“We are all 60something – but if we have the energy to do things, let’s go. To keep this motivation after 40 years, it’s like, ‘Envoyé, go for it and fuck off!”

Four decades ago, The Young Gods reconfigured rock music using the new technology of sampling in a manner no one else had thought to. In a rock and pop world dominated by Anglo-American orthodoxies, they proposed something huge and avant European in origin. Whereas others lazily recycled samples of old James Brown and Led Zeppelin riffs, in a spirit of enfeebled postmodernism, as if to suggest there was nothing new under the sun, The Young Gods created a new, elemental energy using the dead matter of the rock and classical music they sampled as fossil fuels – they rediscovered fire, a fire that raged through their first two albums – The Young Gods and L’Eau rouge / Red Water. The formula was simple – drums, voice, samples – but what they wrought was revolutionary, post-postmodern.

“The technological restrictions of the time – we were born because of those restrictions, the excitement of the new sampling technology,” says Franz Treichler. “We had those pedals which were not designed to do what we did with them – the first electric guitar loopers. I’m amazed that we could make songs with them, sometimes only with one or two sounds – now it’s totally the opposite. The technology today is incredible but you can get lost in so many new programs and plugins.”

Although they enjoyed massive critical acclaim it was with 1992’s TV Sky that they enjoyed the global recognition they deserved – heavy MTV rotation, a hit with “Skinflowers” and the likes of U2, Bowie and Nine Inch Nails singing their praises in interviews.

This success, however, represented a test of the group’s artistic integrity. They could easily have ploughed on through the Nineties in a formulaic, industrial vein but, as Treichler explains, “It’s always about breaking the formula. When you have a formula, it’s good to challenge yourself and write something else. The first three Young Gods records were based on sampling and the surprise element it can bring to the sound, these sharp changes within a millisecond jumping from classical to cabaret, heavy metal. That was our trademark, maybe a cliche. So for TV Sky, the fourth album, we decided to restrict the palette – no more violins, just guitars – then later we were influenced by the electronic, ambient scene – and then later playing the guitar live. Challenge brings forward so many new ideas.”

Such has been the true success of The Young Gods – recording and exploring on their own terms, be it covering the songs of Kurt Weill, exploring fresh ambiences on Music For Artificial Clouds, the subtly inflected blues jazz tendencies of Data Mirage Tangram or most recently, their extraordinary take on Terry Riley’s In C, which they used as a launchpad into new musical ideas of their own birthing, touring to rapt audiences across Europe.

“We’ve not been so fast putting out albums but that’s why we’re still excited about doing all this,” says Treichler. “There are moments in the industry when you are pressurised into being productive you don’t enjoy it anymore, it’s too stressful. So it’s great to jump to another project . . . In C. Some people at the label thought it was too niche – but I said, come on, this is the most played contemporary classical piece in the world, look at all the versions on the net. We did it, it worked and the label loved it.”

In rock terms, The Young Gods are anything but ephemeral – their curiosity, their energy remains undimmed since they first emerged from Fribourg in a shock attack on dull norms in 1985. As Treichler says, with a twinkle in his eye. “God’s not dead!”

David Stubbs