Loud and lawless spirit

Dave Mitchell loves noise. That is why the Ghost Club guitarist and singer never wears earplugs.

"I quite often find myself on the ground, right in front of the speaker, and I don't even know how I got there.

"I almost think my ears just really love it, so they don't consider it bad for me. I keep waiting for the doctor to tell me I'm completely deaf," he laughs.

It hasn't happened yet.

Mitchell is best remembered from his time in the 3Ds, the early 90s Dunedin quartet who delivered much brilliantly loopy and loud guitar pop on their albums Hellzapoppin, Venus Trail and Strange News from The Angels.

Despite his noise fetish, Mitchell has a relaxing voice and manner. He meanders rather than talks and has a delightful way of putting things.

This is how he describes getting back to New Zealand from his London base: "I think I got in on the 12th of whatever month it was before April."

He's house-sitting in Port Chalmers, Dunedin, for Robbie Yeats from fellow noise worshippers, the Dead C.

"It's a great big old house on the hill but because it's so bloody big you have to do a sprint to get to the phone," he says.

Since he's been back he's been working on the artwork for the Ghost Club's second album, Suicide Train. Mitchell does all the band's artwork - has done ever since the 3Ds - and even though he's right-handed, he draws with his left.

"It's the hand that doesn't work," he explains. "I never have a concept of what I'm going to draw, so the hand seems to start this subconscious montage of all these things that you're not even aware of yourself.

"It's like one of those horror films like The Hands of Orlac, it's completely doing whatever it wants and you're the unwilling victim. Quite often I get up in the morning and go, 'My God, that's a mess'."

Suicide Train was recorded in one day in the basement of an old Victorian pub in Hackney.

The decrepit building also doubles as a squat where Matthew Hyland, a member of defunct Kiwi band SPUD, lives.

"It was four stories of crumbling masonry and you're down in this cellar with all these bits and pieces of rock and debris dropping on top of you. It was pretty funny. There's no way you'd want to be down there too long."

Ghost Club - also made up of bass player/drummer Denise Roughan (also from the 3Ds) and bass player/drummer, Jim Abbott - released their first album, Ghostclubbing, in 2001.

It was a solid, loud and chunky album with hints of all the best bits of the 3D's pop sensibility.

It was recorded in two days, according to Mitchell. Why so quickly?

"I don't know. Although, it doesn't always work and that's the gamble. You've got to treat a recording as a little snapshot, and if it does work I find, even if it's slightly flawed, you can look back at it and get a quite immediate picture of where you were at that stage.

"But you might find you've picked the wrong weekend to do a project like that," he laughs.

He and Roughan moved to London in 1997 after the 3Ds "quietly moved apart".

"I don't think there was any animosity or bad feeling [when the band ended]," he says. "We were doing it for fun. Then, all of the sudden, we were into the big [music] machine and I don't think we had any idea of what was out there."

When he got to London he stayed in a Brixton squat for his first two years and started playing music.

He says squatting was the perfect way to get established in the unforgiving London music scene. "You have to get up to skulduggery to survive and once you realise that, you realise there's huge communities all over the city of people doing the same thing, people existing outside the law in order to survive. They're not doing it for kicks, they're doing it because they'd bloody die otherwise."

Now he lives in a council flat by the River Thames near London Bridge.

He plays in five bands including the deliciously named, Evil ("Liz, the drummer, is one of the loudest I've ever been near. Roddy makes his infernal screaming racket and I join in," he says.) Then there's the Mean Streaks and an improvisational band he plays in with Hyland.

"Matthew and I have been playing in mental asylums. Which has been good. But not for the patients, I don't think they've enjoyed it," he laughs.

Similar to his squatting days, Mitchell lives outside the law when he plays music. If it wasn't for his calm demeanour you'd say he was a wee bit sick.

"I had a guy sit down and cry, and he was weeping. He couldn't handle it at all," laughs Mitchell. "It sounds sadistic but unfortunately that sort of thing just makes you want to turn it up.

"I really enjoy playing music over there, even though people have come up and pulled the plug. And you're thinking, 'This is 2005, you can't live on Oasis all your life'.

"They want a honed-down rock show and they're not really expecting improvisation and big black holes in songs where no one knows what's going to happen.

"I've never really thought of music and art being the bread and butter of my life. I mean, nine times out of 10 I don't understand what these songs, stories or pictures are about. They're just as weird to me as anyone who's hearing them."

Performance

*Who: The Ghost Club, noise pop trio featuring a couple of former Ds
*Where & when: Kings Arms Tavern, tonight
*Albums: Ghostclubbing (2001), Suicide Train (out in May)