TRANS-SIBERIAN ORCHESTRA guitarist Angus Clark, currently on tour with the east coast company, is featured in a new interview with Premier Guitar. An excerpt is available below:

Premier: When did you hook up with TSO?

Clark: "I was living in New York just after completing my Master’s degree, and I got a gig with a band called NAKED SUN on a German label distributed by BMG. And we got dropped as soon as I joined the band, which is a classic story [laughs]. We were bound and determined to get a new record deal. So we got in a van and went back to L.A., played some showcases and nothing happened, except that I met a woman who worked for Kitaro, who is a Japanese new age artist. They were looking for someone who could play like David Gilmour, and I basically had the hair, the Strat and the whole thing going on. So I got the Kitaro gig, and I did that for four or five years, from ‘94 until ‘99.

Premier: So you were playing new age music?

Clark: "That era of Kitaro essentially sounds like orchestral space rock. It was like PINK FLOYD with no singer. It was a great guitar gig. I had huge, long guitar solos with strings backing me up. We played in front of castles in Japan, all over the place. It was phenomenal for me as a guitarist. I’m on five of his records, and four of them were nominated for Grammys.

Here’s where it gets complicated. Marty Friedman worked with Kitaro; he had Kitaro produce one of his solo albums, Scenes. And so Marty would come see the Kitaro shows and we became friends; when Marty left MEGADETH, Al Pitrelli [playing with TSO at the time] joined the Megadeth and TSO called Marty to see if he was interested in doing the tour. He wasn’t available, but he said, 'I know another guy in New York,' and they called me. It’s only six degrees of separation [laughs].

Premier: What is it like playing on such a well-known spectacle of a show? Most players will never experience playing in front of a wall of pyrotechnics.

Clark: "It’s intense; you think, 'How the heck did I get here?' And I’ve had that experience more than once. When I was first with Kitaro, they flew me to Japan and they set me up on a stage with a huge PA rig, and I’m playing all this Pink Floyd-inspired stuff, and they’ve got this mirror ball—it’s just like I’m on the Dark Side Of The Moon tour. I couldn’t fathom it. The last two years of the TSO tour, we’ve been using a scissor lift stage—it looks just like the things that KISS would ride. I was like, 'I can’t believe this!' I just commend Paul O’Neil and TSO for wanting to do that level of production, because it’s a family show, and a rocker can bring his kids and enjoy that level of production without having to worry about the content of the show."

Go to this location for the complete interview.

As previously reported, Clark is gearing up for the release of his new solo instrumental album, Your Last Battlefield. Three audio samples are currently streaming on his official MySpace page. The tracks 'Festival', 'The Dohlman's Tears' (featuring TSO violinist Anna Phoebe) and 'Phoenix Hotel' are available here.

Clark collaborated with Anna Phoebe on her 2006 EP, Gypsy. The track 'Phoenix Hotel' originally appeared on the EP and has be re-recorded as a guitar version for Your Last Battlefield. More details of the release will be available soon.

View Trans-Siberian Orchestra's tour itinerary at this location.

A clip of Phoebe and Clark performing the track '99 Lives' from the Gypsy EP is available below.

'99 Lives'