"A really funny thing, I was in Bombay, producing a British Asian artist and I was in this ridiculous hotel which has the largest disco in India in the cellar, playing 2 Unlimited. Not really great," he frowns. "Bombay yuppies were bashing out this bad Euro disco music, and I couldn't sleep, so I walked round the streets at night and I had this little music pocket music writer thing like a Gameboy, and I wrote this little loop, and I had the idea in flash of inspiration."
Here's the science. "I thought I'd take very short loops of something to just inspire a vocal, and then we'd get together, write a complete song and then only when the vocal was recorded and all the lyrics and everything would I put the rest of the noises in.
"I'd figured sometimes when you're really good at noises what often happens is you put loads of them in and you ask a singer to come in and they almost don't fit into the song and then you kind of make a lot of bad choices artistically because you didn't nail the thing first."
Guy's puritan approach led him to sometime collaborator Imogen Heap - a Baby Beth Orton who'd yet to find a real niche. The method worked even better than they expected, and before long FrouFrou was formed - an organic band in contrast to the glut of boy producers and girl singers that dominate commercial house; quite literally the anti-2 Unlimited you might say."She's not only a great singer," gushes Guy, "she's a very creative musician in her own right, and a real sparring partner."
The resulting album, Details, is a hushed collection of electronic spook-pop that succeeds in building a unique kind of bridge between dance and pop. And with the single Breathe In setting light to the airwaves seemingly against the odds, their approach to husk-house looks like working.
It's not a million miles away from the woozy bliss of Madonna's What It Feels Like For A Girl - no surprise seeing as Guy takes a production credit. And we have to ask...
"I think Madonna actually is a real pro. I think one thing about her as a singer is she's completely aware of what she can do well and what she can't, and she's totally in charge. On that record she only took three takes to get everything, and we could have got on it even from the first take. And she's definitely a co-producer anyway, there's no way you could just shout orders to her across the studio, it does not work like that!"
Not wanting to lay into his fantasy, but when his records are as pleasant as his manner, we don't think he's be capable of shouting.
Breathe In is out now on Island.
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