Not every artist would allow himself a full seven years between albums, seven years in a musician's life signifying an eternity. Indeed, some might even say seven years without an album release is tantamount to chart death! But ask Kid Loco why he waited so long before recording a follow-up to Kill Your Darlings (released on Yellow Productions in 2001) and he calmly replies that he has been busy. "I've done a huge amount of remixing in recent years", he informs us."And I've produced a lot of albums for other artists. I've also done a lot of soundtracks for feature films and cartoons. But I guess the overriding reason this album took so long was I simply chose to take my time over it!"

Party Animals & Disco Biscuits did not take long in composition terms, however. In fact, Kid Loco admits to being pleasantly surprised at just how fast things went, claiming that most of his songwriting work was finished within three weeks. He interpreted this as a good sign, believing that the best pop tracks are those created in a spirit of complete and utter spontaneity. When it comes to the musical ambience on his new album, he insists that "it was basically the instruments that influenced the overall climate. For instance, the guitar features much less prominently here than it did on my last album. But there's a lot more keyboards, piano and organ mostly. That was the musical mix that formed the basis of my compositions". After that, he says, he called a few musician friends in to re-record certain parts, threw in a few female backing vocals and added the requisite scratches here and there.

Kid Loco has sought to have a narrative thread running throughout his previous albums. And Party Animals & Disco Biscuits is no exception to his storytelling rule. Kid's new album revolves around the central concept of a young guy who has been out clubbing all night and is returning home at the crack of dawn. Kid delves into his usual themes - drugs, love and sex - and his songs are infused with the familiar wry sense of Loco humour. The real revolution on Party Animals & Disco Biscuits is that we find Kid stepping behind the mike and singing - in English! "This was the best way of getting what I had in my head out there and turning it into music", he says. "I guess this means that this is the first 'real' Kid Loco album, because this time round it's me singing on all the tracks."

Kid Loco - aka Jean-Yves Prieur - has come a long way since he first arrived on the French music scene in the 1980s. Back in those days, Jean-Yves was a committed punk and he soon got together with a group of like-minded friends to set up his own indie label, Bondage Records (responsible for developing some of the rawest French rock talent around, signing cutting-edge bands like Bérurier Noir). In the late 1990s, Jean-Yves reinvented himself as the turntable whizzkid Kid Loco and went on to release his debut album on Yellow Productions (Bob Sinclar's independent electro label housed at a major). France was in the grip of electro-mania at the time, exporting its trendy "French Touch" artists to the four corners of the world. And Kid Loco was one of the most hyped electro acts of the day. So it was hardly surprising that his debut album, A Grand Love Story, went down as a big hit.

Since then, of course, the music industry has changed dramatically. And Kid, now 44, found himself bringing out Party Animals & Disco Biscuits almost uniquely under his own steam. (This included putting up most of the recording and production budget himself). Despite this recent financial pressure, Monsieur Loco appears remarkably serene. "I realise that seven years between albums is a long time", he says. "But I'm not actually bothered if people have forgotten me in the meantime. I'm not freaking out about it or anything. The music I'm making now isn't hype and that doesn't bother me one little bit. Back in 1975 I felt like the Rolling Stones were so ancient they could have been my grandparents. But they're still going strong! I imagine - in fact, I hope - that 16-year-old kids won't be raving about seeing me live on stage! (He laughs). I think it's OK to make music for people your own age, you know. My new album's not about me trying to be trendy. I'm not cheating or dissimulating in any way here!"

Ironically Kid Loco, who has sought to avoid critics' attempts at labelling in the past, has invented his own definition of the sound on Party Animals & Disco Biscuits, describing his new vibe as "psychedelectro". In other words, a consummate mix of psychedelic ambiences and contemporary trip-hop beats. But "psychedelectro" perhaps falls short of describing the digital craftsmanship at work on his latest album. Take a track like Motorcycle Angels, for instance, with its cold sense of urgency and driving beats, Theme From The Graffiti with its astounding harmonic variations or Pretty Boy Floyd which starts out as a simple pop track but ends in a shower of hip-hop beats. The Specialist (the longest track on Party Animals & Disco Biscuits, coming in at around eight minutes) builds around impressively hypnotic central programming and Hijack Blues # 9 is a vaguely hallucinatory instrumental which gallops through the brain like a 21st-century western. So how does Kid Loco explain his ventures into "psychedelectro" and beyond? "I think it's the way I use rhythms and ambiences, my penchant for mixing anything and everything, that has helped me forge my own distinctive style", he says. And frankly, after listening to Party Animals & Disco Biscuits, who could argue with that?