PATRICK WOLF is not particularly interested in talking about music today, MITCH ALEXANDER respects his wishes. So they talk about possibly the only other thing they have in common: pwning n00bs with Mario.

Patrick Wolf has been given many names in his career, names that could never be featured together if any shred of unbiased critical analysis was to be attempted. With that in mind, lemme shoot off a few examples of such verbosity: art-pop savant, classical chameleon, romantic melancholy dreamer … I could probably make up a few more if we wanted to get really silly. But get ready to throw two more into the mix, labels that are simultaneously connected and contradictory. How about ‘retro game geek’ and ‘selective technophobe’? Deep breaths, as all will be explained.

"Me and my sister, we were like the future geeks of the neighbourhood, we had the N.E.S. [the original 1985 Nintendo Entertainment System], and before that, the Sega, the Atari, a lot of fantasy," Patrick recalls. "But the moment the Sega Mega Drive came out, we were like ‘this is shit, it’s too real’.

"It was too much for us, we didn’t want it, we wanted it to be unreality, just really nuts … it’s more believable. It’s like those new movies, those Pixar ones where everything is so well animated, I just don’t believe it. But if you show me any Jim Henson or even shadow puppets, I’m going to enjoy it more because it’s supposed to suspend your sense of reality. And I guess, in my music, I try to do that a little bit."

If Patrick Wolf (presumably his parents know him better as Patrick Dennis Apps, which isn’t nearly as cool, with no disrespect to the Apps ancestry) and his sister were already dismayed by video game consoles traveling into Uncanny Valley in their pre-teen years, I wonder what must he think of the current generation of Playstation, Wii and Xbox 360? I never realized until now, but all those names could sound like horrendous sex toys to the uninformed few.

"I boughT a Wii for my boyfriend, it was literally like … I didn’t know what I was doing," he explains with a laugh. "I was so terrified I just wanted to hide under the duvet.

"I went online and downloaded all the old games like Metroid, but I don’t believe in the rest of it. Too much for a little boy like me."

For the record, I didn’t just ask ‘Hey Patrick, what do you think about video games?’ It began as an enquiry about the track Count Of Casualty, which begins with an adorable sampled beat that harkens back to the glory days of 8-bit video game soundtracks. The song is from Wolf’s most recent album The Bachelor, which will combine with a 2010 album – tentatively titled The Conqueror – for a songwriting journey that will eventually be referred to as Battle. Ambitious, grandiose, and with an unlikely melding of classical music and technology, it kind of leads me back to another interesting topic…

"I recently got the Metroid soundtrack done by an orchestra in New York, that’s been my soundtrack for, like, three months," he admits. "All of those great old games had such brilliant music … Mario, Duck Hunt, Mega Man. You can tell when I stopped having friends".

I can guarantee those soundtracks are running through most of your heads right now. Enjoy attempting to dislodge glitch-pop masterpieces from your cerebral cortex for the rest of the day!

THE BACHELOR is out now through Speak n Spell. www.myspace.com/officialpatrickwolf

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