Robert Miles “Children”
The birth of our underground brand, Factory 93, not only brought on an adrenaline rush reminiscent of the renegade warehouse era of raving—on which Insomniac was founded—but it also had us thinking back to all the people, places, and parties that made this whole operation possible. And with that came a burning desire to crack open our collection and dust off the classic records we couldn’t live without. Through our From the Crate series, we’ll be breaking out seminal and obscure cuts alike, imparting some knowledge in the process.
Trance began as head-down, grid-like body music and graduated to the hard-partying, head-wrecking psytrance/Goa style. But trance broke big, thanks to its sweeping melodicism, and no trance melody broke through bigger than Robert Miles’ “Children.”
Born Roberto Concina in Switzerland in 1970, the composer/producer—who died yesterday of what some sources are describing as an “unreported illness”—was the son of a military man. The family relocated to his parents’ native Italy when Roberto was 10. A soul fan from a young age, he began piano lessons two years after returning to the small town of Fagagna, roughly 90 miles from Venice. At 13, he started DJing at friends’ parties.
By age 18, he was known as Robert Milani, working the clubs right as acid house was making its impact in the UK—not to mention Italy, the home of club hit-makers like Black Box. In 1994, he began producing records for the Italian progressive house trance label Metrotraxx on a home setup he’d completed with a loan from his parents.
Late that same year, as Billboard would report, Miles was “inspired by what has become known [in Italy] as the strage di sabato sera (Saturday night massacre), a regular, tragic phenomenon in which spaced-out teenagers, high on clubbing, alcohol, and drugs, are killed in high-speed road accidents.” An organization called Mamas Against Rock was campaigning to shut clubs at 2am.
Miles wrote “Children,” he said, as a “reaction against the hard-edged, high-energy hubris of the techno beat, replacing it with a more laid-back and melodic sound that has a universal appeal. Kids and their parents can both enjoy it.” Initially an “overnight doodle,” as Miles once called it, the song’s melody, as Billboard noted, “drifts in with a cyclical piano phrase reminiscent of French composer Eric Satie’s ‘Gymnopadaes’ theme, shadowed by an acoustic guitar riff before exploding into a solid 4/4 dance beat… [also] recalling the music of Vangelis and Giorgio Moroder’s theme from Midnight Express.”
Miles recorded “Children” quickly (between one and three days, sources vary) and sold it to DBX, the label run by producer/DJ Joe T. Vanelli—whose own stripped-down tracks were favorites of techno DJs like Jeff Mills. The initial pressing of “Children,” as part of a four-song EP titled Soundtracks in January 1995, was not especially a hit. “The first time around, it sold a maximum of 3,000 copies, and I thought that was it,” Miles told Muzik magazine. “I was happy with that.”
That changed once Vanelli played the Miami club Kimbo, where the head of leading UK trance label Platipus heard the tune and immediately licensed it. Platipus then signed “Children” over to Deconstruction—not a trance label, notably, but a house imprint; its A&R man was Mike Pickering of vocal-house club favorites M People. Clearly, Miles’ tune worked for more than just its intended audience of ravers in need of a slowdown.
From there, “Children” spread through Europe like highly melodic kudzu. In May 1996, Billboard reported, “It has topped the chart in Germany for six weeks, Belgium (five weeks), France (four weeks), Switzerland (four weeks), Italy (three weeks), Spain (three weeks), and Denmark (one week). It has gone top five in every European country that has a singles chart. Its combined sales have put it atop the Music & Media Eurochart Hot 100 Singles chart for the past six weeks.” By mid-1996, it had sold 3 million copies worldwide. It even made the US Top 40, peaking at #23 in 1996 and going to #1 on Billboard’s dance chart.
Even in Europe—always far, far friendlier to dance music than the United States—this kind of traction was unusual. According to Muzik’s cover story on Miles from July 1996 (you can read the whole issue at the Internet Archive), “Children” had thus far “aired around 60 times” on the long-running BBC-TV show Grandstand “and has amassed a further 2,000 or so airplays in the UK alone… ‘Children’ outsold both Oasis’ ‘Wonderwall’ and Everything But the Girl’s ‘Missing’ singles within three weeks of its major-label release.”
All of this felt natural. “Children” was the rare track that operates like a dance record but works like a pop song. “Because it is more melodic than most trance or techno tracks, many radio formats took to ‘Children’ as a distinctive tune that would not alienate those who are not fans of dance,” Billboard reported. Miles’ imperially catchy tune sits in an arrangement whose builds and crests rise and fall with the melody, and the 303-line turnarounds act as countermelody, as well as grounding the track in the trance world. Notably, Deconstruction insisted the track not be remixed for their reissue—it was perfect as it was.
The record’s whopping success made life very hectic for Miles. The week he sat for the Muzik cover interview came after his first trip to New York, where his American label, Arista, insisted he make another “Children” video. It would replace the arty black-and-white original, a European MTV hit, with “Robert walking dream-like through the middle of a group of tranced-out dancers doing their thang in a Manhattan club.” But soon, they added, he’d be going home to Fagagna, where the mayor would “unveil a plaque marking the hometown of Robert Miles. ‘In Italy, there is a lot of pride about “Children,”’ he allows. ‘Everybody is very proud that the rest of the world is listening, too.’”
