Steve Hillage's new album was released this month. Eddie Franklin-White discusses the project with him.

Five musicians working with great energy and discipline, beautiful floating sounds, hard driving rock and the determination to really make it work.

Fierce pulsing rock that must be worked at until the pulse is primordial and inevitable, delicate floating sounds that must truly take their place in the whole.

'Rock music is, in its way, the spiritual music of now.' Earlier in the evening Steve Hillage had talked about the background to his new album Rainbow Dome Musick that was issued to coincide with this year's Mind and Body Festival (London, Olympia, April 21-29, 1979). For Steve there is something inevitable about Rainbow Dome Musick, he sees it as 'an outlet for the less rock-orientated aspect of my music' - interested as he is in the genuinely mystical, and feeling that despite obvious suffering and strife, there is much that is beautiful in this world, he was deeply moved by the (second) Mind and Body Festival's attempt to bring together a range of alternative and mystical thoughts and approaches. Steve also talked of being in France last summer and hearing a series of radio phone-in programmes on subjects such as 'Out of The Body Experiences', 'Astrology', and 'The New Age', during which people from many walks of life contributed views and experiences.

Soon after returning from France, Steve was in contact with the organisers of the exhibition and this is how he came to hear Rupert Attwill talk about the proposed central 'Rainbow Dome'. Steve was immediately fired with the thought of contributing music that would enhance the dome and its rainbows as being a quiet place at the exhibition and also a place of focus for what I would call 'contemplative energy'.

Work on the music started with meetings at which the whole project was discussed (over numerous mugs of tea and coffee) and discs and tapes were played, the latter including some of Steve's own experimental tapes.

Recording took place at Steve's home in Wiltshire and soon afterwards I was lucky to be given a cassette copy of the final 2-track master.

I have played this cassette to friends and to students and we have greatly enjoyed this quiet, contemplative music. A particular point of interest has centred around the double sequence that floats in soon after the beginning of side one; I suggest that as well as enjoying the beauty of this sequence as it floats over you, it will be well worthwhile, and even more enjoyable, to really try and suss out what is going on.

To talk to Steve is to realise the range of his interests; for example, he talked of the sheer physical power of the electric bass and of filtering its richly harmonic sound, and then, soon after, he was discussing Greek, western, Medieval and Indian modes and scales.

I am impressed that Steve has not fallen into the all-too-common trap of using a knowledge of other civilisations and their music as a means of dressing up otherwise sterile productions. Steve's approach is basic and direct whether it be hard driving rock or gently contemplative; still, as Steve said of something or other, 'It's not so much a matter of the Pythagorean coma as of oscillators drifting.'

And so, late in the evening, after a most pleasant meal, numerous phone calls and our talk, I left Steve and musicians getting together some of the most powerful, uncompromising rock sounds that I have heard in a long time.

For the technically interested: on Rainbow Dome Musick Steve used a Gibson SG, with standard tuning, mainly played with a metal glissando rod, a Fender Rhodes Stage 73 and some Tibetan Bells (struck with a metal rod). An ARP 2600, a modified Minimoog and a double sequencer; an Eventide Harmonizer, stereo reverb, and a Revox for stereo echo: all recorded (by Steve himself) on a Brennell Mini 8 (1in) through an A&H mixer and mixed down on to a 2 channel Leevers Rich. Side one was composed by Miquette Giraudy, and side two by Steve; the double sequence on side one was played by Miquette and Steve played on and produced the whole album.

Rainbow Dome Musick is issued on Virgin VR1.