Remember the Italian 'safe house' smash 'Children?' Well banish the memory , 'cos Robert's set up his own label, and the new album has global grooves and smart technology fuelling its digital soul. ..

Robert Miles (for 'tis he of massive hit 'Children' five years ago -but you'd never know it) has taken three years to fashion his third album 'Organik.' And for starters, this century's model is more qlobally flavoured as a diract result of Miles's travels among different cultures. There are guests with dynamic World Music connections: Nina Miranda (from Brazil) and Nitin Sawhney; then there's funk master Bill Laswell as well as a 25 piece orchestra. It's darker, slower, radically different from his breakthrough 'Dreamland' and 1997 fullow-up '23AM'.

A David and Goliath tale lies behind it: "I had to take time off to sort out my contract and had to fight to get my artistic freedom back," Miles explains. "My deal with Deconstruction (part of BMG) was restraining me because they only wanted me to make songs like 'Children'. I split up from my management, founded my own label, S:alt Records, and recorded this album. It took me two and half years to get out of that contract and it cost me a lot of money."

"I needed to be able to make music that is different, a new expression of my interests and not make the same music, over and over. I see myself as an artist and want to better myself with every record. That might be the reason that this album is very dark, because of all the things that were going on in my life. It wasn't easy anid I could only manage three tracks, 'Wrong', 'Separation' and 'Connections' during my layer-filled period."

New horizons

"I moved to Ibiza in 1999," Miles speaks rather dispassionately despite his Italian origins, "for five months and that's where I really wrote the album. I needed solitude, to be far from crowds and business and was really looking for something very personal. I didn't really need to think about the charts, about trying to please the radio programmers, I was really making this album for myself."

"I'm very well aware that this album is not going to be very successful, commercially speaking, it doesn't really comply to what is on the market, it has its own dimension. This is the album for people who like more adventurous stuff, not just the music you find on the radio. But, there are a lot of great albums out there that never get really noticed. I just wanted to do something that expressed myself fully."

"This is only a step in my development," Miles reasons, "and I see myself as a long-term artist. This is getting away from my chart success and toward what I really want to do, movie soundtracks; I think this album is a
good calling card. I feel this music is very cinematic, it can easily be associated with images... I think this music would fit a film like 'Little Buddha' or 'Seven Years In Tibet'... I'd love to do music for a film like Scorcese's 'The Last Temptation Of Christ' where you can combine traditional instruments with technology to create very emotive moments."

24/7 online family

Miles plans to run his own label with a roster personally picked by its founder. He is also active on his own website and has been running a competition for a remix of his album's samples. Two winners, selected by the man himself, will be awarded $3,000 and released at a later date.

"I love all the new technology because you can really keep in touch with everyone," says Miles, perking up a bit over his mineral water. "I get something like 280,000 e-mails a month and answer them all, and because I do it, it truly becomes interactive medium and not only fan-site. When I really start to run my label I'll have even less time but I don't need to sleep much. Life's too short for that."