They released a couple of ear raising singles on Zick Zack, played ravishing live shows and then signed to German Phonogram. The release of their debut lp, produced by the enraptured David Cunningham, coincided with Holger leaving and, apparently, becoming a recluse.

Palais Schaumburg went on to make the distinguished, neglected and expensive (recorded in Zurich, mixed in New York, produced by Coati Mundi) 'Lupa'. Holger still lurked mysteriously out of public view as the UK eventually spluttered into an awareness of German affairs. Slowly the bods here began limbo jigging to the screech and clang of Einsturzende Neubauten while the dark glitter of Xmal found adoration in a cult home from home.

And now Holger, more by good fortune than consciously opportune timing, reappears with a lp called, 'A Bunch of Foulness In The Pit.' Cherry Red (an employee only had to be smacked in the face twice before admitting that Holger's record was in a "different league" from that stable's other output) scooped the thing from Dusseldorf's Ata Tak as, like most German indies, they continue to slide into financial instability.

'Holger Hiller' is almost the second Palais Schaumburg lp – or what it might have been if that group had followed (should I say trailblazed) a path of adventure less obsessively sugar coated.

'A.B.O.F.I.T.P' is exciting without being brash. Immediate without being obvious. It bristles with sounds emulated into pop codes. Like a paint-by-numbers catalogue of pop songs where the numbers are pulled from a hat. It's tuggingly up and stupidly danceable.

"It is perhaps a continuation of what I was doing with Palais Schaumburg," says the surprisingly open and lucid (I was expecting him to be, y'know, w.e.i.r.d.) Holger during a day trip to London.

It struck me as being very much a pop record rather than some over studious 'experimental' deliberation – there's 11 tracks after all!

"Yeah, well it is a pop record but it is also experimental. It is experimental in the way that it is a collection of ideas. A collection rather than being just one sort of pop thought of the kind 'I'm going to make this kind ofrecord with the same idea running all the way through'."

You seem to be playing around with structures examining the relationship between the parts but still emerging with a cogent whole.

"I spent most of the time on the edits. It took one year to record because I did everything myself, except for the drums and the bass, and I mixed it. It is hard in Germany to find engineers to work on this kind of music. But the edits were the most work. I was always changing things, making them longer and shorter."

What did you do after leaving Palais Schaumburg? I always imagined you living in a cave outside Hamburg, growing a beard and listening to Wagner.

"I did a lot of things. A mixture of music and things in other areas. I made music of experimental films that were being made by friends. I did a short opera."

Just a short opera! What was that for?

"Ha, not for anything really. We finally made a video for German TV out of it. I also did a radio play, not a narrative thing but taking natural sounds and working with them. Making entertaining music with no melodies. At the same time I was working on the lp.

"The ideas that I had were formal. I did not have the idea of how that or this should sound. I just had the idea about what I wanted to do. It is very different from song to song but I was trying to achieve a synthesis of English and American music with German culture.

"The songs I could work on at the mixer. It was unlike Palais Schaumburg which was a group situation, each person contributing their own part, this was all me and the songs were developed at the mixing stage.

"The words are from the German music of the 20s and 30s. I don't use the whole lyric from them but just filter out the key sentences. The effect on Germans is very like, er, I'm not sure of the word but very like the feeling of being in church.

"My record is very deeply rooted in German culture and I think that is very important. The main problem for German bands is identity because pop and rock music come from England and America and there is no comparable 'rock culture' in Germany.

"I think perhaps only now are there a few German musicians who are beginning to find a kind of music which is pop music but which still is part of German culture."

The single aesthetic thread that links many of the German bands I've met (and there's been a few!) is the simple fact of their having an IDEA. Some basic premise to rationalise their existence, necessary because picking up a guitar and playing in a group is not the simple process – part of growing up – that it is here. Consequently their work is often closer to being a running commentary on the possibilities of pop than an acceptance of its daily routines and gestures.

That's why so much English music is riddled with nostalgia. 'A Bunch Of Foulness In The Pit' isn't.

And neither is Holger Hiller.