Neglect Avoid: It's hard to tell which acquires greater interest to This Heat today – your reunion 34 years after or the aggravated agenda of This Heat songs. Which geopolitical state do you consider to be more mad – the Cold War with it's Mutually Assumed Doctrine or the New World Order where everybody seems to have forgotten about the possible consequences of the so-called Symmetrical Response even if it doesn't assume use of nuclear weapon?

Charles Hayward: Well I guess we survived the Cold War so best keep our eyes on the road ahead. The New World Order thing seems to be about turning away from an enemy outside and making diverse thought and possibilities the new threat, a bit like McCarthyism without the hysteria, much cooler, calmer and therefore less easy to see and denounce. And of course the strategy of letting people like me with what's inside our heads just fade away whilst ensuring we don't contaminate the new people with our ideas, or at least giving it a context that makes it seem past and finished. I lived through this in the 80's when Thatcher was around and Camberwell Now was addressing these problems and we were treated like we were fighting old battles, there was no working class, no struggle anymore, only getting ahead and buying the newest thing. Today in UK we have a government saying that the opposition wants to take us back 30 years when in reality the powers in control want to to take us back 150 years. Smoke and mirrors. By the way, it was Mutually Assured Destruction, even madder than what you called it.

Neglect Avoid: There is unofficial cassette release on Discogs called 'Izgon Bojazni Iz Komune' from Yugoslavia 1987, which name means 'Expulsion of Fear from the commune'. Do you know anything about this strange release? Can you call the breakup of Yugoslavia this very Expulsion of Fear or is it an antipodal occurrence?

Charles Hayward: I didn't know anything about this until now, just checked and the clip I heard was definitely not This Heat, maybe Elliott Sharp and David Linton. You have to understand that we held back the release of our first album for a year so that we could make the contract mean we had control of our music and what was released so to be honest I mostly despise these bootlegs, they always seem more about the egos of the people releasing them rather than a real love of the music. The break up of Yugoslavia led to a barbaric war, didn't it? Because people have this streak in them where they hate the other, the next village, the people not like them, so not sure if there was any expulsion of fear going on there.

Neglect Avoid: Do you believe there is still room for such sound recording technics as tape manipulation and other DIY methods in modern [punk] music?

Charles Hayward: Yes, but not as an obligation, only if people feel that it needs to happen or can communicate something.

Neglect Avoid: Today This Heat song 'Independence' sounds even more ironic and grievous then it was in 1980s. What is your assessment of the present situation where human rights are being restricted and at the same time proclaimed top priority?

Charles Hayward: My assessment is that it's hypocrisy with a strong dose of laziness from everybody, like sleepwalking.

Neglect Avoid: This Heat seems to, in a way, transmit sobriety and temperance. Can you relate the Online Life to one of these addictions that should be avoided?

Charles Hayward: Definitely, the online life means we're not actually engaging with the world, only pressing buttons. plus we're floating outside of time, history, so we no longer have a clear sense of social and political progress.

Neglect Avoid: You have once compaired This Heat sound to Magritte and Mondrian paintings. 'A Tribute to Mark Rothko' also tells its own tale. Are there any other non-musical connotations and influencies of your 2000s and 2010s projects?

Charles Hayward: I just try to stay alert and to make connections across media, time and space and to learn from those encounters; I cried at a Rothko exhibition only last year. Love Francis Bacon, Samuel Beckett, Joseph Conrad, Duchamp, Feldman, Pina Bausch, learn from them and some projects focus on an angle more than others. Pollock and Mondrian were big contradictions that complemented each other as influences on material like Horizontal Hold, a Magritte exhibition in the early 90's strongly influenced My Secret Alphabet which I made with Nick Doyne-Ditmas, I already loved him from my teens but the sequencing of the exhibition suggested a way of making an album. At the moment I'm just letting things take their course and trying to stay in the creative flow of everything.

Neglect Avoid: Is the sensational 'Feb 2016 London gig This Heat or Not after all? What should happen next?

Charles Hayward: No, it's not This Heat because Gareth is no longer here, but it is THIS IS NOT THIS HEAT. we will play more gigs next year, but none of us want it to be the only thing we do and we don't want to do it too much. It's just that things are going round in circles so the material feels very relevant again. Singing the songs after such a long time is very, very emotional for me and want to use that energy to keep moving the music forward, to keep making new music with lots of different people.