When you were putting that record together, what was the band’s songwriting dynamic like?

“Well, it was unusual in that Screaming Life - which is our first EP on Sub Pop - was new material, and what happened was as we were doing demos, Bruce Pavitt from Sub Pop really reacted to a handful of songs we’d just recorded. Those were our latest songs, and those ended up being on Screaming Life.

“And yet we had this huge backlog of material, and as soon as Screaming Life came out, it did really well critically, and we started getting quite a bit of attention and people coming to Seattle, which had never happened before. We knew we wanted to put out another indie album, but suddenly it was crucial that we just keep going.

“We’d always wanted to put out a record on SST, so we did a deal with them, and we had all this material that was a little bit older than what was on Screaming Life. So, I think we wrote a couple of new things, and then cherry-picked from the songs that we’d been working on for a couple of years, because we’d been a band for four years by then.

“And so we just went back and picked the material. We hadn’t yet had the concentrated writing period for an album. I think it was Louder Than Love, the first time that happened, where you’re writing for an album and it’s all new and you have to have it ready. [laughs]”

Jack Endino has done a fantastic job on the remix, and it really highlights just how broad the band’s influences were back then; did you have a particular vision for the record?

“By then, we had very clear perspectives on what we wanted to sound like, and all it was was just finding subtle improvements on that, and that’s why I think it’s so crucial that Jack remixed it.

“I wasn’t sure in the recording of it that remixing it would really help anything, but then Jack did a remix of Flower years and years ago, just to see, because we were trying to figure out what it was we weren’t sure about. We knew that recording with Jack got us sounding the way we sounded - the way we felt we as a group sounded, the way we sounded in a room. So he did a remix years ago as a test, and it just sounded like anything else we did, so we knew [the original recording] wasn’t bad.

It was our triumph in being able to put out a record on SST, and just be the band we were, which was probably more unique at the time than we even realised

“Other than that, I think it was just our triumph in being able to put out a record on SST, and just be the band we were, which was probably more unique at the time than we even realised.

“The goal had always been that: most of our favourite bands at the time had been releasing at least one album on SST. It was at the centre of great indie at the time. There were a few really great indie labels that you could count on to put out really cool records, or introduce you to cool bands: SST was probably our favourite.

“And so to be able to put out Ultramega OK on SST and be part of that, that to us was the ultimate success, like a popstar being on The Voice now. [laughs]

“And to me, it was entirely on-your-own-terms success; it wasn’t the way a lot of music success is now or has been. Now, you have to make concessions, you have to do what you’re told. We were really lucky, coming into a time where you can do that, in the way that hip-hop did as well. And putting a record out on SST was that; it was the ultimate triumph.”

How would you describe yourself as a guitar player at that time?

“I was a novice at that time, really. I didn’t start playing guitar in earnest until then, and it was really to contribute songs or ideas to Soundgarden.

“And unlike a lot of bands, I didn’t get any resistance; I got a lot of encouragement. I’d come into the room and start playing the part, and if Kim liked it, for example - who’s the guitar player, who would be the first one to be pissed off that someone else is pushing in on his territory - he would really respond positively to it, and it would become a song. So, that was sort of the beginning of me becoming a guitar player on that album.”

That said, you and Kim were ahead of the curve with drop D tuning on the likes of Flower and Beyond The Wheel; did finding that tuning shape the direction of the record?

“I think it did; I think it shaped the direction of the band, probably starting a year-and-a-half earlier. Kim brought that idea in, and it just changed the band tonally.

“The first year of the band was very quirky, post-punk, odd time signatures but melodic music, and heavy rock kind of seeped in there. And I think that’s when we found out what our real identity was, which was to fit somewhere in between what was happening immediately there and mixing that with aspects of rock music from the ’70s that, up to that moment, for the last several years, had been considered super-uncool. [laughs]

“And somehow we had the guts to bring that into what we were doing, but mixing it with influences that had never been done before, and that created something new. It was interesting, the reaction, because it was mostly positive, but when it was negative, it was extremely negative. And that’s when I knew we were doing everything right.”