On Darkstar‘s second album, the band sounds completely different. But you probably knew that already.

The follow-up to 2010′s bleak North – an album preceded by several years of suffocating computer-funk singles for Hyperdub – News from Nowhere finds Darkstar sounding breezy in comparison. More Animal Collective than Alien, founding members James Young and Aiden Whalley and vocalist James Buttery have settled into life as an alternative pop act with ease.

It’s a process that’s been aided by Richard Formby, a veteran producer whose CV sports work for Wild Beasts, Creation and 4AD, and whose armoury of tape machines shaped News from Nowehere almost as much as the Yorkshire cottage that the band wrote it in. FACT’s Tom Lea got Formby and Darkstar back together in London to find out more – you can now watch it on FACT TV [above]. The full transcript can be read here.