Kings of Convenience: pale, sensitive boys with acoustic guitars from Bergen, Norway, whose idea of a good time is a communal reading of Ibsen, possibly accompanied by some particularly strong imported tea. Rock iconoclasts who have merely mastered the trick of drawing attention to themselves by thwarting convention, turning the music down instead of up and waiting until someone notices. Jammy gits who just happened to come along with an acoustic-led sound just at the time when everyone seemed to be doing it and rode the 'new acoustic movement' wave for all it was worth.

Kings of Convenience are all and none of these things. But they are a great band, great because their 'Quiet Is The New Loud' album was much more than a good title, with hooks aplenty and melodies that seem as natural as breathing. And forget about the 'new acoustic movement'. They've never been comfortable with the moniker and now their cover as the new Simon and Garfunkel has been blown out of the fjord by their new remix album, which incorporates remixes and reworkings by the likes of pop ambient electronicists and fellow Nordics Royksopp and Manc indie types Alfie. The result is an even more laid-back (if that were possible) album than their debut but the addition of string and horn arrangements, muted beats and electronic blurts serves to flesh out many of the songs from 'Quiet...', giving them an added depth and range. Not better, just different.

Still, from Bergen to Ibiza seems a long way, in every sense. So how did a band renowned for being more folky than Joan Baez and Art Garfunkel's love twins and wetter than Nick Drake's favourite rain-soaked herring come to make an electronic album? King half Eirik Glambek Be explains...

"It is a remix album, so the changes on the songs have mostly been made by other people. It's not a change of direction for us, it's more seeing how things could have been if we'd known how computers worked. But most of them are people we know, like Royksopp, Evil Tordivel, Alfie and Andy Votel. With them it was a friendly exchange of creativity. We play your songs, you play our songs - it was a creative relationship between us and our friends which gave us the idea of maybe getting some other people in to make a whole album of remixes and see what could come out of giving our songs some other creative influences. We gave them our songs and they did their work. We gave them some feedback but they mostly did it all themselves. Some of the others were suggested by our record company's [Source] A&R person - Four Tet and Bamboo Soul for example. I've never met them. With the Four Tet remix we had some comments on the final mix. But they're not the kind of people we would normally hang out with."

Though most of the process was as civilised as you might expect from two young men who sing about using the Guardian to keep the rain off, there were occasional areas of conflict. David Whitaker, one-time arranger with Serge Gainsbourg, produced a string-driven version of KoC single 'Toxic Girl', but not without some argy bargy.

"Working with him was a painful experience. He's an 'artist'. That's a problem when you work with other people creatively. They want to do things their way but at the end of the day it's our song, we are the ones who are blamed if the album doesn't sound good. So we had to struggle with this old man. We had to put our foot down but he accepted that."

At least Whitaker's cut made it onto the record. Owning up to a perhaps surprising element of backbone, Eirik says there were several aborted attempts by other KoC wannabe collaborationists. "I won't tell you their names, but they added things that I didn't approve of," he says, with the merest hint of (quietly inoffensive) menace.

But despite the possibilities thrown up by 'Versus', Eirik insists that they're happy to leave the knob-twiddling and studio trickery to others, rather than taking a crash course in production methods and producing the next folk garage hybrid (forage?).

"Kings of Convenience will never be an electronic band. We'll stick to the acoustic, that's what we're known for. But more remix albums? We'll see. We're very pleased with this one. I hope it will appeal to other people but I hope we're not losing our audience, we're perhaps gaining a bigger one, hopefully."

But even if they end up selling out Madison Square Garden, Eirik can't see them chasing around in limousines, mobiles permanently glued to ears, sorting out global copyright agreements and a range of KoC merchandise. They're busy now, promoting the album with tours around Europe, but when it's over, they like to return to their home in Bergen, where they're not even that city's biggest band, an honour that falls to Royksopp.

"Bergen is a small city, and because we travel so much, when we're at home we need a quiet place where we can concentrate on making music and not have our minds distracted by all these things that London's got. I can't predict what's going to happen in the next five years. Whatever happens, happens, but I'm quite happy being the second biggest band in Bergen."

Dave Oliver

'Quiet Is The New Loud' is already out, and the remix album 'Versus' is released on 22 October. Both are on Source.