It's five in the afternoon. Chris has only been awake for a couple of hours and is already on his second cup of wine. He grins affably, plops down on the couch and attacks the sandwich provided by some caterer.

"I know I'll eventually tire of these meals," he explains between bites. "But right now, it's just brilliant to wake up and have your food and wine waiting for you."

Liam joins us, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. "Sound check was bollocks... Hello, that's a very nice DAT player you've got there."

While Liam Howe, 26 and Chris Corner, 23 co-founded the Sneaker Pimps only last year, they are no strangers to the music scene, having previously DJ-ed together under the names "F.R.I.S.K." and "Line of Flight." Their musical origins date back to 1992, when the two small town blokes began to noodle around with an 8-track in the protective haven of Liam's Hartlepool bedroom. Hartlepool is a small town in northeastern England.

"The most interesting thing about Hartlepool," according to Liam, "is that in the 19th century, the inhabitants hung a monkey because they thought it was a French spy. "

"I, for one, can understand the confusion there," chimes in Chris.

Liam shoots Chris a bemused look. "Hartlepool is a very strange place -- kind of the hillbilly town of England. It's inbred...but it's the good sort of inbreeding."

"It's totally freak," Chris chuckles.

Liam and Chris cooked up the Sneaker Pimps when they began to tire of the faceless DJ gig. They picked up lead singer and sumptuous Lolita, Kelly Dayton after happening upon one of her performances with a punk band in a Birmingham pub. The newly formed trio worked out their kinks by recording a few tentative 7" singles in the first half of 1996, including the macabre, goth-tinged "Precious," written by Dayton. By the release of Becoming X that August, the Sneaker Pimps had leveled off their opposing influences, and settled into a catchy fusion of pop, trip-hop and blues.

The album shifts seamlessly between fuzz guitar and crisp, roots blues riffs, all laced with a tawdry electronic sludge (à la Iggy Pop's "Nightclubbing"), fat bass and Dayton's babydoll vocals. More upbeat than Portishead and less overtly sexual than Tricky (both bands of a similar ilk) the Sneaker Pimps have managed to produce some of the most accessible trip-hop to date. That, and Dayton's special brand of 'PG' sleaze have generated a sizable buzz on both sides of the Atlantic.

But the buzz, at least on this side of the sea, has yet to translate into celebrity status. And when you get right down to it, Liam, Chris and Kelly are just three normal twentysomethings roaming about in a foreign country. Case in point: Last night, Liam and Chris found themselves wandering around Chicago on their night off, searching for something to do.

"It was a bit silly," says Liam. " We don't know anyone in this city. We don't know where to have a good time. Kelly was feeling a bit ill, so Chris and I hopped into a cab and told the driver to 'take us somewhere cool.' And he took us here, to the Metro. We turned to him and said, 'hmmm, we're playing here tomorrow night.' Nevertheless, we went to the club downstairs. Our intention was to pick up women, but we felt too unattractive to do anything."

Really, the only people Liam and Chris know in the States (save two mysterious girls from Washington D.C. dubbed "Trixie" and "Dixie") are those in the Sneaker Pimps tour entourage.

"It's like a traveling circus," explains Liam. "You go around with this really strange bunch of people who should never be put together -- but they are, and you have to make due. Most people think touring is glamorous and cool. But a lot of it is hell."

Chris agrees. "And you are with these people day in, day out for so long, that it becomes really hard to relate to those outside the group. When you go home and try to talk to people, you don't seem to have much to talk about."

For Chris and Liam, it seems, the hardest thing about their success with the Sneaker Pimps is the toll that it takes on friendships back home.

"You tend to fuck up a lot of relationships doing this," laments Chris. "You're gone so much. Things change. People think that you've changed. They think you can't relate to them anymore, and they become quite bitter about your success."

"I want to say to them, 'calm down. We've just got a bit fucked up, that's all.'" Chris sighs. "I guess I am so far removed from the person I used to be -- sort of sitting around Middlesbrough and Hartlepool..."

Liam also admits that they've gone through some noticeable changes.
"We go back to our local pub in Hartlepool a lot, and it's getting progressively more bizarre each time. Because of living in a bubble like you do when you're in a pop band, you don't realize quite how stupid you look until you get into a group of normal people. Our hair is dyed stupid colors, and we wear silly shirts and sunglasses. You don't realize -- until you go back you your local pub and then you think 'my god! I've been consumed by this madness.'"

Still, being consumed by the whirlwind of press interviews, big record deals and their first major American tour is part of the story for the Sneaker Pimps, as it is for any hot new band.

"It's very easy to lose your sanity," says Liam. "But, this is our debut album. We're really taking it over the top. It's all new and exciting. Who knows? Five albums down the road, I might be driven mad by the whole thing."

"Certainly, I don't want to be doing this when I'm forty."

ISAAC JOSEPHSON