Music is his natural groove

Rhian Sheehan isn't particularly fond of the albums he makes most of his money from.

But he's not scoffing at the Cafe Del Mar compilations - the big-selling down-beat series that's up to volume 11 - because there's nothing better than a royalty cheque, especially when it's from overseas.

"It's hard for me to be put in that [Cafe Del Mar] bag to be honest, and this is probably not a good thing to say to the press, but I don't really enjoy that genre of music. It's very wallpaper-type music and it's funny to be stuck in that bag.

"But on the positive side, I've been on numbers 10 and 11 of those compilations that have sold over half a million copies."

He won't reveal the amount of his cut from those sales but says, "It's not much compared to other compilations at all. But when I get the old royalty cheque, it definitely helps.

"In the past six months, all the licences we've had from overseas have really helped me financially. I still bloody struggle, and I actually wouldn't say I'm [a] fulltime [musician] because it's so up and down, but I can sustain some kind of living out of it.

"But I'm not flying round in helicopters or anything. The money I've made has definitely come from overseas. It hasn't come from selling albums in New Zealand."

He says Cafe Del Mar gets his name out there. That has meant more compilations have licensed his tracks, including Barramundi Vol. 4 where his track Garden Children appears alongside Horace Andy and Tosca.

Sheehan, who plays the Three Islands gig tomorrow night at Galatos, released his first album, Paradigm Shift, in 2001.

Tiny Blue Biosphere followed last year and Sheehan made a name for himself for producing some slick electronica of the down-beat persuasion.

Fair enough, too. The likes of Sunshine (sung by Jess Chambers) and Waiting (featuring Lotus) are two of the best examples of Sheehan's soothing and sensitive music.

Yet he believes his music is not so much Lazy Sunday, but more dance floor-based and so he came up with the idea for the remix album, Music For Nature Documentaries.

"Both my albums are pretty down-beat and they get chucked into a bag of down-beat, ambient music. The whole idea with a remix album was to throw it into different genres and see what people can do."

The result is 16 Rhian Sheehan tracks remixed by 14 different producers to create everything from the quirky (the Phoenix Foundation and Gasoline Cowboy remixes especially), to the bleepy, samba-type dancefloor remix of Sunshine by Interfearance, to the dead-still late-morning soundscapes of Module's remix of Te Karanga.

"People have always told me that my music fits the more sort of dance-oriented stuff. We gave it to so many producers and it all came together so easily, really. It just occurred. It's a really solid album and you can hear my influence all the way through it, but it's completely different genres, a lot of it.

"The Gasoline Cowboy and Phoenix Foundation ones are bloody funny tracks. Joel from Gasoline Cowboy is an old mate of mine and on his one it's like he's subtly taking the piss out of my genre of music. So in that sense you kind of can't be too sensitive about it."

Sheehan plans to release some tracks in Britain on vinyl and sees the remix album as a way to expand internationally. He's been overseas twice in the past year and heads back to the Britain and France in February for more gigs and promotion.

"The idea is to get my music into that scene of the clubs and having remixes really helps. It kinda gives me a chance to be heard in a different market - one that I wouldn't necessarily be heard in."