Forget for a moment that XTC is a pop band responsible for some of the most sublime modern music of the last twenty years, and consider simply that these are musicians that have been prevented from sharing their gifts with the world since 1992 due to battles with their former label in England, Virgin Records, as well as a slew of other complications you are about to read about. Their sabbatical was a crime, and it becomes doubly criminal when you take into account that XTC ceased playing live in 1982. Their absence was not only a disappointment for the fans who craved their singular blend of post-punk pop, but a flustering frustration to guiding light Andy Partridge and his foil Colin Moulding - as well as third wheel Dave Gregory, who recently left the fold after twenty years.

Thankfully, XTC's dark period came to a close at the end of last year with the release of "Transistor Blast," a 4-CD archival excavation of radio broadcasts and live material that is the group's first release through the independent label TVT; that relationship blossomed with the March 2, 1999 release of a brilliant new studio album of "orchoustic" XTC, "Apple Venus Volume 1." For a full exploration of XTC's music to date be sure to seek out Neville Farmer's book "XTC Song Stories: The Exclusive Authorized Story Behind The Music." For the story of XTC's new album, we turn to Andy Partidge.

Q: Andy, it's been seven years since XTC released any new material. I'm sure there's several reasons why...

A: Have you got a few hours? I could tell you them. I'm going to have to do this real quick, because a) I'm going to bore the pants off of you and b) unless you've got a tape there that's like five days long, you won't get all the reasons. But just briefly, we did "Nonsuch" in '92 and weren't happy by the lack of promotion and we weren't happy being on the Virgin label. We were never going to make a living being on that record label. We had the world's worst deal. It was a real back of the cigarette packet kind of deal. And I said, "Look, will you make our deal sensible or can we go and get another deal with another label and we'll make some money doing this?" Because I don't want to remain in poverty for the rest of my life. They were selling fine amounts of albums, but our deal was so appalling we weren't making any money.

So they would do neither. And so I said, "Okay. We're going on strike." And we spent -- let me see -- four years, nearly five years on strike in which we legally couldn't record as XTC. They would have owned it. And in that time, I went through illness, divorce, a lot of songwriting. And finally, they let us go. It was wonderful. You know, we won, basically. And we have some great deals with record companies all around the globe. And we spent last year in and out of various studios making "Apple Venus, Volume I."

Q: When was it that guitarist Dave Gregory left XTC, because he had been with you for almost 20 years.

A: Yeah, he was like - he was part of the wallpaper. He left in March of last year, more or less as we were just getting into starting the album. He wasn't happy with a lot of things. He wasn't happy with doing an acoustic orchestral record. He wasn't happy with the fact that he wasn't songwriting, which I can't help him with. You know, he should go and buy a pencil. He wasn't happy with a lot of things. He wasn't happy with not touring. Colin and I don't like to tour. He wanted to tour. And basically, the band had kind of drifted away from his expectation of what a band should be. And it's got closer to what Colin and I think a band should be. You know, certain sorts of songs and a certain way of approaching something. But Dave, I think, has a kind of more old-fashioned plug-in-the-wall-and-play kind of an attitude. And it was just time that we split. It was sad that he went, but I felt like a million tons had been lifted off my shoulders the day he walked out. So it was good for everyone.

Q: On the way to making what has turned out to be "Apple Venus," did you have some false starts, some times you went into the studio to start making a record and then it didn't come to fruition?

A: We did. We actually started in a studio run by Chris Difford of Squeeze. And I went to see it and it looked great. It was in the grounds of his house. He's got this nice house with these big grounds. He must have made a few bob somewhere along the line. And he had this old barn converted into a studio. And it looked great, you know. Wonderful. And we started. And just nothing was ready. The day that we turned up, the mixing desk was in pieces on the floor. And we waited around for four days until tempers were really frayed. And we said, "Look, we'll come back when it's all fixed." Came back two weeks later, two weeks eaten out of our schedule and it still wasn't up and running properly. And we tried to record and things weren't technically working. And he was really embarrassed. He said, "Look, you're my favorite band ever. I'm embarrassed to death about this. So why don't you take the rest of the time for free." So we took the rest of the time for free. And then near the end of that time, he tried to charge us for the free time. And we said, "Take that bill and put it somewhere," and not on the shelf. And we left the studio. And as we were packing up to leave, he stole our tapes. So we had to start the album again. In fact, he still has the original tapes.

Q: This is going to be a juicy little conflict when it hits the music press.

A: Oh, you wouldn't believe the stuff that happened during the making of this record. I mean, this has been the trickiest and, I think, the best album yet. But it was certainly the trickiest to get born.

Q: Why is "Apple Venus, Volume I" an almost exclusively orchestral recording?

A: That's something I've wanted to do for a long time. And you can kind of see there are pointers on "Nonsuch." "Rook" and "Wrapped In Grey" and the way that we approached "Bungalow" and, to some extent, "Omnibus" and "Humble Daisy." I mean, they're not your standard rock and roll kind of structures and instrumentation. And I really wanted to get into different sounding textures. I wanted to get into an orchestral sounding thing. And as soon as we finished Nonsuch, all the material I started writing was really with that kind of thing in mind. You know, an acoustic instrument, like an acoustic piano or an acoustic guitar and then the flesh that gets hung on that skeleton is strings, brass, the whole orchestral nine yards.

Q: Do you read and write music in this process?

A: Not at all. In fact, I barely even play keyboard. I mean, you're talking to the man that's made a cardboard hand to -- if I find a great chord on the keyboard, because I don't really know what I'm doing, I've been known to run in from my little garden shed studio, draw around my hand in that shape and then run back out with this cardboard hand so I know what the chord is. So I don't read and write music. And the arrangements that I did, I had to do them one note at a time on a sequencer.

Q: Are you a notebook or computer man?

A: I have a computer, but I'm a real lug on it. And I don't use it for anything other than playing -- you know, putting together things that I can't play, but wished I did play, like drums and keyboard.