The search for happiness, or at least the search for something, is one of the most noticeable themes in Simon Bonney's work. It was touched on in 'Shine' - most brilliantly in 'On Every Train (Grain Will Bear Grain)' - ran through 'The Bride Ship' and recurs again in 'Paradise Discotheque.' Perhaps it has something to do with coming from a rootless nation.

'All Australians have that sense of rootlessness,' he reckons, 'and make pilgrimages back to England, Ireland, Italy, Greece or wherever. I a sense it's good cos it sets you free and, eventually, you can move to Berlin like a whole load of stateless people and feel part of a stateless mass.

'Feeling alienated in Australian culture was basically responsible for there being such a strong music movement there. I mean, you get groups like The Saints who come from Brisbane, and really you'd have to go to Brisbane to fully understand. More than three people together on a street constitutes a riot, black people are treated worse than they are in South Africa, aboriginals live on the outskirts of town and are abused and mistreated and have lost their religion.

'That's one of the things that I'm very interested in. As soon as people lose their religion, they lose their whole culture, which has seemingly happened to the aboriginals. The amount of aboriginals who know about The Dream Time or about their past is virtually non-existent, apart from a couple of tribes who went into the desert where no one could reach them.

'For example, in the '60s, there was a programme where they actually stole children from the aboriginal camps and adopted them out to white middle class parents. They did a follow-up documentary and the amount of criminals and anti-social maladjusted people among them was something like 99 per cent.

'That happened right across the board and it somehow symbolises what Australia is like - the predominant culture is white Anglo Saxon Christian and everyone else is expected to fit into that.

'Australia has a reputation for being very laid back but it's actually a very aggressive and intolerant place, and there didn't seem to be a great deal of room for people who were playing the sort of music that we were playing.'

Although the core of Crime are still based in Berlin, Simon wrote 'Paradise Discotheque' in his newly adopted home of Vienna.

'That might go a long way to explaining the peculiar styles of music on the record,' deadpans Mick Harvey, but despite doing most of the songs by correspondence, the arrangements were relatively easy to work out.

'That's largely down to the attitudes of certain members of the group,' he explains. 'They're very loose and free, so it's quite lucid. I mean, Alex will start playing nothing and then go (adopts a believable Hacke accent), Well, that's a song! It's very easy to get songs started.'

Simon: 'It's getting them stopped.'

Mick: 'Yes, it's getting them stopped, that's the problem.'

Harvey might be committed to The Bad Seeds and Hacke to Neubauten, but neither he nor Simon feel that Crime is restricted by other involvements. They're not the sort of band who would be touring for more than a couple of months of the year anyway and, indeed, as far as England goes we can't expect much more than one or two live appearances this year.

It's an inestimably generous proportion by Harvey's account, but a killer for anyone who has watches himself and Hacke put a whole new meaning to the 'Metallica bits' and seen Crime blow all the live opposition apart. Whatever, Harvey is well aware that they've only just begun to realise their true potential.

'The change from the previous line-up to this one was very drastic and the whole approach to making music is totally different. This one creates very much more flowing, easy, natural music. Is it better? If it was a worst line-up than the previous one we would hardly be continuing with it - we've got better things to do!

'Basically, this line-up consists of people who are interested in working with Simon. Everyone's kind of there for the right reason, which - if you're in a group with a singer - is to work with the singer, and I think that has a very big influence on the way the music is constructed and falls together.'

As for Simon himself, his vision of Crime is now clearer than it's ever been.