The first album from The Streets in a dozen years, The Darker The Shadow The Brighter The Light, possesses swooping God’s eye crane shots of nocturnal adventures in clubland. With his customary unique delivery, Streets ringmaster Mike Skinner runs the gamut:  random late-night hook-ups, decadent escapism, dawn crawls, aching bank accounts and more.

If that list make you think a hardboiled Philip Marlowe brewed with a star-crossed club DJ, then, clever sleuth, you’re on the money, for that is Skinner’s intention. He recently toured UK Everyman Cinemas with his self-directed debut feature, named after the the album, billed as “a tripped-out noir murder mystery based in London’s clubland”.

Last night at 3Olympia in Dublin, the man behind it all passed within a hair’s breadth of Hot Press, as he roamed through his berserk audience, shaking hands with surprised punters, before leaping back onstage to deliver an iconic performance. The following morning, South George’s St. feels like the calm after the storm. Knocking on the door of Warner, I’m led up half-a-dozen staircases, into a sparse but comfortable space.

Mike rises to his feet, crosses the room, shakes my hand and immediately takes a fancy to my vintage (read ancient) Tascam recording device. He is warm, personable and easy-going. But let’s get down to brass tacks: tell me how it feels like to plunge into a heaving mass of ticket-paying punters?

He laughs loudly.

“When we did the comeback tour, it was really manic and crazy, but it’s calmed down,” says Skinner. “It’s really good fun. I just walk into the crowd from the side, and go all the way through, shaking people’s hands. They don’t really know I’m there. It’s weird, nobody expects you – they’re so surprised you’ve come into the crowd and tapped them on the shoulder.

“I find it quite addictive. If I just jumped into the crowd from the front and started crowdsurfing, it’s too mad, because it’s just a massive scramble and can sometimes feel quite dangerous. But when you walk from the side, it’s such a surprise to people that they’re like, ‘Oh, fuck!’ They shake your hand, and before they’ve worked it out, you’re gone.”

Copyright Miguel Ruiz.

With regard to the movie, Mike actually directed, shot, edited, scored, starred in and funded TDTSTBTL. I mean what the hell? As I remarked when reviewing the album in these pages, the man makes legendary workhorse Clint Eastwood look like a slouch.

“Each job on its own was quite straightforward,” he explains. “I’ve done millions of music videos, lighting’s really the hardest thing. I’m a sound engineer, I’ve been recording all my life, so, the sound side of it was pretty straightforward. There wasn’t one job that I actually found impossible.

“But what was incredibly awful was how much everything adds up, like the Foley, fuck! I’ve done two weeks on doors creaking and footsteps. I also did a bit of CGI on it, it’s just goes on and on and on, you realise why there’s so many names on the credits in films.”

During the release of the movie, reading interviews with Skinner, I was remined of Dennis Hopper editing Easy Rider, and the mammoth undertaking of the auteur. We talk books and documentaries on the subject, including Peter Biskind’s Easy Riders, Raging Bulls and Burstein & Morgen’s The Kid Stays in The Picture. Making movies ain’t easy. He throws a tell-me-about-it look.

“I feel movies are really human,” says Mike. “With music, you don’t have to think about people so much. Even if you’re U2, how many people are in that studio? It’s five people in the band and probably the entire band aren’t always there. And you’ve got a producer, an A&R man and maybe a manager. That’s it. You’ve got like seven people for the whole project. But film, it’s just another level of people. I think your creativity in film is measured by how good you are with people.”

Big motion picture kahunas such as Scorsese and Tarantino appear to agree, continuously using many of the same crew members. Mike nods and outlines the complexity of shooting schedules, comparing them to a weird matrix that must be aligned if you don’t want to shed dough. I wonder about his writing process; does he storyboard?

“It was a bit like A Grand Don’t Come For Free,” he reflects, alluding to the sophomore album that confirmed his star status. “I wrote a story and then I did the album. But A Grand had the plot in it. Whereas the music for this film doesn’t have the actual plot in it. It’s just moments. But the process was kind of the same - write the story, then write the music. But in this case, I had to finish off the script.

“As for storyboarding, I didn’t storyboard, but I did stick to the script, literally, word for word. The film is the same as the script. I think, if you’re operating on a zero budget, all you’re doing the whole time is looking around and thinking, how can I make the best of this moment? Because you can’t control anything, you’re sort of being blown along.

“When you’ve got a big budget and you’re controlling absolutely everything, then you can rec your locations and storyboard. But generally, it was walk into a room, work out where to put the lights, and then quickly block it.”

He sits forward, intent on highlighting the intricacies of his process.

“I don’t shoot coverage either,” he expands. “Because I’m the editor, director and DP, normally you’d have to give the editor coverage, right? You’d have to give the editor the ove-the-shoulder shot, the wide shot, the establishing shot, but I’m editing it in my head. I can literally look at the camera and edit it in the camera. By the end of it, I was only shooting what was ending up in the film.”

I recall reading about Tarantino shooting Reservoir Dogs using a similar method.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “I think it’s smart actually. If you give everyone everything, it weakens your position. Whereas if it’s - This, is it! Bang. Bang. Bang. You give that to the editor, a producer can’t come in and say, ‘Let’s fuck all this up’, do you know what I mean?”

With Mike’s pedigree, I’m surprised that nobody took a punt on him with funding. He’s not surprised, reminding me that people who have made many films don’t get financial backing. We talk more about his process – filming Quadrophenia-style dance club scenes, and the onerous task of dragging a movie across the finish line. He categorically states, “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. By a long way.”

Asking how the film is being received, his answer is interesting and illuminating.

“People have been really nice, we’ve been showing it to fans,” he says. “It’s a good Streets album, the film is basically like A Grand Don’t Come For Free, but if I got older and started DJing. But I haven’t made it for the fans, I’ve made it because that’s what I’m into. I haven’t really been paying that much attention to the reaction. What I’ve been paying attention to is how good it feels to have finished the fucking thing.”

After such a gruelling process, Mike was editing up to the final day, literally, so getting on the road with The Streets must have come as something of a relief. Last night in the Olympia, he joked with us that he even missed tour buses.

“Being on the road for me means being in a in a bus, in a bed,” he grins. “Where you don’t have to do anything, you just have to get out of bed. Open the bus door. Open the venue door. Stage. Where’s my microphone? That’s my job. It’s much better. It’s an hour’s work a day. Life is good.”

It was Lauren Laverne who used the line ‘nocturnal adventures in clubland’ to describe Mike’s movie. It’s a good hook, considering the comparison to film noir and murder mystery.

“Yeah, that was the starting point,” he agrees. “I love the Raymond Chandler books. I’m not so much into the Chandler films. I’ve always liked really simple stories, almost like fairytales, but with people saying cool shit. And there’s really nothing that comes close to those old movies, like Jacques Tourneur’s Out of the Past. Even the neo-noirs – The Usual Suspects, you wouldn’t call that a simple story, would you? It’s kind of just people saying cool shit. But yeah, Raymond Chandler was an influence on my music before I even thought about making a film.”

Chandler. UK Garage. Clubland. Film noir. Neo Noir. You can’t say it ain’t original.

“It came to me suddenly,” notes Skinner. “I spent years trying to make a film and frankly feeling a bit depressed that I hadn’t actually done anything. Then I thought, no one’s really done a musical, where the songs are the voiceover; obviously there are rap musicals and things like Hamilton. But if you think about Goodfellas, or Out Of The Past, those sorts of gumshoe, hardboiled, detective things - it’s like you’re hearing about what’s inside the character’s head. And it’s not the plot.

“It’s the counterpoint to the plot. So, I just thought, wow, that would be really good. As soon as I thought that, I thought it has to be a Streets thing, so that was that.”

These things take time to form - after another year of gestation, a further lightbulb moment came at a legendary Manchester dancehall.

“I was at Sankeys in Manchester,” he says. “You see some wild shit in nightclub offices. It’s one in the morning and you’re sitting in the corner. You’ve got half an hour until you’re on, you’re watching security, promoters, friends of promoters who are super fucked up and borderline drug dealer-type people as well. Suddenly, I realised this is a great movie, if I was Philip Marlowe, but a DJ.”

The Darker The Shadow The Brighter The Light is out now.