Decoder Ring have gone through a renaissance. In the space of two albums and one incredibly successful soundtrack to one incredibly successful film the band have gone from playing small venues – like the Hopetoun, where they recent played a super-not-so-secret show to get into touch with their ‘roots’ – to playing festivals galore, showcasing their wares at the likes of South By Southwest, touring the world, and generally having a grand old time.

Now’s come the time when the band playing – anywhere, anytime – is a big deal indeed. That’s why they’re one of the main attractions at the forthcoming Great Escape festival over the Easter long weekend. But the group are already thinking ahead, to the point where Tom is contemplating the recording of the band’s fourth release.

“I’d like to get to old school songwriting,” he comments. That will, no doubt, be helped by the very nature of the group; far from being three individuals who are experimenting, and bringing in guests of the calibre of Art of Fighting’s Ollie Browne and vocalist Lenka, Decoder Ring are now a lean, mean fighting machine, with the latter guest part of the band’s permanent line-up since the recording of last year’s Fractions.

“She’s the pin-up chick with a bit of a bite,” he grins.

Tom agrees that the sounds of Decoder Ring have evolved and changed to a degree, and that, in all honesty, he’s still unsure as to how the next batch of recordings will actually end up sounding – will it be more experimental, reverting somewhat back to their earlier style, or will it continue apace into atmospheric, esoteric soundscapes? Tom sits on the fence. “I’d like to encapsulate that sense,” he says of the band’s more recent material, “with some of the earlier stuff. It’d be interesting. I’d like it to be more energetic, and slightly immediate I guess.”

Are Decoder Ring about to write some pop songs? “We might do a few,” he says with a laugh. “Ahh. It’d be very weird.”

Of course, with Decoder Ring continuing to gain acclaim, it must at some stage come into the group’s thoughts that, indeed, they do have to write something that will comfortably find on spot on radio. “Look, when you write songs for the song itself you don’t write a song for the radio,” he outlines, “but you do have a series of songs for an album and you try and create an album that has a connection so that the songs relative to one another and so that the album has an essence, and I think as far as that you just pick a radio song from that.”

For Fractions, it was very much that case – the guest spot by Ollie Browne on “Traffic” automatically leant itself to being a single release, as did…well, pretty much anything with the gorgeous tones of Lenka on it. “It’s got to fit that criteria of length, but we won’t necessarily edit a song so that it fits that 3:20 length. We’ve got to be happy with the song, and it can be tough as radio playlists are very regimented. They won’t play mogwai; it’s too long. It’s a little bit disappointing.”

Playing festivals like the Great Escape does mean, to a certain extent, that the likes of Decoder Ring do have to change their own approach to how they would at, for instance, a show at the Metro, where they can utilise the large P.A. and have a filmic background versus a show at the Hoey, where it’s more about being able to fit the group on stage first and foremost.

“They are,” he says of the differentiation of delivery. “I think we just consistently do what we like to do, and continue to have the visuals because that’s important to us. That’s why it is quite odd where we didn’t have it [at the Hopetoun] because the lack of union between the visuals and the music is different. The album, certainly, when you listen to it by yourself that’s what you do.”

But, Tom indicates, the band have grand plans for their next release to go beyond that scope, and to incorporate a DVD component to accompany the music. “If the money’s available,” he cautions, “we’d like to throw that together and that’d be great.”

It sounds like a decision is pending – could we end up seeing Decoder Ring on a major label? “We were with a major in Australia,” he says of the band’s initial releases on Hello Cleveland/EMI, “and we thought we’d like to try to do it ourselves because ultimately we thought we could achieve what we wanted to achieve and get it done, but at the same time I think on an international level it’s a big world out there, and we don’t expect to be able to manage everything. Bella Union looked after us in terms of Somersault over in the UK and we’re certainly not closing any doors, and partly SxSW is about getting over there and talking to people.”

Of course, there’s always the fear with SxSW that you’re simply going to be one of 1300 or so bands hoping that their big break comes, when in all reality there’s really only two or three genuine ‘buzz’ bands to emerge from Austin’s extravaganza – and this year it seemed to be Tapes ‘n Tapes, the Editors, and Perth rock poppets the Flairz who garnered the most attention. That’s partly why Decoder ring did the sensible thing and tailored their festivities around various other shows besides, including a showcase for MusicOz. “Once we were selected to go to SxSW there was a further selection in amongst those bands and three or four or five got selected to showcase.”

It ended with the Mess Hall, the Living End and Decoder Ring playing a showcase in Los Angeles to rave reviews.

Now the group are back in Australia to play at the Great Escape festival over the Easter long weekend.