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 Euros Childs It is a strange night in a hot room. Huddled in groups around the white loft space, New York's indie mafia try aliantly to preside over their cool, while the late summer heat and broken air-conditioning conspire against them, two floors up off Broadway. From the stage, there is the sound of heavy machinery mingled with a curious Caledonian gargle. This is Prolapse. And while those present wrestle with the four-way assault of temperature,
installation art, indie music and the projection of hardcore pornography, slumped against a wall, in September last
year, we find Gorky's Zygotic Mynci. And they are terribly, terribly drunk. Six months later, in a Camden Chinese
restaurant, singer Euros Childs buries his head in his hands and sighs heavily. "Ohhhhh. My. Christ!" The recollection is not entirely painless. Gorky's had travelled before: to japan, where they are poster stars; to Paris where their muse attunes easily to the scratched chin, and so to support The Cardigans in New York... not a
problem, surely? Except it wasn't one of their best gigs, and the next day, when Euros walks into a record shop, the first thing he hears is the bloke behind the counter saying... "...you know those Gorky's guys? They sucked!"
"So I went up to him," grins Euros, "and nothing much, mind, but I just said, Oh, really? I'm in Gorky's, actually'.  Richard James
Gorky's Zygotic Mynci laugh at the Americans and the impossibility of selling records in their country. Their debut
American album did not sell well. "It sold 34 copies in the first week," explains drummer Euros Lawrence. "And
they were saying to us. Hey! Guys! That's great: you're in double figures!'." But that was another time and another
place. And now a much happier Gorky's are facing something different altogether. Something a little bit like... success in their homeland.THE COMMENT from Nicky Campbell, the DJ for the kids with the facts on the wax was, recall Gorky's, probably the best. Affecting his voice, Euros relays his insight. "Kerrazeee guys! Bet they had a bit of a smoke before coming up with (hot name!" An unnamed female DJ, meanwhile, was moved to remark, "What's all this about - I don't get it!" "It's like, of course you don't," grins Euros. "It's in Welsh, you stupid cow!" What Gorky's are talking about here is the moderate success of their fine single Patio Song'. While they were recording their new album they were able to listen to Radio I during the daytime and hear the station's first playlisted Welsh language record, and simultaneously watch themselves become a slightly different sort of band. The sort of band now not just  Megan Childs
not changed the way they worked. This is the best thing about Gorky's. Notions of career development, of
What Gorky's do, rather than follow any prescribed notion of cool, is to follow their instincts. "It's self-censorship if you don't," Euros explains. "There's a lot of times in the past where maybe we've gone, 'Nah,
we can't do that', for the obvious reason that, er, people would laugh at us. But then you go. Well, that's what we
thought of initially, so we'll go with that'. "Like the Bwyd Tyme' cover where we dressed up as wizards and bishops - I had a big argument with a couple of Christians about that, they just didn't get it at all. They were just telling me the costumes we'd got were crap, but the point was that we had a laugh doing it." Euros ponders.
"Then there'll be the Church Of England hymns album, that'll be another. We tried to go to church on Christmas
Eve, actually. Went down the pub, couple of pints, wanted to go in and go, "Weeeargh!', but they wouldn't let us  John Lawrence
"Dunno," says Euros. "Punched John once, but I was too pissed to have either a heart or a head." Guitarist John Lawrence looks at bassist Richard James, then at his egg fried rice and recalls the incident desparingly. "You didn't have a reason either," he sighs.WERE THERE no Gorky's then its member would lead more pastorial existence.
"Forestry," avers Euros. "Chopping down trees. Putting steps into the side of hills. Buliding paths down to the beaches"
And this is where, somewhere out there the timeless world of quality experience, we find the third proper album from Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, 'Barafundle' - the name of a beach, though not an album about that beach - is full of rooms with stories in, of wistful recollections, good days on sand dunes and the occasional song about a stomach. As unfettered by fashion as its redecessors, it will sit strangely in a world unaccustomed to the country twangs of new single Diamond
Dew', and the occasional medieval trill. But this is part of the point: Gorky's are not weird, they're just not what you expect to hear.
Megan Childs, Gorky's violinist and walking definition of the expression, 'We just do what we do, and if anyone else likes it, then that's a bonus', explains. "Everyone seems to have this preoccupation with sounding new, or
what sounds like it's new. But in two years' time, everything'!! sound like that; and more people should have the
foresight to think, Well then, if it isn't always going to be new, why should we think it's special now?'."
Gorky's is a world of strange clocks, you see. So prolific are they that their backlog of songs means that these  Euros Rowlands
The effect is timelessness. Where songs like 'Heywood Lane', which would have maybe sounded like the sum of their creative powers at the time they were written, now sound refreshingly unaffected as performed by a Gorky's in their early-to-mid-20s. "We wrote that when we were 14," smiles Euros, "and you look at it now,
and you can still see why you wrote it. It's about going to the house of some old people, and just talking about their new- born pups and their washing rack. "We didn't finish it then, and now it enters your mind just like when you
were 14. And seven years later, we finally got it right!" Megan arrives at the crux of the matter.
"Everything in life that you get real satisfaction from has that sense of timelessness with it. I think that's real
satisfaction: looking at something in the countryside, or looking at art, or talking to people... they exist on their own." "If there's a recording of someone singing 100 years ago," adds Euros, "how could that not be relevant now?" He looks crestfallen. "I don't get that one." Silence falls. Collectively, Gorky's don't get that one.OUTSIDE THE perimeter fence of fashion sit Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, working back through their memories, gleefully uncool. Cool they have seen, and cool they have spurned, and to find out why, we travel back with them to
when they were 15. A school concert. There are two bands scheduled to play this evening, and the first is called The Plugs. They have come close to being called johnny Met God, as a homage to Nottingham Forest
footballer Johnny Metgod, but at the moment it is The Plugs who are playing a defiantly peculiar music. Their singer, Euros Childs, has a voice that is still unbroken, and this will prove significant. Particularly because the cool band in school are up next. They have Marshall stacks and can play. The Plugs realise that something is foot. The teachers are laughing. And they are laughing because the singer of the cool band is singing a rendition of a Plugs song, and he is doing it in a cruelly high voice.
Importantly, Gorky's have remembered this. And they are determined to have their revenge on those, like their eachers, who would dare to laugh at what they did. "We had this mad chemistry teacher called Merion, who said we were all wasters, and wouldn't amount to anything," says Euros, "so we wrote a song about him." The song is called 'Merion Wyllt'. And it means 'Merion - Twat'. In time, you see, revenge will be theirs. All you have to do is wait...
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