There's something of the Wight about them. The spirit of the legendary 1970 Isle of Wight Festival has passed by osmosis into the very bones of The Bees. They've left the confines of a garden shed, and, with a little help from their friends at Abbey Road studios, have produced a stonking album from the melting pot. Paul Butler and Aaron Fletcher talk to Kevin Courtney

Thinking of staging a rock festival on the Isle of Wight? Looking for bands to perform there, but Jimi Hendrix, The Doors and Emerson, Lake & Palmer are not available anymore? Well, you're in luck, because somewhere on the island off the south England coast, in a small shed at the back of a garden, two bright young men have formed a band called The Bees. They're talented, they have eclectic tastes, and they're totally in love with vintage rock, roots and soul music and all its possibilities and permutations. Most importantly of all, though, they're dead handy.

Paul Butler and Aaron Fletcher weren't in this world when the legendary Isle of Wight festival turned their home into a mud 'n' poo bath back in 1970. It was the third IoW festival, and the biggest one, bringing nearly half a million rock fans across the Solent to converge on a site built to cater to less than one-fifth of that number. It was also the last one. The facilities buckled under such vast numbers, and a trench had to be dug to allow fans to answer the call of nature. The result was a scene resembling World War I, with guitars instead of gunfire and dreads instead of helmets. In other words, rock 'n' roll heaven. Still, the good burghers of the island thought it wise to curtail any such further shenanigans.

When the festival was resurrected in 2002, the organisers made sure this time to sort out the toilet facilities, and also to book some of the best acts around. Coincidentally, one of the best acts around also happened to live on the island, so that was one less ferry fare to pay for.

The Bees had just been nominated for a Mercury Music Prize for their intriguing début album, Sunshine Hit Me. Written and recorded entirely in Paul's dad's shed, using old analogue equipment, the album was a startlingly variegated affair, jumping from one genre to the next with almost wild abandon. John Barry-style cinema-scapes sat comfortably beside psychedelic roots and even Latino loungecore. Remember Punchbag? Remember A Minha Menina? Unbelievably, those two totally disparate tunes were done by the same band. If anything unified the music, it was a passion and respect for rock's wide-ranging history, and a shared joy of delving into the past and resurfacing with some great ideas. What better band to represent the revived spirit of the original Isle of Wight fest?

Last month, The Bees played another festival in the Isle of Wight, only this one was a smaller, more intimate affair, held in Robin Hill Country Park in Newport, in the company of Basement Jaxx, Fatboy Slim and Zero 7.

"It's a smaller one, with a better line-up," says diminutive, be-capped singer Paul Butler. "And it's more in the fields, which is closer to what the original festival was about."

In the two years since Sunshine Hit Me hit the shelves, Paul and Aaron have had to change their bucolic working practices a bit. Now expanded to a six-piece, they've moved out of the garden shed and into a proper studio to record the follow-up, Free The Bees.

"We left the shed," confirms Paul. "It was sinking. It was going under. It was moving, and we outgrew the shed a little bit. And there was another studio on the island, but we were struggling for a sound. We couldn't get the sound we were after, so we just went for the best studio in the world instead."

That studio was Abbey Road in London, where rumour has it that The Beatles once recorded a B-side or two. "Yeah, why not?" reckons Paul. His eyes glaze over momentarily - "for some reason, they don't advertise the fact that they can do anything other studios can do, in a legendary studio as well. So we got the old 1960s desk out and had the biggest collection of mics in the world to choose from, and all the old kit. . . it was awesome. These are the people who made all the old EMI equipment, which all your favourite albums are recorded on, so we dusted it off and made it work again, because it's just so well made. It was just a matter of firing it up again."

There follows a long, animated discussion about vintage musical recording equipment, which I'll keep for publication in What Studio? Magazine. Suffice to say that these Wight boys are serious analogue anoraks, almost as passionate about the gear as they are about the music recorded on it.

"We just figure that all the best music has already been made," explains Aaron. "And the way it was recorded, and the artists who recorded it - it's all been done. So we figured if we use the same equipment that the great artists used, that's a step nearer. Just because the old equipment is the best."

"John Barry came into the studio," reveals Paul. "He came into Studio 2, and he goes: 'Oh, I did the James Bond theme in here!' We were just standing there with our mouths wide open. He says to us: 'I like what you're doing, here's my New York address, send me the album when it's done.' And we were like, here's our Isle of Wight address."

You can smell the studio dust rising from the laser grooves of Free The Bees, particularly on the frugging Chicken Payback, the phantasmagorical Horsemen, and the festive One Glass of Water. These are songs that sound like your dad's entire vinyl collection, melted down and distilled into a dozen musical nuggets, each one completely different from the other. One minute Aaron is doing his best Robert Wyatt impression on Go Karts, the next Paul is on his knees like Percy Sledge begging you please on the sweet, soulful I Love You. It can be a bit disorientating - you keep having to check your calendar to make sure it's still 2004.

"We get that from bands like The Beatles," says Aaron. "The Beatles went through loads of different music genres. The Kinks. . . if you break the Kinks' songs down, they're all very simple, but the way they're played and arranged - they're all different styles."

"These days, I think there's more of a melting-pot attitude, rather than being into just one genre," says Paul. "'Cos every genre's got such a lot to offer. It's picking the best bits, or your favourite bits. That's what we do."

The Bees play The Nerve Centre, Derry tomorrow, The Limelight, Belfast on Sunday and The Village, Dublin on Monday