Once-Hot EMF Glad to Cool Down : Pop music: A year after its No. 1 hit, the group has gone from the Palladium to the Roxy. ‘We’re not a mass-exposure band,’ says its leader.

A year ago last summer, the English band EMF stirred up the pop world with “Unbelievable,” a brash, bratty single that went to No. 1 and allowed it to sell out the 4,500-capacity Hollywood Palladium. The group was inexperienced, but its success seemed to charge the atmosphere, and EMF’s hybrid of guitar-rock and high-tech dance music had the air of an adrenaline rush.

But that’s all proved to be a kind of junk-bond high, and now EMF is happy to face reality--such as playing the 500-capacity Roxy tonight, without the inflated excitement of a radio hit.

“Times change and people forget easily,” observes the band’s guitarist, Ian Dench. “We’re gonna have to work the sucker again before we can necessarily pack the Palladium out again. I’m aware of that, it’s the nature of the beast really. Especially with the nature of our initial success.

“There’s always a sort of novelty interest with a hit single, but you need background for people to come and see you again and again. And what we’re doing is building the background.”

At 28, Dench is sort of the father figure and stabilizing force for his younger bandmates--singer James Atkin, keyboardist Derry Brownson, bassist Zac Foley and drummer Mark Decloedt. Dench is the one who gives form to their energy, and he views the past year’s roller-coaster ride with a mature perspective.

“(The first success) for me certainly felt very precarious,” said Dench, who had played in minor bands for eight years before EMF formed. “Because I had no control over that sort of success. I mean, ‘Unbelievable’ we wrote in an afternoon and suddenly it was just huge.

“It was like, ‘Heck, I haven’t done anything.’ It felt like it wasn’t right. I’ve got a real work ethic and if you want to do something you’ve got to work for it. It was all too easy. I want something more solid and something that I feel more part of. I never really believed that any of it was too real or long-lasting. So it didn’t affect me too badly.

“We’re not a mass-exposure band. ‘Unbelievable’ put us in a ball game where we didn’t really mean to play.”

EMF has followed its debut album, “Schubert Dip,” with a more substantial new collection, “Stigma.” Dench is encouraged by reaction to the new album, as well as developments on the band’s recent European tour.

“The change in the audience has been gratifying. I think the more fickle elements of the audience who were coming for the novelty of ‘Unbelievable’ and a good-looking young band have either grown up or moved on.”

EMF was formed in 1989 in western England’s Forest of Dean area. Dench lived in the town of Gloucester, but his partners were from the tiny village of Cinderford, and Dench suggests that some of EMF’s perspective and personality are tied to the isolation of its home.

“People in Gloucester always say, ‘Oh, don’t go to Cinderford, funny people there, funny people.’ But they’re really kind of warm, friendly, energetic, drunken, mad people, inbred sort of. Some small community that’s kind of gone wild in the middle of these woods.

“That’s the most notable thing about the people in the band, is that they have that sort of oblivious energy, do their own thing. I think that’s one of the driving forces.”