There are a few tell-tale signs when an interview starts heading towards a brick wall.

Little things: the conspiracy theorising, the stream of consciousness responses, ignoring a question should it not fit the monologue…

Little things, such as casual admission that our intimate little chat is being broadcast. Live. Over the internet. To hundreds of listeners who – judging from the real-time comment facility – might just be more interested in mischief than any Q&A.

Or perhaps it’s as the interview nears its natural conclusion, when the line “mysteriously” drops dead – nothing to do with us, guvnor – and you wonder if (and how quickly) you should phone back… except by this stage, you’ve already logged on to said internet channel – morbid fascination being a thing – and lo and behold, there’s the conversation, continuing without you.

Anton Newcombe is not necessarily an easy interview. Also: the world needs Anton Newcombe. Even as he nears his 50s, he still travels at a thousand miles an hour; it’s a challenge even to think of keeping up. 26 years after the first BJM release, his has been a career trajectory that defies every law of longevity, yet he remains as resolute and idiosyncratic as ever (although plenty of other, less sympathetic adjectives have been flung in his direction over the years). 

“The America that I’m in love with doesn’t exist anymore. It’s bullshit.” – Anton Newcombe

“I never wanted to be commercial,” he tells The Skinny from the Berlin studio complex he’s called base since 2010. “I’ve never changed.”

Not even a little? A natural evolution shaped by maturity and experience?

“I’ve never changed,” he reiterates, another line of enquiry firmly closed.

This isn’t strictly true, of course; cleaned up, happily married and a doting father, it’s a world away from the bitumen of self-destruction smeared liberally across the band’s convoluted history – the smack, the booze, the nuclear option mentality that has worked to cloud an acute and prolific songwriting talent. In sync with the German capital – “Berlin is brilliant,” he announces – and Europe in general, he’s also very much not missing the motherland. “The America that I’m in love with doesn’t exist anymore. I see all these people that have suddenly lost their minds, trying to run an economy on easy credit. It’s bullshit.”

Cue further minutes of animated pontification on global affairs.

Anton Newcombe was born in 1967, growing up in the affluent Californian suburb of Newport Beach, and obsessed with music from an early age. “My mom and my babysitter saw that I loved records so much that they went out and got me a record player.” He was two years old, by all accounts.

“Of course I had all the Beatles records, but it never occurred to me that I could play music until I discovered punk and post-punk. When you’re watching somebody like Bowie on TV, there’s nothing that he ever does that could lead you to believe that you could be David Bowie; at the time I was into everything, but the punk thing helped out.”

“I saw the Mary Chain play,” he adds, remembering that we’re supposed to be talking about the forthcoming Cosmosis festival (before rattling off a list of pretty much every important UK act from the late 70’s). It’s this Anglophilia that’s always flavoured Newcombe’s own particular brand of laconic psychedelia… but growing up in Orange County, did he understand the reference points behind British music of the time?

“I certainly did, because when my sister and I started getting into Crass we knew about the economy and Thatcher. CND and all that other stuff – they took being on the front line, whereas America was so aggressive, going ‘Russia, we’re ready. Look at us, we’re John Wayne,’ and people in the UK were like ‘We don’t want all your bases here because we’re targets – it’s pointless.’”

The above is delivered bam-bam-bam, no pause for breath, and it’s this intensity that suggests he’s talking at you, not with. Which is when things start growing a little weird. Tangents, cross-purposes, buried context. A question is asked about Ringo Deathstarr – also playing Cosmosis – whose lysergic shoegaze and punned moniker both owe a debt to the Newcombe aesthetic; instead, he repeats an oft-told story he’s spun to more than one journalist in the past, claiming that “When I started the band we were called Blur. Later, I picked up a Melody Maker and there was a new band called Blur, so I said to myself that I’m going to make up a name that no-one has ever thought of.”

Which may or may not be true; the point being that you’re never quite sure if he’s being straight-up. Even a cursory chat with the BJM’s only constant (as with The Fall, the roll call of past and present members would struggle to all fit on a bus – the main difference being that musicians tend to return to the fold in Anton’s world) indicates a fierce intelligence, and passion undimmed by middle age. And after flying almost too close to the sun during the last two decades, ridding himself of his distractions has seen the band’s reputation rebooted, the recent albums – 2014’s Revelation; Musique de Film Imaginé, and Mini Album Thingy Wingy, both from last year – representing fluid additions to the contemporary psych canon (while also echoing the rich, playful, and above all honest textures of the earlier material).

Yet wavelengths can be challenging constructs, the frequencies that Anton broadcasts on – internet platform aside – far from easy to tune into. We never learn why the phone line failed, or the party responsible (let’s just say we have our suspicions). But later, online, while speaking of his disbelief that we didn’t call back with twinkle very much in eye, he dedicates a song in our direction before heading back to domesticity; it’s a display of warmth betraying an unexpected affection – no wonder he attracts so many complex adjectives.

My Little Underground 

Beyond Anton's antics, we cast our gaze over the coming instalment of Cosmosis Festival 

The jury may still be out on whether Sleaford Mods are the voice of genuine disenfranchisement or Emperor’s New Clothes, but Anton Newcombe is in little doubt. “Jason and I hit it off when I started to go and see them play. Berlin would be a good example; a room full of sweaty Germans, all watching him pull it off with Andrew just standing there with a can of beer and a laptop.” And having released the duo’s Fizzy 12" a few years ago on his A Records label, there’s plenty of synergy in having both BJM and the Mods playing this year’s Cosmosis – in spirit if not in style.

Not that the day’s festivities – this year taking place over five stages in the Victoria Warehouse in exotic Stretford – is likely to ever fall prey to predictability; not with the fraternal discourse that is The Jesus and Mary Chain occupying top billing (thus inviting a tasty contrast between the Reids’ instinctive American leanings and the BJM assimilation of UK flavours).  

Yet such a headlining triptych only scratches the surface of what the 40+ bands and DJs will be placing before the masses. Highly influential art-rock veterans Wire will juxtapose the odd crowd pleaser with tracks from their just-announced new mini-album, whilst of Montreal will get to tease with their umpteenth new direction. The Raveonettes’ chic noise, NYC spacerock courtesy of White Hills, the cerebral post-metal of Deafheaven, the indie bounce of PINS… and we could go on; with thirteen hours of on-stage action there’ll be no rushed sets, and little pause for breath – just manifold opportunity to chance upon the refreshingly new amidst songs lived with and loved to.

The heads will be happy, old roasters will be happy, and so will the rest of us.