For over three decades, William Sheller has neatly sidestepped critics' attempts at musical pigeon-holing, asserting his right to be a protean artist with ever-changing moods and styles. Whereas the majority of his fellow musicians have chosen to follow one single route to fame, Sheller has travelled many musical paths in life, exploring each and every byroad. And his latest album is no exception to that rule. Avatars finds our humble adventurer striking out in a totally new direction, exploring the fascinating virtual universe that lies beyond computer screens.

According to the French dictionary Le Petit Robert, "avatar" originally signified "an incarnation of the Hindu deity Vishnu in human or animal form." Alfred de Musset used the term in a different sense in the 19^th century, however, taking "avatar" to mean "metamorphosis or transformation." And while William Sheller certainly draws on the 19^th-century French poet's definition on his new album, the musician primarily uses "avatar" in the 21st-century sense, defining a computer user's virtual alter ego. "I started using the Internet back in '92", the tech-savvy 62-year-old explains, "I enjoy surfing web sites, exploring myspace pages and coming into contact with distant horizons. The fascinating thing about the Internet is that it gives you a glimpse into other people's lives. It really is like seeing the whole world at a glance!"

Sheller's new album weaves a fascinating mix of the ancient and the modern, tapping into the witch-and-warlock universe of fantasy role-play games such as Dungeons & Dragons while at the same time opening up futuristic visions of cybernetics and Tomorrow's World. "My new album is like walking through an imaginary landscape and meeting all these weird and wonderful characters which may be related in some way or not," says Sheller, "Castles, monsters and nightclubs…it's all totally mixed up. What I'm trying to do is open up Utopian worlds and Wonderlands. Alas, the sad thing is that human beings only seem to be capable of recreating what they've experienced in real life."

This does not stop Sheller in his attempts to push back the limits of the imagination, plunging us deep into the caverns of our collective unconscious as he plays with a series of literary references which include the great French surrealists Prévert, Eluard and Queneau as well as the quick-witted novelist Colette. The secret of his songwriting style? "Using the minimum amount of words to conjure up the maximum amount of images. Listeners should be able to invent their own adventures within the framework of a song."

As to the question of whether Avatars should be seen as a concept album, Sheller declares that "'Avatars' does not run along a central storyline like (Gainsbourg's) 'Melody Nelson.' In fact, there aren't really any stories on 'Avatars' at all. This album is more an exploration of an alternative universe like Second Life." Interestingly enough, the avatar Sheller chooses to use in his virtual world is the duck-billed platypus (the bizarre egg-laying mammal native to Australia that looks like a cross between a duck and a beaver). "The duck-billed platypus is a lot like me," he says, "It's a perfect symbol of my hybrid nature forged between a classical music education and my taste for 'chanson', pop, rock and contemporary sounds."

Now that he has finally put the finishing touches to Avatars, Sheller says he can sit back and savour a job well done, but he admits that the gestation of his new album was particularly long and painful. Assembling as many real musicians in the studio as he did was no easy task in these digital recording day. And Sheller is the first to rage against new production methods where computer clicks dehumanise and millimetre-style calibration takes the spontaneity and soul out of music.

Ask Sheller whether he is "old school" and he takes the term not in a negative sense but as an affirmation of quality. Several years ago, Sheller admits that he abandoned Paris - a city full of "noise, noise and more noise!" - to seek creative silence in a village in the depths of the Sologne countryside. You can easily imagine him here, seated at the local church organ, playing his favourite classical music - Bach, Schubert and Brahms - or improvising his own melodies through a process of inspiration he likens to a state of clairvoyance. Sheller says that one of the recent highlights of his work in the French countryside was working with a 1,300-strong children's choir - "an activity I found far more interesting than running off to appear on another TV show with Joe Blow!"

One is tempted to ask what other insights William Sheller has gleaned from three highly productive decades in the music industry. "What have I learnt?" he muses, "That the only way to go the distance in this business is to keep on learning new things. You should spend your entire life mastering your instrument and perfecting your skills so that you can do your job properly. Recently, just for fun, I learnt how to play traditional Japanese music performed at the Royal Court."

And would William Sheller describe himself as the clichéd "happy man" these days? "Well, I've ended up in the profession I always dreamt of," he answers, "I've got no regrets and I still feel like pushing on! I think the secret lies in questioning your work and yourself all the time. When I won a 'Victoire de la Musique' award, I felt as if I were being locked away in a cupboard and being told 'OK, you can piss off now!' I think medals, honours and awards just make you hidebound and ossified! All I'm interested in today is reaching out and touching people through my music. I'll be dead a hundred years from now so I don't really care. Frankly, I don't want to end up as a bronze statue, standing in the middle of a public square, with a pigeon shitting on my head!"