Miguel Ramirez
Remember the trance hit ‘Children’?
There’d be no today without a yesterday, so it’s time to honour a classic trance in our new regular feature. Let’s take a ride into trance history and explore ‘Children’, the stunning classic by Robert Miles.
The Robert Miles story for the world at large begins of course with the composition of ‘Children’ in 1994, written in a 4m x 4m bunker studio he had personally soundproofed and assembled in a converted garage not far from the family home.
‘Children’ was Robert’s immediate and typically honest emotional response to pictures of the child victims of war with which his father had just returned from a humanitarian mission to the ex-Yugoslavia. So moved was Robert by the plight of these innocents, caught up in so much devastation and atrocity, that he felt compelled to begin work on the track the very next morning as he returned from playing his DJ set in the early hours.
‘Children’ was to be a life-changing track for Robert in many ways, most of all perhaps in the confidence and reassurance that after much hard work and a number of initial stumbles he had for the first time ‘found’ himself as a composer, as he was to discover the first time he aired the track in public at his next DJ set.
“I was anxious to see how people would take to this piece. The following Sunday morning I opened my DJ set with ‘Children’, feeling both scared and excited… the DJ just before me had ended with a very heavy piece. To break the existing mood with a melodic tune and a long intro could have simply cleared the floor.”
“The people in front of me stopped in their tracks, their eyes fixed to the console almost in annoyance. I felt my blood run cold and I remember lowering my eyes in fear. The record reached its soaring climax. From the floor came a thunderous noise… I lifted my gaze and saw a sea of hands reaching up high and a smile stamped on every face. A girl approached me in tears. “What music is this?” she asked me.”
“I don’t think I shall ever forget that moment, when I realized that my feelings had been conveyed through my music. My dream turned into reality.”
From there the track built steadily from the underground, championed by DJs and club audiences one by one around the world.
Watch the music video above.
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