Interview - Jeff Mills: Techno Auteur
Jeff Mills: Techno Auteur
Reported on Tuesday, Feb 17, 2004 by Cosmo Cater
One of those timeless techno auteurs, Jeff Mills has forged a unique
individual path for himself in a career spanning two decades. He is
perhaps best known for his masterful control of three turntables, using
techno tracks as building blocks for entirely new compositions. As a
producer, Mills is more renowned for his obsessive conceptualism, album
concepts often taking up more time than the making of the actual music.
Given his background in architecture, this approach makes sense.
For those out of the loop, Mills began his career as a hip hop DJ in
Detroit in the 80s, and performed live on radio. So skillful was he that
he earned the nickname 'The Wizard', and soon graduated to the emerging
sounds of house and techno. Being involved in the Detroit music scene,
Mills' transition to techno was almost inevitable. Legends such as Juan
Atkins, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson fuelled Jeff's passion for
making and playing a new techno aesthetic, and he set about producing
music as one of dance music's most militant outfits, Underground
Resistance. Together with 'Mad' Mike Banks and Robert Hood, UR didn't
make tracks, they made sonic missiles. Their rage at 'the system' was
palpable, but curiously non-specific. Mainly, they believed they were
resisting the programming that the Western world was subjected to
through mainstream entertainment. Coupled with this was an obsession
with space and other worlds, evident in titles such as 'X-102 Discovers
The Rings Of Saturn'. It is pertinent to note that both of these themes
have been common in much black American music Ð militancy coupled with
escaping oppression in this world by travelling to others.
Mills parted company with UR in the early 90s, and made a series of
minimal techno compositions with Robert Hood called 'Waveform
Transmissions'. The music was hard and fast, and Mills began his own
label, Axis. Being very much into conceptualism, he extended his
experimental thought to the actual patterns of vinyl grooves, making
locked grooves, riffs and beat loops designed purely for mixing
material, as well as earlier spacing the grooves on the vinyl out so the
needled lunged across the vinyl suddenly then stopped. His music is
definitely based around the mind, although it has somewhat come back to
the dancefloor in recent times, reflected in both his DJing and
production. "After so many years, (I have been) learning what to do
when; when things are most effective. So basically after 10 years, I've
become much more wiser about programming music for people, and actually
it's kind of like a cycle. After so many years you go back to the
basics, and you understand that people are there because they want to
listen to music in the first place, and it really doesn't take that much
to make them dance."
There is quite a lot of technique involved in Jeff's DJing, and people
these days may not be aware of some of that technique. To wit, Mills has
come to the world with a CD/DVD project called 'The Exhibitionist',
which captures him live in the mix both aurally and visually. "I'm
hoping that people will understand that DJing is really an art form.
It's really something quite special to be able to mix sound and rhythm
together to be able to make that something that doesn't really exist, to
make that third record, that third sound. We wanted to have something
that was very pure and very simple, so simple that it's not a type of
project where it's kind of forcing itself on you. It's there if you want
to watch it and it's interesting if you really get into it. For the most
part just to expose the artform of DJing."
Also, there was the matter of no recorded output of his mixes since the
mid 90s 'Live at the Liquid Rooms' effort. "It was time for me to make
another mix project after eight years," Mills says, calculatingly. "It
was time to kind of revisit the idea. I really wanted to do something
different, something a couple of steps forward. Visually showing what
I'm doing I think does that. I think people should have a much better
understanding of what a DJ goes through and how he kind of navigates and
kind of juggles record to create one streamlined piece. It's very
graphic and there's lots of content, lots of things to watch actually."
Jeff himself found the piece a learning experience. "Even for me, I've
never seen myself in that position before, so it's even interesting for
me to watch, it's like I'm watching someone else. I'm watching it as a
DJ, watching myself DJ, even learning about the things that I do myself.
It's a very eye-opening experience."
Although Mills has been stereotyped as a minimalist, stark, Detroit
techno DJ, he often plays with a funky, percussive edge, confusing
purists and detractors alike. "I've never really played one particular
way, because there's always so much music to play," he remarks. "My
influences go back many many years and I'm attracted to many different
styles of music. Growing up in Detroit, that funky, Afro-Cuban
percussion, pumping bassline, is something that we would die to have as
a DJ when I was younger. It's still even really a gift to have a record
that has those components. Right now, I was in the studio last night in
Berlin, thinking about the music I was making now. It's so different
from anything else that I've ever made. It's not percussion at all, it's
something really abstract. I think, as an artist, you go through all the
changes, it's necessary to go through all the changes."
Of late, Mills has felt the need to go out even more into leftfield in
his production work, although he sees this as a transitional phase to
another form of music making. "It's getting much more abstract. Somehow
I'm trying to make the machine over express themselves, to the point
that it just becomes actually kind of sexy in a way. It's like when you
see someone that has a compulsive way, something way over the top, you
kind of stand back and you kind of admire that someone can be so over
the top yet so expressive that you kind of admire that. I'm attempting
to do that. the music that I'm making right now, at this time, I'm
trying to bring that feeling. Kind of erotic type of way, a lot of it is
not structured, there's no drums, but sort of lots of deep heavy
frequencies that mess all over each other. Again, as a producer, I'm not
quite sure if I'm going to release this stuff, but I have to make it in
order to understand where I need to go."
Techno isn't really a trendy genre at present, although it is starting
to gain acceptance in new circles. It seems to some that the influence
of Detroit techno sounds and the template laid down by artists such as
Mills is fading from being the influential force it was some years ago.
Mills, however, thinks the music is still relevant. "I think so. There's
so much music that can be used as reference, just from the city of
Detroit. We've been through numerous generations of making electronic
music. Everyone I know still consistently makes music, whether it's
released or not, so those ideas are constantly running in that one
location in the world. Then there are many other locations in the world
where people are doing the same thing. There's a tremendous amount of
material that can be used as reference for younger producers. It's
actually too much."
A hardware production traditionalist at heart, Mills has softened in his
stance on using software to create electronic music. "I think it's ok if
the people can make the software make the music in a way that's unique I
think. There are so many different ways for someone to be exposed to
music. My honest opinion is from what I hear it appears that people are
not really using the technology to the fullest I think. If I think about
the averaging sequencing software, how many tracks there are to record
on, and then I listen to most dance music that's being released, it's
almost the complete opposite - it's very basic and very simple, and it's
like a loop with a bassline and a sample or some other keyboards, but
that's about it. If you look at technology, it's allowing you to make
things much more dramatic, much more abstract, and I think maybe in time
people who use computers and software will take advantage of all the
possibilities. I think a lot has to do with the method or how making
music is approached. If you make music and you don't press any keys on
the keyboard, it creates a completely different mentality or approach to
making music."
Whilst stylistic trends envelop production cliques the world over, Mills
remain as somewhat of an iconic loner. "I've always tried to kind of
stay away from what was really trendy at the time, try to focus on the
near future. There' snot much I can do about the music of the day, but
maybe I have a better chance of having some input about maybe the music
that we're listening to tomorrow. I'm addicted to the idea of trying to
do something that might put an element in the equation to have a
different answer. I'm constantly looking at what we're doing today and
kind of breaking it down and thinking about what DJs may want to have or
what we may want to look at music in the future."
"I think it would be more shocking if I did not change," he adds. "I
think it would be really strange if after all these years I was playing
the same music I played back in 1992 or I approached it the same way.
Maybe I would not enjoy it as much, I think change is part of an
artist's career. I think it's really really interesting to step back and
think about the things that I've done and the places that I've been and
it really seems like I'm thinking about someone else actually, like it
was a completely different life. I'm still exploring."
Jeff Mills 'The Exhibitionist' CD and DVD is out nationally through
Shock Records.
Re: Interview - Jeff Mills: Techno Auteur
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jeff Mills
"I think it would be more shocking if I did not change," he adds. "I
think it would be really strange if after all these years I was playing
the same music I played back in 1992 or I approached it the same way.
Maybe I would not enjoy it as much, I think change is part of an
artist's career. I think it's really really interesting to step back and
think about the things that I've done and the places that I've been and
it really seems like I'm thinking about someone else actually, like it
was a completely different life. I'm still exploring."
He's still playing the bells and strings of life. :P :)
Re: Interview - Jeff Mills: Techno Auteur
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dustin Zahn
He's still playing the bells and strings of life. :P :)
...and alarms, and steampit, and run and...
