He’s Wired About Life

Sealhenry Samuel takes a seat on his porch that places him between the towering dead oak tree that dominates his yard and the humming nest of computer gear just inside the door of his den. It seems a good spot to talk about his life and music and the changing circuitry of both.

“I think I must explore machines more,” says the singer, who’s known simply as Seal. “There can be a very human element in the music filtered through a machine. But the most difficult thing is to retain an organic quality with a machine. But there’s a very interesting and pertinent sound that machines can bring to music made by the human hand.”

Seal shakes his head, not satisfied that he has expressed his point, but then he shrugs, smiles and reaches for a tray of fresh fruit. The gesture suggests a man who knows the answers will come in time.

The questions he is asking these days are no less than what the future of music and mankind will be when viewed through the prisms of technology and social healing. And, he says chuckling, he wants to know whether he can frame these heavy queries in an “out-and-out dance album” with “a real fat analog sound and big beat.”

Launching his first tour in three years (which includes a stop Tuesday at the Greek Theatre), the 35-year-old Briton exudes a relaxed air of confidence and patience during a recent afternoon interview. Wearing a snug black suit, he appears the picture of serious serenity despite the suitcases and half-empty metal trunks littering his Beverly Hills ridgeline home on the eve of the tour. His home may be chaotic, but his life is in order, he says.

“My faith has been restored to a level at this present time unlike any time before,” he says in his precise British diction. “It’s just growing older, looking around me and realizing how great life is to me. . . . It’s a very exciting time.”

Seal would seem to be an artist for the age, a singer who is as comfortable behind the keyboard of his impressive computer array as he is at the microphone.

His diverse background includes a strict, working-class upbringing in London, some training in architecture and electrical engineering, and a stint in the fashion industry.

Seal’s tastes veer wildly across the musical map from Frank Sinatra to Bob Marley to pioneering electronica by “guys who are making music in their bedrooms, these fascinating programmers.” His lunchtime chat is equally eclectic, touching on the history of U.S. racial segregation, French avant-garde photography and the prospects next season for the San Francisco 49ers.

He leaves his lunch tray of soup, shrimp salad and a dozen vitamin capsules to jump on the Internet for the instant purchase of an intriguing album he has just heard about. “It’s on the way,” he says, picking up his fork again. “Don’t you just love that?”

The technology that intrigues him most is the new recording innovations, and he admires the trance-like effects of cutting-edge electronic music. He cites U2’s “Achtung Baby” and the music of Underworld as markers on the path he would like to follow with his new projects.

That would signal a sea change for an artist whose greatest successes have been arcing pop songs with lush strings and soulful soundscapes.

“I’m not going to stop writing lyrics and singing, it’s what I do best, no matter how much I romanticize something else,” he says. “But I’m trying to find a perfect blend with the organic and the machine.”

If that is his quest, it’s fitting that his springboard would be his current album, “Human Beings.” While the sound is very much in line with his first two albums, he says the band assembled for the project and the imagery of the lyrics are pushing him in new directions. The cover of “Human Beings” has a bizarre photo of Seal, crouched, naked and glistening, looking “very dark, reptilian, alien-like,” as he puts it. The photo is an unsettling companion to the title track, which explores the concepts of humanity.

That song has been a commercial disappointment, Seal acknowledges, and he is hoping his tour and a song featured in the film “Entrapment” will help.

“I’m used to this journey. My albums tend to start very slow, people not really getting it or not receiving it right away. . . . But something has happened and they become fairly large successes.”

The album is elegant but includes themes of emotional rawness. Some of the ache is from two failed relationships in recent years--one of them with model Tyra Banks--and the title song is part inspired by the shooting deaths of rappers Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur. The umbrella themes are faith, fame, the grim cycle of prejudice, and, most of all, the role of love.

“We all need to ask, ‘What can we do to improve the way we relate in our society?’ ” he says. “That’s what I try to say in my music. But I try to say it in a metaphoric sense. I don’t try to shove it down people’s throats. At the end of the day, it’s just my opinion.”

Seal was given his first voice in the music world in 1990 when he lent his distinctive vocals to “Killer,” the dance track by Adamski that topped U.K. charts and intrigued producer Trevor Horn (Yes and Rod Stewart).

Seal’s collaboration with Horn has led to three albums, and the singer’s smoky yet brawny voice became world-famous in 1991 with “Crazy.” The swirling, soulful essay inspired by modern times thrived on its dance-floor beat and still managed to be smart.

Three years later he scored another major hit with “Kiss From a Rose,” which was featured in one of the Batman films and scored three Grammys. By then the Seal sound was established: Horn’s layers of lush, shimmering keyboards and strings setting up the singer’s vocal instrument.

Will a new direction mean a departure from Horn? Perhaps, Seal says. “I don’t want to leave too much to other people with this next album. I want to get more of myself in.”

Beyond “more machines,” Seal alludes to goals of performing with a full orchestra, putting together “stripped-down” and acoustic tracks, and learning to play the piano. It comes out as a jumble of enthusiasm, and Seal seems beset with uncertainty and options.

That may have also been the case with the making of “Human Beings.” Horn was the on-again, off-again producer, as Seal sought to work with other studio influences before, finally, getting his most familiar collaborator to finish the project.

“We did fall out at one point,” Horn said in a separate interview. Horn said his close work with Seal has made them an effective tandem, but that the singer may need “to shift around, do things to keep fresh.”

Added Horn, “There’s a certain sadness about this third album, a feeling of making mistakes, not really feeling where you’re going. . . . It’s his most personal album. He’s writing about his life and feelings, as do most people worth listening to.”

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Seal’s L-shaped, ranch-style home is dotted with exercise equipment and totems of spirituality from different faiths. Only the occasional airplane and, at night, coyote howls break the dusty, canyon-rim silence.

At the center of the yard is a tall, brittle oak that has not a single leaf on its twisting branches. “It’s bumming bad from overhydration,” Seal offers. The property, like so many exclusive hill homes in the area, creates a distance between its owner and the community below. The role of outsider is a familiar one to Seal.

Tall, muscular, with an athlete’s grace, Seal has chiseled features, a deep ebony skin tone and a slash of facial scars beneath his eyes (remnants of a childhood illness) that combine to make a striking figure. While he is not a household name, the distinctiveness of his appearance draws double takes and fans wherever he goes--but it has also amplified his sensitivity to being “other.”

He has lived in Southern California for four years, but says he is still uneasy about the racial divides here. “America is very different from England in the sense that there’s a lot more segregation over here and a lot more color lines.”

Would that prompt him to move back to Europe? After a long pause: “No, I think I have work to do here. I need to keep trying to convey my message of love and cultural harmony, and I think everybody needs to hear that message whether it’s from me or whomever.”

In the song “Colors,” the second single from the new album, Seal envisions waking up in a monochromatic world. It’s his favorite song on the album, and the video is a startling collage of images that further the metaphor.

“Lyrically and texturally, it seemed to sum up what I’m trying to say,” he says. “We need to break down the barriers that have been put up by color and fears that come from people not understanding.”

Technology, music, love--all of it swirls together and, in the mind of Seal, is distilled down, finally, to the basic power of communication. Sometimes it is richest in its most simple form. For instance, he says how wonderful it will be to look out into concert crowds again, a decidedly low-tech connection.

“The people come to the shows for a shared consciousness, whether they articulate that thought or not,” he says. “They want to connect, and I want to share. It’s an amazing position to be in. I live for human beings, for that contact with human beings. It’s just amazing.”

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Seal plays on May 25 at the Greek Theatre, 2700 Vermont Canyon Road, 7:30 p.m. $23-$48. (323) 480-3232.