Just days before, I spoke with Manjay of the Sunkings who had given me the blueprint to what they were going to conjure up that night. But even though I had the semblance of a map, I wasn't prepared for the digital equivalent of "Pilgrim's Progress" intersecting with "The Tibetan Book Of The Dead". Henry Miller once said, "When one travels, it's not necessarily the journey that's important, but how one arrives at the destination". We had all travelled to see and hear the Sunkings, but how were we to know that once we got there our journey was just beginning. The following is the conversation that I had with Manjay bridging the space time gap via the trans-global link.

Manjay: It's going good.

RV: You don't sound very British?

MJ: That's because I'm not.

RV: Where are you from?

MJ: I'm from Connecticut.

RV: How did you hook up with the Sunkings?

MJ: I'd been here for awhile and started working with Paul, one of the other Sunkings around 1990.

RV: The first time I'd heard the Sunkings was on a comp called Ambient Senses. I think the track was "Galapagos".

MJ: Ambient Senses volume one!

RV: That's the one, with The Orb, Luke Slater, Mandragora. . . .

MJ: Aphex Twin, Polygon Window. . .

RV: That's a pretty cool CD.

MJ: Yeah it is, but I don't like the artwork- it's pretty amateurish.

RV: Third grade.

MJ: We're going to do a version of "Galapagos" in San Francisco. That song has wound up on a number of compilations.

RV: Have you ever been to Burning Man?

MJ: No, I've only read about it, but we've been invited to go. We're only going to be over for a week. We're trying to convince Nicky [Blueroom Chieftain Nick Crayson] to fly us back over. It's kind of pagan-y isn't it?

RV: It's very pagan-y and desert bound.

MJ: High-tech paganism it sounds like.

RV: It takes place over a week with the final three days falling on the Labor Day weekend. That's when the yuppie techno pagans arrive. It's an exercise in hedonistic survival in an autonomous zone.

MJ: Didn't Coldcut or Hex do some sort of live broadcast?

RV: Not sure. Rumor has it that you guys are supposed to play there?

MJ: I know rumor has it and I'd like to confirm that rumor. But we're supposed to fly back. But we're also doing the Moontribe gig in Southern California.

RV: Well, in any case this year it's back out in the playa of the Black Rock desert. Last year they were herded onto different land and it was the revenge of the locals. It is the wild west ya' know.

MJ: It probably belongs to the Pueblos.

RV: The Paiutes.

MJ: Well there you go. They haven't returned it to the Paiutes now have they?

RV: Nope, but you have to go to Paiute land to get there. Don't want to speed. And then there's Pyramid Lake.

MJ: Is that the lake with the trippy pyramid in the middle?

RV: Yep.

MJ: I've seen pictures of that lake. Has Nicky put you up to getting us to stay?

RV: No I am truly an innocent.

MJ: Well, we'll try to get him to fly us back out. We could do some different things there-some diverse environments like a chillout zone. There's only going to be two or three of us. We don't always have to be plugged into a hardcore trance scene. Have you heard the new record?

RV: Absolutely.

MJ: What do you think?

RV: It's awesome-love the fact that you guys use guitar. In the realm of trance, the guitar is sacrificed-outside of Steve Hillage.

MJ: It's (the guitar) part of the original psychedelic movement. I play some guitar as well as Del our main guitar player. When we started out, we started out to be a psychedelic band. In fact I'm surprised that we were even signed to Blueroom. I don't think we're typical of the label. But I'm happy we're on it.

RV: Did you know that there's another Sunkings in this country?

MJ: Aren't they a country band?

RV: I think they're from San Antonio and they play Tex-Mex stuff. Maybe you guys could do a record with them?

MJ: The Sunkings vs. The Sunkings!

RV: But getting back to the record, I also like the fact that it's a journey-a full on journey. What sort of sources do you use for your inspiration.

MJ: I draw pretty heavily on a lot of Celtic symbolism. That's a Celtic shield on the cover of "Soul Sleeping". There's so much information there laying below the surface. A lot of history and mysticism. It's not like your typical Celtic mysticism though. For instance most people have a very superficial take on the Celts and the druids. But if you go deep enough beneath the surface there are some powerful undercurrents. The image that I had in mind when we did the record was of a Celtic tribe that had encountered a Roman tribe and got their butt kicked a bit. They weren't totally beaten but they were defeated. I was trying to see how they would feel by going on and having to deal with defeat.

RV: How does the element of magic or chance play a role in your music?

MJ: Well, some of the best pieces have mistakes in them. You know when the Roland 303's came out, the program manual was bigger than the unit itself? It had what I would call a seventy-five twenty five effect. It was very, very difficult to program the onboard sequencer of that machine. You could program it and seventy five percent of the time and you might get twenty-five percent of it right. I'm convinced that there's a lot of really whacked out accede pieces that were really fucked up from the 303 and they were never meant to be that way. But people probably thought it sounded pretty cool and they left it. So quite often when I work something out, there's always the possibility that something will go wrong but be absolutely right.

RV: Any examples?

MJ: Well, on the subject of chance, we had a piece, "Burning Buddha's" put on a compilation by Brian Eon. He had solicited a bunch of tapes and didn't want to know who they were by. He just rode his bike around Dublin and listened to them on his walkman. He chose our piece amongst some other really good pieces. It's on his first Antenna compilation which he's put together for orphans of Bosnia.

RV: He used a lot of chance composition during Heroes, Low and Before and After Science.

MJ: Yeah he was into those cards-Oblique Strategies I think they were called. The funny thing about Eon is that when the DX-7 came out he decided that that was going to be his synth, I don't think he's ever used anything else. He's probably gone deeper into the DX than anyone. Kind of like an old blues man and his guitar. Some of those ambient sounds that show up on those U2 records are probably Eno and the DX at work.

RV: I saw him in a film "Imaginary Landscapes" where he said that he only needed "eight or nine really good options to use on a piece of music".

MJ: In addition to being pretty brilliant he's also a pretty good businessman-calling himself an anti-musician and all that it implies.

RV: I was talking with a friend today and I was telling him that I had heard that the astronauts on space flights can listen to any music they want. . . like the Sunkings for instance. But after about three days in space, they lost all desire to listen to music. Do you think music is a phenomenon limited to the magnetic fields?

MJ: Well, first of all I'm a primitive. I want to stay right here. I don't want to go anywhere where there isn't music. They can leave that up to Buzz what's his name. Have you ever heard these astronauts? They sound like mechanical men really. Maybe the music that they like isn't the music they like, maybe they were just told to listen to it.

RV: In the NASA handbook!

MJ: If they went into space at all! Capricorn One!

RV: With OJ!

MJ: And James Brolin!

RV: Speaking of space travelers, you're coming to San Francisco. What do you plan on doing at the Blueroom launch in SF?

MJ: Well, we'll play "Galapagos" most of the new record and maybe a few other things--see where it takes us. We'll try to make it ceremonial and a bit ritualistic--set the space and all that. We really like to bring the spiritual element into the music. That's important to us. It's also important that we take people somewhere.

RV: So where is the trance taking the Sunkings?

MJ: Hopefully to someplace that has some money. We're tired of being starving artists. We figure it's somebody else's turn for awhile.

The Sunkings--Soul Sleeping
(Track Listing)

Tongues of Fungus
Flesh Canvas
Isle of the Departed
Tang
Eden Reprised
Polyglot Man
Divine Inferno
Talisman