He's the man behind one of the biggest tunes on the island this summer - Cosmos' 'Take Me With You' - and ahead of his guest mix on Annie Nightingale's Ibiza show, Annie met up with Tom Middleton to get his take on the Ibiza experience, and find out the story behind Cosmos...

Annie Nightingale: Is this your favourite bit of the world, Ibiza?
Tom Middleton: It's one of the many beautiful places that you can come to and enjoy a different tempo of life. You can just change gear, relax at bit, take in some sun, listen to some music, and meet up with all the people, all the faces that you know that are in this scene, this industry, and finally sit around a pool and have a drink, and have a chat!

Your music can be - not always - but can be very definitively 'Ibiza'. How did that happen to you?
I think it's been a very amazing, organic kind of word-of-mouth experience. It all started with the Global Communication stuff, back in 1995. The track with Grandfather Clock, 'Ob-selon Mi-nos', that seemed to resonate with everyone, and became a seminal chillout classic. Of course, Ibiza has subsequently been known as the place to come and chill - and also to have it large! So, it's the kind of place that, for someone like me who has this dual role of making highly orchestrated, deep, chillout ambient music, and also the energised, adrenaline-fueled club stuff, it's a great place. Best of all possible worlds!

The beautiful track you did, 'Summer In Space', was that about Ibiza?
Well, the bizarre thing with 'Summer In Space' is that it had this dual meaning. I knew people would resonate with Space and Ibiza, but equally, there's a very very good underground club on a Wednesday night in London at Bar Rumba, called Space. So it was Summer - a reference to Donna Summer, and Summer In Space. We did this PA originally in Space at Bar Rumba, and that became this idea for Donna Summer in Space, and you go to Space in the summer. It became this dual concept of underground in London and overground over here.

And it was on blue vinyl!
Yes, indeed.

Did you make a conscious decision about the blue vinyl? I was always wondering about this. You get coloured vinyl sometimes and I wonder was it their idea, or some marketing person - did you want it in blue?
I've always been quite keen on the first promo run to make it a little bit different, a little more collectable. So, they're hand-signed in silver wrapping, and they were blue see-through vinyl. It was also a nod to Ross Allen's label, Island Blue. So again, it had this dual resonance with Island Blue, Summer in Space, collectable vinyl!

What's the difference between Tom Middleton and Cosmos? Or, what's the difference between Tom Middleton and the cosmos?
Over the last 12 years, since I got into this music-creating role in life, I kept sort of thinking beyond one individual, and getting out of that. Originally it was Global Communication, the label was Evolution Records, and then we had Universal Language, and then I thought, hold on a minute - what's the biggest word that has this kind of meaning of 'people'. In Greek, Cosmos means the people, the populus. I was always a big fan of Carl Sagan, the late, great American physicist and scientist - he was a great character and he did a series called Cosmos. When you're about 10 or 11 years old, something really hits you at that age, really inspires and influences you. This man really did something to me, alongside George Lucas - hence the Jedi Knights connection. Carl Sagan and George Lucas, two pretty key individuals in my life, I'd say. So Cosmos now is the umbrella for the stuff that I was working with Mark Pritchard on as Jedi Knights, and Reload, the drum & bass stuff, Chameleon, and the chillout downtempo stuff as Global Communication. Now it just feels like a really great moment to encapsulate everything I've been learning about making music and sharing with the people, the populus, the Cosmos! Music for the people!