Keeping the Simply Red flag flying: Simplyred.com's indie stance has been as successful as it is radical. Now the label is set for a fresh push.(Special Report)

You can probably gather all you need to know about Mick Hucknall's attitude towards the modern music industry by his choice of Cuba as the recurring motif of Simplified, the second self-released Simply Red album.

To use Hucknall's own term, the "cottage industry" of Simplyred.com relocated to the Caribbean island for a week in August. Working with the discipline that tends to reveal itself when one or more of the people involved are also paying the bills, the team filmed promos, interviews and two live concerts at Havana's Gran Teatro, which will provide the basis of a DVD to be released just after the album on November 7.

Never one to shy away from audacious comparisons, Hucknall told a Cuban radio interviewer that the move perfectly encapsulated this latest phase of Simply Red's long career: "We are now an independent group, completely independent from the major record companies," he said. "And we are going to be performing the new album here for our Cuban friends, because I know they also understand a bit about independence."

Fidel Castro, who in a certain sense is every bit as red as the singer, might appreciate the analogy between Hucknall's renegade status and his own ageing, stately republic, proudly divorced from the prevailing economic powers of the world. And then again he might not--Castro didn't make it down to the Gran Teatro, in spite of fears that he would arrive and fill the front three rows with bodyguards.

Simply Red have certainly created their own regime with Simplyred.com, a joint venture between Hucknall and his management company Silentway. You might even classify it as a revolutionary regime--and Hucknall is clearly revelling in his new role as the architect of his own destiny.

"The best thing is just the sense of freedom that you have when you are making your own music on your own terms," he says. "I was feeling frustrated about where I sat within contracts from about 1998, so I just felt that I needed to do this. Music should feel free, and that is how I feel now. I feel liberated."

When the band released Home in March 2003, Hucknall and his management/record company team, led by former East West general manager Ian Grenfell, introduced to the music industry the concept of an independent, one-artist record company with major label-sized ambition.