"Music is a powerful tool for change," says Toby Marks, the magician behind Banco de Gaia, "You can radically shift or transform people's consciousness or awareness or focus through music. That is why people like playing music: because it moves them from where they are."

Marks, a one-time rock and roll musician, has found a new mode of expression. Well, it's not entirely new; he's been working under the Banco de Gaia moniker for nearly a decade now, but with the release of Igizeh (his second release for U.S. label Six Degrees under his own Gecko Records imprint), he's fully captured the attention of those who first become aware of his unique blend of trance, acid house, and fourth world samples on The Magical Sounds of Banco de Gaia. You can't help but feel like a cobra caught up in the strains of the fakir's flute, mesmerized and swaying to the insistent rhythm. Some have gone so far as to label Marks as a musical shaman and, while he scoffs at the restrictions of such a title, there is an element of magic underlying his sublime mingling of beats and samples; there is transformative energy at work in his music.

"When I started working in dance music, I was trying to part of that whole dance-floor-as-a-temple kind of thing. But as the months and years went by, I realized most people were either not ready to do that or didn't want to do that. The degree of spiritual evolution involved in that varied from individual to individual, and most people were not going to a club as if it were a church. Most people went to a club as if it were a club; they were out for fun, but maybe getting opened up and turned on a little bit in the process. The emphasis--for my music--shifted from trying to be this great tool for psychological change to much more in creating a supportive and positive environment."

"Frog's Dinner" (from The Magical Sounds of Banco de Gaia) begins with the chirp of birds under the verdant canopy of the jungle, and adds the joyful chorus of a sub-Saharan village dancing around a fire before getting caught up with a shuffling snare and an echoing dub melody. It opens a window into which your soul can leap, transporting you from the interminable perpetuity of your daily life to a sun-drenched beach with white sands and beautifully blue waters. Positive environment? Sign this writer up.

His new album, Igizeh, opens with a field recording from the streets of Egypt--children laughing and playing in the streets, a distant call to prayer whispering in the background. It is a testament to Marks' skill at co-mingling the ancient and ethnic with modern instrumentation; the drum and synthesizer don't sneak up on you or seem out of place. And, as the children's voices turn suddenly, booming out in a rousing choir of exultant voices, you are swept along by the musical tide. It's a powerful opening, quickly demonstrating Marks' affinity for melding the natural and the sampled with the insistent pulse of a dance-hall rhythm section.

Marks downplays the seemingly Faustian manner in which he crafts his music. "There's a randomness in it and that randomness throws off patterns that I wouldn't expect--that I find fascinating," he says. "It really depends on the tune. Sometimes I'll come across a vocal sample and think, 'Wow, I really need to make a tune out of that.' Other times, I might think that I just want to write a banging breakbeat tune and start with a drum loop. Or I might just be programming weird noises and come up with a texture or maybe a melodic idea or chord pattern that I want to experiment with. Every tune starts in a different place. I don't use the same formula every time. There probably are formulas in what I do, but I'm not particularly conscious of them. The start point varies and the end point varies as well. Quite often I start with an idea but by the time I get finished with the tune, that original idea got thrown out a long time ago. What I tend to do is pile things up--just chuck in loads of elements--and see what works together and what doesn't. Quite often I'm surprised."

We're at the Westin Hotel in Seattle. Marks is in the midst of a short DJ tour of the United States with Sam Zaman (of State of Bengal). They're both out spinning records at clubs--a small promotional tour for their respective albums recently released on Six Degrees. It's their day off and they're taking interviews before their clipper ride to Victoria. Sam is just to the left of us, staring into the unblinking eye of a camera from an Internet-based streaming content company. Toby is relaxing in a cream colored couch before the large windows. It's another overcast day in Seattle. We've been talking about the trouble of gathering decent location recordings. Marks went to Egypt shortly before starting recording for Igizeh. While it was a holiday, he did take his minidisc player with him, hoping to pick up a few location samples that he could use on the next record. "We were on a train in Egypt going down south," he relates. "We were in the sleeper car and they have an on-train radio, if you can call it that--it was a tiny little speaker. They were playing this early acid house compilation--must have been from 1991 or so--God knows where they got it from. We were just sitting there killing ourselves listening to these tunes: 'I remember this!' 'Oh, what the hell is this? This is so last year.'" He laughs at the memory of those songs coming out of the tiny speaker. "And then suddenly the conductor or guard or steward cut in and says, 'Good evening ladies and gentlemen. Just to let you know that in the restaurant car at 9 o'clock we have disco dance party.' I should have had the mic there. It was just hilarious the way he said it. It would have been a classic sample. It would have been great on a track to suddenly have it cut to that. Of course I wasn't recording. Those moments--if only! On computers these days you can kind of record retrospectively, they're buffering all the time and you can--o quick!--grab something after the event. If only I could do that with a microphone and a minidisc, I'd get some really interesting things."