"It's all about love," says Jessie Banks, a statement which, pronounced by any other singer, would seem a little sickly.

"Whether its happiness, sadness or just being very pissed off, that seems to be what I think about and talk about all the time. I've tried to write about other things but somehow they never quite cut the mustard.

So it's just about love." She's talking about Chungking's third album, the follow up to last year's successful The Hungry Years, which is currently being mixed, and will get its first airing at the Spiegeltent tonight.

But for the Brighton-based band, aficionados of the floaty opus, the trippy beat and the psychedelic swirl, it's always been about love.

Naming themselves after Chungking Express, a film about the love lives of customers at a Hong Kong snack bar, they formed some five years ago around the trio of James Stephenson, Sean Hennessey and his then girlfriend, Banks.

Hennessey and Stephenson had been writing songs together for a while, but little came of their efforts until one day Hennessey heard his girlfriend rattling around the kitchen and belting out a Joni Mitchell tune.

He realised, as The Sunday Times would later, that she had a voice like Shirley Bassey, Liza Mineli and Dusty Springfield combined.

With Banks on board, in 2001 they put together a bunch of demos, a copy of which travelled to Tokyo in the cd player of a friend. He gave it to a DJ in a club, then promptly forgot about it.

But three months later a box of white labels turned up on his doorstep stamped with Japanese writing that read "Beautiful Chungking Records."

When one of these 12-inchers ended up in the hands of Tim "Love" Lee, owner of Tummy Touch Records, the trio found themselves coaxed into writing an album.

Unfortunately for them and fortuitously for their music, however, the album's recording was to coincide with Banks and Hennesseys' break-up.

Chungking's previously sanguine chillout took on a new edge as Banks poured her bitterness into tracks such as Cold Outside and (I Won't Be) Following, and the band distorted her unfalteringly sweet vocal to fit their mood, speeding it into a childlike squeak or slowing it down to a lover-man drawl.

Previously the heirs of Zero 7, Chungking forged a unique lounge sound that was authentically worded, passionately sung, humorously inventive and truly bitter sweet.

"I've never thought of myself as a soul singer," says Banks. "We've always had a late Seventies, quite soporific, psychedelic vibe. But in terms of the dynamics of the music it is really modern soul. It's very heart felt, very emotional music, always tugging at the heart-strings."

Chungking are naturally delighted to be debuting their new stuff in the Spiegeltent, a venue where "you can be really expressive, put on a proper performance".

But, having seen her first show there a few night's ago - the vaudeville circus extravaganza La Clique - Banks is also aware that there's much to live up to.

"I feel like I've got to do something special," she laughs, "and after seeing La Clique I was drunkenly getting someone to teach me magic tricks at four in the morning. I don't think I've quite mastered hide the hanky' though, so I'll have to rifle through my dressing up box.

"If it was an old dive I could look like a scruffy arse but you've got to glam up for the Spiegeltent haven't you? We'll rise to the occasion."