Mike Rimmer met up with dance music producer Paul Buono (also known as Magellan) of the pioneering CLUB DREAMLAB

I joked that now I knew he went to Berklee, I had to take him seriously. Buono chuckled, "Yeah, I'm not just some kid that got garage band on his Mac and decided to make music. I've been doing this awhile." I asked him about his contemporaries at college and suddenly he got a little shy. "I remember. . .okay. . .that's a tough question because I don't want to reveal my age!" And he didn't!

He did remember a session guitarist who visited and inspired him. "I was thinking, 'Wow! This guy gets paid to go into a studio and play his guitar!' That was like such a foreign concept to me. Seeing him and hearing his stories about how he was making a living as a studio guitar player, I was very impressed by that and I thought, 'That's what I want to do! I want to find a way to make a living just by being in the studio every day and creating music.' Sometimes when you pray and you ask something, it's like you have to be careful what you ask for because sometimes God will indeed give you the very thing that you've asked for! So I prayed and asked God, 'I want to be in the studio and make records.'"

God obviously took his prayer seriously. Paul confessed, "I've never told anybody this but I have a little ritual. When I'm going into a session, before I walk through those doors I say a little prayer. I'm like, 'God, thank you for letting me do this and just help me to be really good at what I'm doing today. I give this day to you.' Because I feel like he blessed me with that gift; to be able to do what I asked him for. I said, 'God, can I just make music in studios? That's what I want to do,' and he answered my prayer! So I respect that and I give all my studio time back to him in a sense. And the cool thing is that I don't only just produce Christian music, so even if I'm just producing a mainstream artist I say that same prayer and want that same blessing of God on that project, because I'm very serious about what I do."

Buono explained that he comes from a typical Italian American Catholic family. "I just had one brother but a very big extended family. Both my mom and dad came from big families so I had lots of cousins and had a wonderful youth growing up with them in the city of Boston. When I was a teenager, I got saved and became a believer. The cool thing was a bunch of my friends and I took it upon ourselves to evangelize our entire high school!" He laughed at the memory. "We were completely zealous and radical and we would have kids praying in the hall to receive Christ and then we'd give the report at lunch time; 'So and so got saved today!' It was just a wonderful experience with my friends and I, so I kind of really quickly was immersed in a very radical kind of Christian lifestyle."

Intriguingly, by day Paul Buono is plainly and simply Paul but by night he shifts into his alter ego Magellan. I'm not sure if he dons a cape for this. He explained, "Magellan is a name that I've taken on for my stage [persona] and for some of my remix work and I hope to take some of that on the road and do some festivals and bring the music to the people and get the people dancing and moving their bodies in a new experience of worship."

I asked Paul to run through the Club DreamLab albums he's so far produced. "As I mentioned, I produced 'Club Revival' in Helsinki with Maria Kopiola. I'd describe it as a spiritual mix of dance, trance, stadium and club. 'Hymnotica' features traditional hymns set to a vibey, chillout beat. 'Technodelic' blends modern techno with the sounds of the '60s and '70s psychedelic movement. 'Tranceformation' has catchy hooks and trance club beats mixed with words of grace. And the latest 'Worship Revolutions' takes some of today's most popular worship sons and remixes them for a modern church culture."

Would Paul Buono/Magellan describe himself as a radical? "I was thinking about this the other day," he said. "I really feel strongly that my ministry to God is in the music that I create and in the artists that I work with and in the people that I help facilitate, to help them go on with their ministry and in their music. And I've had to resign myself to say, 'God, this is my reasonable service to you now. Using the gift you've given me to create music, that help encourage people all over the world to either worship or be encouraged to receive Christ for the first time.' I really believe the music that I help people record and write and create is a tool and a ministry in and of itself. I think it's a very serious thing and I do give that ministry and that gift back to God."