Looking back, it's likely that had I had not bumped into a friend of mine we'd still be bumping around basements in Wardour Street and spending our nights in the empty Victorian warehouses around the docks. Back in '85 there was still the odd place that hadn't been decked out in potted palms or vandalized by Philipe Starck. The yuppies hadn't quite taken over.

Anyway, this friend of mine owned this tiny 8-track studio and offered us some free time. Like I say, we'd been used to playing in the sort of places a bum would consider bad so this little studio, with its ancient equipment and old- fashioned goodwill, well, to us it looked like a fucking NASA. Even so, it took us about 24 hours to knock out stuff that sounded so good I could suddenly see a future. That's probably an exaggeration, but it was certainly the first time in my life I'd ever bothered to think about tomorrow morning.

In this very dizzy state, we sent off taapes to all the record companies, convinced we's set the Thames on fire or at least caused the biggest bidding war since Decca let the Beatles go. A few days later we wre signed to 4AD- you know, the label that discovered the Cocteau Twins, the Pixies and Nick Cave's Birthday Party ( I like to keep good company). A week after that we were in Scotland recording our first album, Clan of Xymox. By the end of 1986 we'd completed our second, Medusa- pretty much the blueprint for everything we've done since. By that I mean I was surprised by it's scale, astonished by it's nerve, delighted. One of the British music mags said "It's more than a soundscape, it's sonic architecture." I liked that. It didn't sound quite like me, it didn't sound quite like us, but it did sound like the kind of music I'd always wanted to listen to, or at least close enough. Music, I always thought, shouldn't just make life seem more dramatic but be more dramatic.

In October 1988 we left 4AD for PolyGram. I'd been spending some time in New York and hadn't really been to sure why. The, one very bright day, I decided to cross the Brooklyn Bridge on foot. Halfway over, I looked back towards Manhattan. I was standing on the boardwalk that runs above the traffic, the boards felt sringy under me. I peered though the thicket of white cables that caged me in its grid. With every step the lines of the cables shifted so that I was glimpsing the city through a constantly changing geometric design. Manhattan may not always make you feel like you're hero but it should at least make you feel like you're playing an important cameo role. I like the idea that music can do something similar, that it can be as that Bridge with its view. I like that alot- Big Pop, Big Rock'n Roll.

With Twist of Shadow, our third album, recorded and released in 1989, we locked most of the melodies into a dance grid. We wanted to make music you could dance to, equally we wanted to make music that would move you. The moods, high or low, had to be ecstatic, had to move with a seamless cinematic sweep. We wanted a music that would make the ordinary extraordinary, sountrack life to the point where you could almost see the credits roll and feel the cameras pan.

Sometimes I worry about that- the idea that I need to make my loves, my lusts, my smallest victories and most insignificant defeats so much larger and more dramatic than they really are. Maybe it's the reason I'm not entirely comfortable playing live. After all, anyone who requires an audience can't be well balanced.

Phoenix felt like it was making sense of all this. It also felt like the most important thing we've ever done. Mind you, every song we've ever written has felt that way. As someone once said- life's too good.

Ronny Moorings
London 1991   

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