WATCH: Synth-heavy sound and special effects take Big Time Quell back to 1980s

Synth-laden rock, echoing saxophone and pounding, hefty riffs feature on Big Time Quell’s latest release <i>Midnight Jaguar</i>.

The isles quartet bring a flavour of the 80s to their latest music video thanks to some green screen wizardry.

Thomas Jones (guitar, synth and vocals), Jamie Hatch (guitar, synth and vocals), Chris Cope (bass) and Robert Balfour (drums and vocals) have an EP in the pipeline; a rock opera entitled Hard Man Ponytail which is split into seven parts.

“It’s about a guy called ‘Hard Man Ponytail’ as he deals with the murder of his brother Trevor at the hands of Steve, the bad guy,” said Hatch.

Midnight Jaguar is a prequel to the EP.

“We actually started recording it Midnight Jaguar two years ago,” said Jones.

“We started recording Rob’s parts two years ago at Stevie Hook’s [studio] and we just decided to finish it a few months ago.”

“It’s a song that very much lends itself to a video,” smiles Balfour.

“There’s a lot of visual aspects to it.”

England striker Harry Kane, a lobster and facial hair have all featured in the band’s previous material.

For the new EP, Hatch said he has always wanted to write a musical. “That’s like my dream and this is like the closest this will ever come to that”.

A lengthy music session at a studio in Wethersta saw the music for the new EP written in the early hours.

“It was 1am and we still hadn’t done anything proper and then it just clicked. Between the hours of 1am and 5am we’d written most of Hard Man Ponytail

Creatively the band say there are no boundaries and they clearly enjoy chipping in with ideas.

“There’s a lot of creative space,” said Balfour.

“We do have a lot of fun doing it, but we still think the music is good. We wouldn’t press on with it if we didn’t think it was good.”

“We see a boundary and we eat it,” laughed Jones.