Currently holed up in London where they’ve been working on their fourth album for the last two years, local legends Pnau are being coaxed out studio hibernation for a homecoming tour as a part of this summer’s Big Day Out festival tour.

That live return looks to be just one part of Pnau’s big ambitions for 2011, with the band’s Peter Mayes telling inthemix that the band are at last ready to unveil their new record with the tentative title of Soft Universe.

“This album has made us such better songwriters,” Mayes said down the line to ITM. “The last record and the Empire of the Sun one were really good training for this album…there’s a lot more vocal stuff that we’ve done this time.”

When asked whether a greater emphasis on vocals meant that Soft Universe would be less of a ‘club’ record, Mayes explained that this effort will “definitely be less ravey” than Pnau’s past LPs but insisted that it would retain the band’s trademark “energy”.

“This is all about melody, we really love that. I don’t think we’ve ever really flown the flag for the dance scene because it’s too hard to keep up with everything that goes in it,” he said. “We’re not the kind of guys who put out a remix every two months, we work for years on our albums. We’re trying to make something more timeless than a straight up club record.”

Confirming all the chatter that the band have indeed been working with Sir Elton John on the record, Mayes stated that the piano-pop icon is a strong influence on Soft Universe.

“It’s definitely a surreal thing to have Elton as our mentor but he’s been great to us,” Mayes said. “He took us under his wing and has been there to motivate us when we needed it. He’s an incredible songwriter too, you’re in the studio with him for 10 minutes and he’ll write a song. He can do that. And if he doesn’t get the song done in that time he’ll just start another one.”

Stay tuned for more juice on the return of Pnau and stay up to date on all the news by becoming a fan over at our All About Pnau page.