's Jarvis Cocker to their sample-strewn musical hybrid. This time around they are still working with the same vocalists; Martin Barnard, Wendy Stubbs and Helen White as well as one track Wishes featuring Daddy G of Massive Attack. However, they have abandoned studio trickery, preferring to prove themselves on 'real' instruments as if to emphasize that they're, you know, A Proper Band.

"It's not because we don't like samples, but because we wanted to move on," affirms Jenks. "When we went out and played the last album live we were quite conscious that there were a lot of limitations to what we'd done in the studio. So we made the writing more live-based so we could replicate it."

Originally they only had what Jenks refers to, smiling, as "a negative blueprint: things that we didn't want Alpha to sound like". Hence although they were immersed in beats and drum machines, they vowed to articulate their hitherto suppressed side that was only visible in the MOR that was gathering dust in the corner of their bedrooms. "Charity shops got me into Alpha," Jenks admits. And where others recoiled at mention of the 'Bristol sound', Jenks and Dingley yearned to be lumped in with their peers. "Everyone slags that off here, but for us it's been nothing but advantageous," announces Jenks. "Especially when you step outside Britain; Bristol still has that currency, which is amazing. It's almost like a fucking credit card sometimes."

One day though, he admits, he'd like to live abroad. Maybe San Francisco or, failing that, Paris where Alpha's woozy dreamscapes are especially popular. So much so that they've crafted a five-track EP with three French singers, which will only sell in France. "It's great playing live there," elaborates Jenks, "because all you can see are these faces staring at you, really concentrating. We're so used to three-quarters of the crowd talking about what they're going to do tomorrow night."

Such apathy is destined to be part of Alpha's past when everyone succumbs to the blues-inflected grandeur of The Impossible Thrill. Not that Dingley sees their music quite that way. "What does it mean to me? Well, its music to er, dream to, music to er, be confused about."