Chungking will be performing at this year's Big Chill festival on 4 August. They're also set to play the main outdoor stage at V Festival Chelmsford on 18th August and Staffordshire on the 19th August 2007.

Imagine the album you might expect from a man obsessed with 70s hits compilations and Readers Digest albums, and a woman passionate about The Pretenders, Grace Jones and Kate Bush. Imagine this: a celebration of how the best pop need not be obvious in order to be immediate, in an album so layered with hooks both hidden and manifest that it has a spooky ability to throw up something new with each and every listen.

It may not be immediately apparent that the album was almost entirely recorded in a room above 'Mad' Frankie Fraser's pub in Brighton. "Of course," Jessie says, "we could have just gone into a studio for three weeks and made the album. With hindsight that might have been quite sensible. Instead we spent two years above a pub, figuring out how to set up drum mics." Really, it's no wonder the band stayed where they were: the vast mixing desks and gadgetry of your average London studio may have a certain allure, but there's no place like home and, for Chungking, home can be nowhere other than Brighton.

Jessie Banks grew up on the south coast, devouring her mum and her brother's record collections - taking in Motown, Tom Waits, Ian Dury. She was obsessed with Paul Young and eventually made her way to Woolworths with enough money to buy Tina Turner's "We Don't Need Another Hero". "I'd heard it on the radio," she recalls. "I didn't know what was happening, I was like, 'I don't know what's going on! I feel really emotional and weird!'"

Though it wouldn't come to fruition until several years later, this early connection between sounds on the stereo and a visceral pop bodyshock had a profound influence on Jessie's musical tastes - and, now, on the music she makes herself, no better illustrated than on the low-slung bodymoving funk of "Love Is Here To Stay". You may also recently have come across Jessie singing live with bands like Royksopp and Air.

The pair met when Sean Hennessey was in what he will now only describe as a 'dodgy hippie band' - Jessie explains that it was a cross between Crosby, Stills and Nash and medieval hip-hop with songs running to twenty minutes apiece. "Sean was sat there all aloof, with his beard and cardigan, svengali-style. He seemed too cool for school - little did I know the truth. And I know what he thought of me…" Says Sean: "I thought she was a complete airhead. She was going out with our drummer at the time, smashed off her face on bongs most of the time…". The band slowly metamorphosed into Chungking.

"We started going out together and all of a sudden I was the singer of the band, telling everyone to f*** off with the moody shit and get on with the pop." After one too many nights sitting in bed arguing about middle eights Jessie and Sean reached an 'it's us or the band' decision, choosing to go with Chunking because, as Jessie smirks, "the band showed more promise". The hunch paid off with debut album 'The Hungry Years' and an incredibly varied wave of support from the press, radio and punters alike. The album provided a perfect solution for clubbers looking for an early hours soundtrack as well as touching the hearts of lovers of beautifully crafted songwriting across the board.

Between that album and this one, the duo have been carefully refining their sound, but beyond the production sheen are proper songs about proper things: "Baby", on first listen all bombast and danceable grooves, is a song to a lover whose self-confidence has been annihilated. ("A whisper in the ear," Jessie says, "to say 'I think you're brilliant and I'm in love with you'.") Then there's "Love Is Here To Stay" - a "filthy song", Sean says, "which says it's okay to put your hands down somebody's pants and not necessarily mine - get the motor running and we'll stick our hands down everyone's pants'".

Tracks like "Stay Up Forever" and "Itch and Scratch" keep up the pace, and add to the feeling that if 'The Hungry Years' was Chungking flicking through the papers on Sunday morning, then "Stay Up Forever" is the sound of the band kicking off their shoes and dancing right through Saturday night and beyond. But what remains a constant in Chungking's music is the quality of songwriting and sheer beauty of Jessie's voice - check out the sublime ballad "Beautiful Inside" if any more evidence were needed.

"When I get an album I tend to go, 'well, I like Number 4, and I like 7 and 8'," Jessie says. "We wanted to make a CD you put on for the whole album - We've done the melancholy stuff - now we're ready to turn it up and have some fun."

Tracklisting:

1. Ticking
2. Love Is Here To Stay
3. Itch and Scratch
4. Stay Up Forever
5. I Love You
6. Baby
7. Slow It Down
8. It Could Be Wonderful
9. Beautiful Inside
10. Know What You Mean
11. Sorry
12. Maybe It's Over

Album Release Date: 13 August 2007
Label: Institute Recordings

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