Robert Miles — Children

Roberto Concina wrote 'Children', so the story goes, to keep Italian ravers awake on the long drive home from parties. It is a piano melody built like a lullaby and paced like a memorial. It sold more than five million copies, invented an entire subgenre — dream house — and remains the record almost anyone, trance fan or not, can hum on demand.

Concina was a resident DJ at Trieste's Alter Ego club in the mid-90s and had watched the local police collect body after body of young ravers killed driving home from all-night parties. He wrote 'Children' as an explicit closing record — something slow, calm, and non-narcotic — to send crowds home in a different emotional state. He has dedicated the record in interviews to 'the friends who did not make the drive home.'

The piano melody was recorded on a Roland RD-500 stage piano in Concina's home studio in Fagagna. The pad underneath is a single Korg M1 patch layered with a Roland JD-800 string sample. The 4/4 kick sits at 135 BPM but the piano phrasing is deliberately half-time, giving the record its 'dream' pacing. The mix was cut at Milan's Fonoprint studios; Deconstruction Records signed it for the UK on the strength of a promo cassette Concina mailed to A&R Keith Blackhurst.

Reached #2 on the UK Singles Chart (kept off #1 by the Spice Girls' 'Wannabe'), #1 in Germany, France, Italy, Ireland, and Switzerland. Sold over 5 million copies worldwide. Won 'Best New Artist' at the 1996 World Music Awards. IFPI-certified platinum in seven European territories.

• UK Singles Chart#2
• German Singles Chart#1
• French Singles Chart#1
• Global sales5M+ copies

• 0:00The piano enters alone. No beat for 48 seconds.
• 1:52The full pad enters — the record 'blooms'.
• 4:20Breakdown to piano and string pad only.

• Original Dream Version (1995)

  The definitive DBX release.

• Age of Love Mix (1996)

  Rarer, harder-bpm reworking on some UK pressings.

• Original Extended Mix

  Full 7:38 club version.

• Robert Miles Rework (2011)

  For the Thirteen album; downtempo reinterpretation.

'Children' spawned the entire 'dream house' subgenre — BBE's 'Seven Days And One Week', DJ Dado's 'X-Files', Zhi-Vago's 'Celebrate' — and effectively invented the 'piano-led trance' template that Chicane, ATB and Robert Miles's own follow-up 'Fable' would work through the next two years. Concina passed away in May 2017; DJ Mag's obituary called 'Children' 'the gentlest gateway drug in dance-music history.'

• The photograph on the sleeve is of Concina himself as a small child, taken by his mother in Switzerland.
• Concina turned down a US remix by Nile Rodgers because he 'wanted the record to stay European.'
• Robert Miles retired from dance music in 2001 and moved to Ibiza to run Openlab, an ambient net-radio project.