Carl and Didz speak to the NME

Thanks a lot to Rosebay Fairie for the transcription. It looks like we'll have an EP before the proper CD after all. That's cool.

Dirty Pretty Things have revealed how tensions during recent recording sessions in America led to the band attacking each other with pool cues. Speaking to NME last week, Carl Barat and DPT bassist Didz Hammond explained that various band members were kicked out of the group at different points during the making of their second album. They had been holed up in producer Nik Leman's Santa Monica studio space at the tail end of 2007, before mixing the resulting album in London.

"It was intense," Barat explained. "We broke up and reformed a few times. Everyone got kicked out at least once. At one point it was just Gary (Powell, drums) left."

Although the duo wouldn't be drawn into explaining the specific reasons for the tension, they did reveal just how serious it got things got. "Didz attacked me at one point, physically," said Barat, before Hammond added: "All I'll say is, never try to use a paper-mache pool cue as a weapon." Barat: "Er, actually, Didz was on (magic) mushrooms. It was a real pool cue. Flights were booked home at various points- credit card numbers were put down."

Despite the fights and fall-outs, the band survived the sessions and now claim the experience actually galvanised the group. "There was a lot of foot-stomping, justified and unjustified," said Hammond. "It was like schoolboy play," added Barat. "It was chaos, but on opening night when the curtain call comes, everyones in love with each other. We came together, confidence was stronger and we're more of a unit now than we were before."The band are set to release the album in June, although Barat declared he'd rather not wait that long to get the new Dirty Pretty Things music out.

"After everything we've been through (in the USA), my plan is to do the EP in the flat," he explained. "I want to do it in the next week or so- record stuff we wrote to late for the album. We miss doing happy-go-lucky bathroom recordings, although Anthony's house isn't very big and the bathroom hasn't got stunning acoustics."

As well as a new EP, fans should look out for intimate gigs that Dirty Pretty things are planning. "That goes without saying," Barat said. "It's foregone conclusion. As for when, I can't really say, but that will come to light. I'm just so excited to be back in London. Compared to Los Angeles the streets here are like crooked teeth - I just grin and look in the mirror and I've got the perfect map of Muswell Hill."

After revealing the band's EP and gig plans, the duo just had enough time to tell NME about a strange encounter Powell had with an international rap figure in the States. "Gary had a bust-up with Suge Knight in Los Angeles," explained Hammond of the Death Row Recordings mogul. "He was coming out of a nightclub with a lady friend when Suge jumped into a cap they had flagged down. Gary went 'Oi! Hang About!' There was what you might call argie bargie""There was a confrontation, a stand-off, I think," added Barat. "Gary is a principled man, as well as a strong man." And Hammond concluded. "Let's make it clear though, that Suge got the cab in the end."