"Mmmmm, hurhho Crusss", mumbles a voice over the transatlantic line from New York. What kind of greeting is that? "Sorry," says the now-recognisable Mike D, swallowing. "I had a mouth full of cereal." That's all very well, Mike, but what kind of greeting is Hello Nasty the title to the Beastie Boys long-awaited fifth studio LP?

"1 don't know," comes the sheepish reply from a slighty woozy Mike D, just recovering from a bout of laryingitis. "It started with this Japanese friend who was workIng at the place that does our publicity, Nasty Little Man. She used to answer the phone, 'Hello, Nasty?'"

0f course, soiled by the Beasties' sticky fingers this wholly-innocent enquiry becomes a rip-roaring riposte. Cue Ad-Rock dusting a long lost break off his beat-stacked shelves and proclaiming, "Hello Nasty, where you bin!" And it's obvious from the first strains of Hello Nasty's opener 'Super Disco Breakin", that the Beastie Boys are back on raucous form. A knowing reference to pioneering hip hop supremo Paul Winley's sought-after Super Disco Breaks collections, it's also a pointer to the fact that the Beastie Boys have returned to their hip hop roots. Even If they do end up branching off from electro through easy-listening, dub and all manner of analogue-electronica.

Although they now operate out of Manhattan, it sounds like the Beasties are back on the Brooklyn Dust that made their seminal Pauls BoutIque LP such a scatty, cut-and-paste affair. "That's probably because we have pretty short attention spans," admits Mike D, "Also because when we're working on our own we end up with so many dIfferent ideas that we're not confined to just bass, drums, guitar for any given songs. Trying to narrow it down to the ones that work the best is the trickiest." Recording started two and a half years ago, just after they had finished touring 111 Communication. "But," says Mike of the first sessions in New York in their dank Manhattan rehearsal space nicknamed The Dungeon, "for the whole first half of this record our attitude was more, 'Let's get together and play music'. Out of these sessions came tracks like 'Dedication', where Mike has shout-outs to such unlikely places as Beijing, "all the people in the Dead Sea" and Newcastle, where Vellum come from".

They also completed an instrumental that was given the working title of 'Dr Lee', because it sounded like an early Upsetter production. Even better, they managed to connect with the former Grand Royal magazine cover star when his Black Ark landed in America.

"He was playing this show in a mall here in New York on Halloween," explains Mike, "and I have to give Mario Caldato, our producer, props for making an effort to get a tape of the track to Lee in his hotel.

"He came down to the studio and had all his lyrics written down on the back of a poster for one of his shows. He listened to the track half a time and was like, '0K. 0K, let's do this'. We had told him how the track reminded us of 'Mr Brown', a Bob Marley track Lee had done, so he started going off on the Mr Brown trip with the lyrics.

"It never really would have been conceivable to us that we could ever have worked with the guy It was cool because he's been such a big inspiratIon to us - how he pioneered being a producer and using the mixing board and every part of the studio as part of the music." Another spell recording in their LA-based G-Son studio was interrupted by work on the Tibetan Freedom Concert tand accompanying LP and movie) and a relocation back to New York. "Adam Yauch moved first and then we all followed," says Mike. "It wasn't really planned, it just kind of happened." Mike seems suitably non-plussed at the fact that their Grand Royal empire is still located on the other coast: "Yeah, but y'know, these days with the high technology," he says adopting a sophisticated tone, "the telephones, the e-mail, it's like next door." With its wash of analogue atmospherics and jump-start song construction, the Beasties' relationship to technology seems much more evident on Hello Nasty. "I think technology just works its way into what we do," says Mike. "We might buy an old piece of equipment, but it's new to us and by fooling around with it we produce a certain kind of sound that ends up on a record." Apart from the SP1200 sampler that Adam Horovitz had been rocking for some time at home, Mike cites the ARP2600 synthesiser that squiggles over several tracks and the Tascam Digital 8-tracks each Beastie invested in as significant pieces of tech. The latter afforded each Beastie the freedom to record ideas at home.

Catch an individual Beastie Boy on the hop and you'll see a dIfferent side to the group - polite, quiet, even reflective. Something like the mood on cuts like 'And Me', 'Instant Death' and '1 Don't Know'. "They were more emotionally raw and we thought they sounded honest so we didn't mess with them too much," comments Mike. The album ends with the Adam Horovitz-voiced 'Instant Death', which sounds like a painful eulogy to someone. AII Mike concedes, though, is that it is "eulogy-esque, a little meiancholy. It's about a bunch of people." For all intents and purposes Mike's solo joint is the grungy power-pop of 'Remote Control', the closest they get to the punk rock which they apparently purged from their system with 1995's 'Aglio E Olio' EP.

But for something reaily out there, check the helter skelter orchestration of 'Song For Man', which sounds bizarrely reminiscent of a Bill Wyman solo cut on the Stones' Their Satanic Majesties Request.

"You're barking up the right tree. We were going for that Latin-60s-mod-psychedelic TV show vibe," Mike reveals. "We had a demo of a song that Adam had made at his house, which definitely did not have that vibe. So we came up with the concept of adding the sitar guitar and trying to make it like a mod-psychedelic trip. Of course, when we ended up actually making it, it was slightly different to what we actually said we were going to make. But that's the process of music." No one makes records quite like the Beastie Boys. It's a constant process of jamming together and playing around on pieces of equipment, the results of which are sifted for the most dynamic elements, then cut and pasted together on the computer and patched and processed through effects. A track like 'Flowin' Prose', where MCA goes off on one of his mind-expanding rhyme routines, was retro-fitted with an array of vocal acid trails.

Grand Royal associates were drafted in for various tracks. Jill Cuniff from Luscious Jackson guested on the Latin lover-flavoured easy listening of 'Song For Junior', Miho Yatori from Cibo Matto features on 'I Don't Know' and another friend, Brooke Williams sings on 'Song For The Man' and 'Picture This'. Sampled outbursts from veteran hip hop out-patient Biz Markie appear on 'Can't, Won't Don't Stop'. Keyboard swirls came from Money Mark, who also joins the band on tour. But the most significant other is Mixmaster Mike, the alien-obsessed DJ of famed Invisbl Skratch Piklz who comes with a self invented catalogue of over 300 scratches. It all goes to prove that despite bouncing from coast to coast, the Beastie Boys can rock the hip hop spot and still stay way ahead of the pack.