Necessity. I'd been recording as "Black Hole" since 1991, but going online forced a name change. Do you have any idea how many "Black Hole"s there are on internet music sites? Bloody hundreds. Some people call me Milo, so I kept the "Black" from "Black Hole" and became "Milo Black".

Used to, many years ago, but not having a band makes things impossible. Too much hassle. Don't start me off on this.

Not in the slightest. It gives the independent artist an outlet, but you're still in competition with the major players, 'cos they're all doing it too. The indie artist is still a very very small fish - it's just that the pond is now even bigger.

Yup. Tomorrow, if someone gave me artistic control, and I could do it without running up huge debts to the record company that I could never repay. So, no big advances, please. But a commercial release would be cool.

After a number of false starts, Milo Black was launched in 1991 with the concept album "The Tail of Oskar the Fish" to worldwide indifference, concept albums having gone out of fashion in 1973. Undeterred by the label "old hippy", follow-up albums "Hypermass", "Black-Log" (demos & out-takes) and "Black and Fourth" continued to plough the tripped-out ambient guitar rock furrow. Stadium-filling success remained as elusive as a polar bear in Uganda.
At the time of writing, Milo is working on another concept album based on the Sci-Fi classic "Ringworld", although no-one knows why. Milo lives in Oxfordshire (UK) with his partner, nine guitars, four horses, three cats, two dogs, no children, a small studio, a large overdraft, a pink anteater called Plato and a collection of dead mice. He is old enough to remember 1973 (when concept albums went out of fashion), young enough not to care, and is living proof that listening to Pink Floyd rots the brain.

If pressed, he will confess to owning a copy of "Tales from Topographic Oceans".

Pink Floyd, Hawkwind, Ozric Tentacles, Gong, King Crimson, Genesis, Tangerine Dream, guitarists David Gilmour, Steve Hackett, Steve Hillage and Robert Fripp, and drummer Bill Bruford.

Rekjavik. Iceland is the coolest place on Earth.

Many guitars, PC with Cakewalk and Soundblaster Live!, Alesis HR16, Roland SH-101 and D5, Yamaha DX-100, Soundcraft mixer, several other useful boxes.

There are three full-length Milo Black albums, a mini-album and a collaborations sampler available on-line - either from www.mp3.com/MiloBlack, or from www.cdbaby.com. You might also want to check out www.mp3.com/grumpyandlumpy (straight rock-n-roll with Duane Tate) and www.mp3.com/raspberrysilk (emotional power ballads and adult contemporary with Kim Novak).