Robert Miles!!! – Where have you been?? You remember him??
Rolling off a list of accolades which peaked primarily in the late nineties to redefining piano based EDM (with his trademark ‘Robert Miles’ sound), Robert Miles went on to notch up over 5,000,000 sales of his debut worldwide single ‘Children’ and then followed it up with the very similar but highly enjoyable track, ‘Fable.’
He later released the albums “Dreamland” (in 1996) and “23am” (in 1997) where ‘One & One’ featuring Maria Nayler was another glorious hit for him and in the following year, ‘Freedom’ featuring Kathy Sledge (of Sister Sledge fame) continued in that same trend too.
However, Robert went a bit quiet on the production front – until 2001 in which he released “Organik;” his third LP on BMG/S:alt Records. A single called ‘Paths’ is featured on Organik and is beautifully reminiscent of the style Massive Attack or Morcheeba are known for worldwide.
After another hiatus, a collaboration of minds gives birth to an album in 2004 with Trilok Gurtu called “Miles Gurtu” and this album concludes in starting off as we’re meant to go on; by covering a very linear jazz sound with light elements of funk and downtempo overtones.
Seven years later, we have Th1rt3en (or pronounced Thirteen) which is an album that has matured into a collage of quintessential sublime melodies, dangerous guitar-altering groove lines and ruddy smooth, slick riffs, which suggests that this guy has truly got the funk!
Even though we have some tracks that are superbly ambient towards the end of this album, the main structure of this content is jazz, breaks, rock and funk based. Its amazingly brilliant & forward thinking overall, so for a man who has stapled his name in a sound completely different to what brought him to the table in the first place, then “Miles Gurtu” & “Thirteen” push the bar way out there, with hopes to sustain & entice new and current fans to a journey beyond the One and the Three.
(‘Antimony’ and ‘Deep End’ are two examples of this raw style, but the real sapphire quality stems from ‘Black Rubber,’ ‘Archives,’ ‘Miniature World,’‘Somnambulism’ and ‘Afterglow.’)
Robert Miles has truly got the funk with Thirteen, so if you like a drop of good and non boring meaningful jazz/rock with your Tropicana in the morning, then bag yourselves a fresh copy of Thirteen on Feb 7th and stick it on “repeat all.”
