“And not somebody singing it in a rollneck sweater.” Budgie laughs and pretends to be shocked by her bitchiness – “Miaow!” She purrs and miaows back, scratching the air with her fingers.It’s an act they almost didn’t pull off. There was a time, immediately after the break with Polydor, when they seriously considered calling it a day. “It was as if we didn’t fit a particular category, so we weren’t allowed to continue,” Siouxsie recalls. “There was a point where I thought: `Oh well, I’ll just pack up and open a flower shop or something.’ “Even recently, they had difficulty securing live bookings “We were just dying to get out and play We asked around, but there was a real resistance. The music promoters over here are governed by the corporate way of thinking, of tying in tour, album, tour, album.”The response was: `When’s your record due?’ All of a sudden you are being told that you can’t play because you are not promoting a record I was so pissed off with that attitude. So, fingers firmly stuck up at them, we went ahead and did those shows at the Garage.”As well as proving that they could still cut it live, the shows marked a return to the intimacy of those early Banshees performances It’s the closest they get to a nostalgia trip “It’s been a long time,” Siouxsie says wistfully “I’ve missed that contact. With the Banshees, it developed into a situation where you went out on the road when you’d completed a record, and did some big production in a hall or a theatre There was that distance.

And I missed that feeling of starting again, of playing stuff that people don’t know.” Budgie nods in agreement.This feeling of rejuvenation dominates their conversation, not least when they describe their plans to release a remix version of the new album. It sounds surprising at first, until you remember that the Banshees were one of the first non-dance bands to embrace the concept of the remix. And with the Creatures’ sound relying so heavily on drums and percussion, it was only a matter of time before the world of dance music finally caught up with them.There’s another logic to it, too, something which makes this latest enterprise a natural extension of everything they’ve done. It’s the spirit in which a lot of contemporary dance music is produced – people tucked away in their bedrooms, making records on their computers. It’s the fact that, with a little bit of technology, “anyone can do it”. To put it another way, the world the Creatures inhabit now is a lot like the one they first sprang from, a lot like punk.The moment the words are out of my mouth, Siouxsie Sioux’s eyes light up “Yeah!” she says emphatically “Brilliant! It’s DIY It’s back to DIY That’s the key for me DIY.

Do it yourself, with as little interference as possible.”The Creatures play the University of London Union on Friday and Saturday; their single, `2nd Floor’, is released on 5 October; Banshees And Other Creatures is the subject of `Rock Family Trees’ on BBC2 on Saturday 25 September. THIS IS traditional call-and-response dance: the more you call the more they’ll respond The Edinburgh audience called and called and called. Cool Heat Urban Beat made their British debut at the Festival last month with a show that had all the hallmarks of a global campaign for trainers – jumpy, jive-talking young men with baggy clothes and amplifiers the size of Venus

But the obvious youth appeal is only half the story. I think one would be hard put to find anyone who wouldn’t have a good time – it isn’t even particularly loud.
Cool Heat Urban Beat’s 10-man show is a collaboration between Rennie Harris’s Pure Movement Hip Hop outfit and Herbin Van Cayseele’s Urban Tap trio. The two styles collide in a gang war between traditional tap and the more modern dances of the street. The whole Sharks/Jets set-up is a little contrived but it has respectable roots in all the great tap- dancing acts where each soloist tries to top the last routine.After an initial three-man tour de force the tap dancers each do party pieces. Rod Ferrone, dressed like a lost member of Madness in dark suit and bowler hat, enacts an elaborate tap mambo, his feet stealing their rhythm from the congas like an extra element in the rhythm section.