Delorean were formed by Ekhi Lopetegi and three schoolfriends in the Basque coastal town of Zarautz in 2000. Originally a hardcore punk outfit, their outlook changed after they relocated to Barcelona in the middle of the last decade and discovered house music, New Order and 80s pop. Their 2010 breakthrough album Subiza offered a euphoric swirl of indie guitars, Balearic beats and psychedelic beach-pop. Having recently built their own studio, Delorean are currently recording their fourth album, due early next year.

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Your last album Subiza came out in spring 2010. What have you been up to in the meantime?

We toured for almost two years – we played our last show in October. Since then we've been building our own studio and we've just started to work on new ideas. It's been slow but steady. I think we'll have the album finished by the autumn.

Why did you decide to build your own studio?

We've always worked in our home studios but we thought it would be nice to have a permanent space with good equipment and proper microphones so that whenever we want to work there is everything in place. We didn't want to be limited to the laptop. It's a matter of stepping forward and learning how to use proper studio equipment because that opens up new possibilities. Not only for Delorean but for other projects too.

Do you work more like a traditional band, recording everything
in one go, or more like dance producers, building tracks up as you go along?

For the last album we worked more like dance producers, making beats on the computer and developing the tracks from small pieces. Right now I think we're in the middle. We're still working with computers but we also have all the instruments ready so we can give the songs a proper band sound. We want to get back to real playing, not only clicking on a mouse.

What are the musical inspirations for your new songs?

We spent a lot of time thinking hard about what we wanted. The moment we finished the last record it felt like the ending of a cycle. We knew we didn't want to write Subiza again so we had to think how we could push ourselves. We were inspired by late-80s pop-rock: Peter Gabriel, Prefab Sprout, even Enya. Those records are cool because they're hi-fi – they're still analogue but they sound big and well-defined. They're powerful records – pop songs, but with sophisticated production techniques. I'm not sure if we're going to be able to emulate that sound exactly, but this is the focus we're having.

Subiza was a euphoric, carefree record. Are those still the
emotions running through your new material?

I don't think it's going to be such an enthusiastic record from the very first second. It's not going to be a mellow record either, though. It'll be a little bit more contained, but we don't want to lose the punch.

On Subiza you worked with Barcelona house producer John Talabot. Are you planning to collaborate with anyone on this new record?

Right now it's just the four of us, but there are some songs that need a strong female vocal and we need to find the right girl for that.

Are you still working on your PhD in philosophy?

Yes. I quit for a while to focus on the band, but after we came back from touring I decided to return to uni. I have the freedom to decide how and when to work on my PhD, but it's definitely something I want to finish.

What's your area of study?

Right now I'm studying ethics and politics, taking ancient Greek tragedy as a base – Sophocles and stuff. It's interesting but it's a very wide subject so I'm trying to narrow it down.

Does your philosophical nature show in your lyrics?

Yes, I think so. When it comes to lyrics, my decisions are determined by my background in philosophy, but I try to make the words more intimate and personal, otherwise they would not make much sense. Pop songs need to be sung in a way that people will immediately get the idea and feel that the song is speaking to them. I never intend to make them abstract, but it's difficult. I think I'm a better philosopher than a poet. The great lyric writers can condense so many things into very few words. I don't know how they do it, but it's amazing.

Is Barcelona still a creative city?

There's always been a lot of musicians here, but there's not an obvious scene. It's not like Williamsburg, where you don't know anybody who's not in a band or doing something creative. In Barcelona it's more relaxed. But it's a good city for music, definitely.

What impact do festivals such as Primavera and Sonar have on the
music scene in Barcelona?

There's two ways of looking at it. From one point of view it's positive, because if you are a band from Barcelona you can have the chance to play in front of a lot of people. But at the same time, it concentrates all of the shows in just two weekends of the year and I think that makes the music scene more difficult. Now, all the international bands wait until Primavera to come to Barcelona instead of coming here in winter or spring to play a regular show.

Do you still put on your own parties in Barcelona?

Yes, that's something we still do. I'm not as involved, but our drummer Igor and our friend Kigo, who's a DJ, still put on parties. We have a night at the Apollo club called Desparrame – the producer Todd Edwards came last weekend – and we have another party in Madrid called Calor. We try to bring interesting acts from outside and put them together with interesting musicians in Spain.

Which up-and-coming Spanish acts do you recommend?

I would strongly recommend people listen to Extraperlo. They're from Barcelona and they have a new album soon. They're a great pop-rock band, but what's interesting is they also take influences from the Spanish 80s scene, which will probably not be familiar to British people. We also share our studio with a cool band called Hidrogenesse
– they play krautrock-influenced electronic music. And we like a producer called Pional, from Madrid.

What are the main differences between Barcelona and the Basque
country, where you grew up?

We grew up in Zarautz and San Sebastian. These cities are pretty and easy to live in – amazing food, amazing beaches. But the weather's not as good – it rains a lot – and it's not as exciting as Barcelona. You don't see as many things happening, so that's the reason why we moved to a bigger city. If you're into music and you really want to broaden your horizons, those cities are a little small. But it's a very cool place to live. I always think that when I retire I want to go back to San Sebastian and live the life.

Does the Basque country still feel different to the rest of Spain or Catalonia?

Yes, culturally it's different. San Sebastian is very French. It looks more like Bordeaux than Madrid. And obviously nobody understands Euskara, the language we speak, outside the Basque country. Barcelona is a very Mediterranean city. It has more to with other southern European cities, or north African cities, than the rest of Spain. Whereas Madrid is typically Spanish.

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Do you see yourself as Basque rather than Spanish?

I wouldn't want to make a choice on that. I see myself as Basque first of all because that's where I grew up and that's where my family comes from. But I'm not nationalistic. I speak Spanish too, I speak Catalan, I speak French, I'm speaking English with you. I really don't give a damn about whether I should call myself Spanish or Basque. Of course if somebody comes to Spain, I'll show them the cool spots in Spain. I love Spain and I feel Spanish in a way, but I also feel Basque and I don't forget that.

Delorean started out as a hardcore punk band. Was there a big hardcore scene in the Basque country?

If you wanted to step aside from mainstream music and also from older Basque music, you got into hardcore and punk. I've mostly lost touch with that scene to be honest, but I still hear about hardcore bands coming from that area. In Zarautz, for instance, there's a squat in the middle of the city and a lot of hardcore bands still live there. They play a lot harder now than we used to! Hardcore is definitely a good start because you learn a lot of things that are not necessarily related to music.

What did you learn from hardcore?

You learn how to manage things and how to make your decisions within the band. Delorean works more as a friend alliance than a group of musicians. Basically we're friends who learn how to try to make good music because we have a common interest. Some people look for other musicians to help them achieve a musical goal. That's absolutely respectable, and you'd probably get better results that way, but for us it's different. It's a friend alliance first, a musical project second. I got in this band when I was 16 or 17 and I've been with it ever since. We obviously fight sometimes – there's stress and frustrating moments – but I think it's longer-lasting. If we quit, it would hurt more than if it were a project that came out of nothing.