Jeff Mills Interview (really good)

[LavenderMenace]

This was posted on NB too, but I figured half you people dont look there anyway.

Jeff Mills

Ever since the beginning of the nineties Jeff Mills has been one of the most influential people in techno. He almost single-handedly gave birth to the loop techno genre. Both as a producer and a DJ he broke all boundaries demonstrating his phenomenal skills. Jeff Mills quickly became a God to vast legions of techno fans. Some people claim Mills has had his best days, but in the meantime Jeff has come up with some new ideas and concepts that will shut them up big time. The new album, At First Sight, shows the melodic side of Mills again and is filled with tight arrangements and beautiful strings. Jeff is also thinking about his first live act. At the moment he is working on the visual aspect of his DJ performances, but he’s also dreaming about holograms and simulated DJ shows. There is even more to come. In a one-hour interview Jeff stated that he is sick of the political and social situation of the US and that he wants to do something about it. Does this imply a return to the revolutionary line of thought of his brothers in arms, Underground Resistance? Who knows? One thing is sure: this man has no intention of having anybody else claim the throne of the techno world. On the contrary, he’s about to ignite a new revolution!

In June I saw you perform at Sonar. Your set was supported by visuals, starting with a dancer. Could you elaborate a bit on the concept behind the visuals?

Well, we are attempting to use more film, more visual images within just a normal DJ-set. The idea is to basically use film in the same way I would use records, to program them accordingly, based on the reaction of the crowd, based on what I plan to do before and after. We kinda created a way to insert DVDs on the fly, the same way we would grab a record out of a record box. The introduction was the filming of a dancer from the Joffrey Ballet in Chicago. We happened to run into this guy. I had the idea to make a short film with dancers to some of the material I had made a few years back, but things didn’t work out. Once we met this guy I asked him and he said he would love to do it. We flew to Detroit, we just put him up on a sound stage, played the music and sort of stood back and let him do whatever he felt. That’s what we came up with and that was the introduction.

Are you working on those movie bits yourself or do you have somebody helping you out?

There’s a film company in Detroit called Pilot Pictures, we do all the visual images together.

Do you plan to incorporate these visuals more into your performance because I can imagine not every venue is suited for that?

Right. We’ve managed to basically break it down to just the bare essentials. It’s just one machine, one projector and one screen. Everything just basically ties in with the DJ-mixer. It’s in the most simple way we can possibly configure it. I can actually cue it from the DJ-mixer. Of course venues are always different and the sound man and light man are always different. It’s still a challenge. Of course the way to have complete control is actually to have complete control to eliminate every problem. Generally technicians are willing to do something different so I travel with this all the time, with a collection of movies. The next time we’ll actually try it will be in Tokyo next week. I’ll play the movies or there may be a point where there’s just a movie playing and I’ll be supporting the movie with a soundtrack.

You seem very excited about this idea. Do you plan to expand upon it?

Hmm, yes! More on the visual aspect I mean. I have an interest in, if we can find a way, a very easy set-up, using holographs. The standard set-up is with multiple mirrors and projectors. It’s really complex at this point so we are trying to find a way to make it more simple. That way we can eliminate the video screen.

I have no knowledge of a Jeff Mills live act and thanks to your phenomenal DJ skills nobody seems to care (I do). How much thought have you given the idea of a live act, especially now we have tools like Ableton Live and good controllers?

I’ve always wanted to do something live. I’m talking maybe the last ten years. Up until the last two or three years I could begin to really imagine what I could do and what it could be like. I don’t play instruments, I’m not trained as a musician, but as a DJ I can do ‘something’ (laughs). So the idea came to mind to create machines that are made for me to be able to do what I do, but they are not keyboards. So then I’m actually performing, but it’s a machine that is actually designed for me. That’s one side of it.

The other side: I could never really figure out the visual aspect. While listening to the music, what could possibly be interesting? Usually it’s just standing there watching a guy turn knobs, it’s just not interesting. In the past I’ve thought about ideas of using illusionists, magicians, to kind of create some kind of illusion where I might disappear and reappear, just all types of really interesting and odd things. It’s becoming clearer to me now. In this album (At First Sight) there’s more orchestration in the tracks and that has been done purposely because I think I’m getting closer to possibly performing live and when you perform live you need something to play.

You just mentioned disappearing and reappearing. At Sonar I saw you disappear at some point, but the music kept playing and there were images of you playing records. I was pretty confused by that. Was that done on purpose or did you just need to go to the loo?

(laughs) No, that was on purpose. It was designed so that at one point the film would take over. At a certain point there was no need for me to be on the stage. Once the film took over I left and stood on the side and watched for my cue to come back up and take over from the film. That was like a test as well, to see if the people would be able to continue on with the party if say something was simulated. That was an experiment. I don’t think it worked out so well because the venue was so large that the people in the middle or the back couldn’t see anyway. We tried it once before in Tokyo and it was the same thing. At first the people were confused, they didn’t understand where I had gone, but the music was still playing and there was still this image of me playing on the screen. What I had hoped to get from that was the indication that the people wouldn’t mind dancing to an image and that would lead us into this holograph thing where at a certain point they would actually be dancing to a simulation of myself or multiple DJs.

In the last few years we have seen enormous progress in the field of music production hardware and software. Knowing that you are very much into technology I was wondering to what extent this has changed your studio set-up in recent years?

I’ve kinda concluded to simplifying the studio, actually going back to the earlier days when I didn’t have access to so much equipment. So right now it’s very basic, almost table top sort of set-up. Though I still have the machines, all the boards and drum machines, I use very, very little of the machines, just concentrating on getting the best parts out of the machines. The other machines all have unique features, but I’ve learned that if you have too many boards I really looked over the unique features. Just two keyboards or one sound module or one drum machine, one effect whether it be delay or reverb, just very basic, very simple things, having to rely on the melodies in my head to create a different sound. I actually have to condition myself to rely on myself to create these unique types of sequences and sounds and using my fingers to make the sequences rather than an analogue sequencer or some kind of random type of equipment. I’m beginning to do that more and what happens is that I myself am becoming more of an instrument, my own special instrument, being myself, something that nobody can buy. It takes conditioning to actually do that.

Do you mainly stick to hardware or have the new software possibilities seduced you as well?

No, I stick to the hardware, in fact I have absolutely no software in the studio at all, not even for editing. Very, very little, if even anything these days, is ever saved or archived. All the tracks on this album were flown in live. What I mean by that is that the keyboards and machines are sequenced and then I just hit one button and I lay it straight to the master.

Is that to create a sort of organic feeling to the music?

Yeah, it’s to get more of the imperfections and fluctuations in between the machines. They individually create a different kind of pulse. Depending on the imperfections in the electrical charge and things like that it creates mistakes basically. I’m trying to capture those mistakes while still staying in a minimal form. A machine may blur out an unusual note, I’m trying to capture all these things and imperfections in myself in the physical mixing of the tracks. I’m trying to capture how I was late in cueing something or fading something up at an unusual time.

You have a new album coming out at the end of September: At First Sight. What is that new project about?

Most of the tracks encompass a lot of arrangement, a lot of strings, melody lines and that’s for possibly performing live in the near future. To perform I need something to play. I need a melody line or something. It’s also a nudge or tap on the shoulder for maybe the younger producers that it is ok to put melodies back in the music. It doesn’t have to be mainstream and it doesn’t have to be considered commercial to put something in the music that people can remember. We used to do that in the late '80s, early '90s, but we stopped. For people to remember they have to be able to imitate it with their mouth. As we all get older and more people come into electronic music and they really begin to get into the music and as time goes on your memory will remember the things that had a unique melody, even though it was simple. It was a melody that was simple so your brain could latch onto. When dealing with random patterns and complex things it’s really hard to remember those things. It’s just much more effective to create something that people will remember. That was one side of it. On another side all the tracks are uptempo danceable. That’s the other aspect I try to relay: it still can be dance music, but music, not just tracks.

I’m pretty confident that the new release, like the previous ones, will be centered around a concept, an idea. Can you already reveal a bit what the theme is this time?

It’s entitled ‘At First Sight’, referring to when a baby or infant is born and the first few days there is the development of the eye sight. The infant is very slowly, very gradually adapting to the colors and the shapes of his or her surrounding. And that is what is what the album is about. It’s kinda starting from zero again, laying the foundation to be able to see more in the future.

Was the release of the three chapters of Every Dog Has Its Day sort of a preparation for the people towards the new album, towards the incorporation of more melodies?

Exactly! I started work on volume 4 which is … different (laughs). I’m listening to Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew album. I’m listening to a lot of late 60ies, 70ies psychedelic fusion types of jazz. If I can I’m going to try to make Every Dog Has Its Day 4 more in that vain, where it’s much more psychedelic, more abstract than the album.

Recently you released Axis 9 A & B, two releases that previously had been very hard to get by. Are you planning more of these very limited releases or has something like that become impossible in this stage of your career?

No, I’ve started work on Axis 9 E and that’s going to continue through ‘F’ and so forth. The concept of the A and B has run its course, that was almost ten years ago. If I have the opportunity to create another project where it’s a time-oriented thing, where time determines whether it really works or not… I actually love to mix those things so I’m sure I’ll come together with another one, I just have to figure out how to do it.

Still, when I was in Detroit I got my hands on Axis 800 Time Machine on vinyl.

Yes, that was not released. We can’t put the entire album on a vinyl because of the quality and time. I just thought it would be cheating the whole album so I put it out on cd.

Your main label Axis was started with the intention to develop its different braches into individual labels. Purpose Maker has been running for a long time, Tomorrow is also on the tracks. When will we see the other label (6277) getting into action and which direction will that take?

You know, honestly, I’ve been listening to demos for like the last year, maybe year and a half and haven’t found anything yet. I still receive a tremendous amount of demos and I still haven’t found what I’m looking for. I really hope you print this in your interview because I really want people to know: What we are looking for is someone who has a different perspective in making electronic music. Not the typical 4/4 beat, just someone who has a unique way of approaching the whole idea of composing electronic music.

So it doesn’t necessarily have to be dance music.

No, no, no, just someone with a different perspective is what we are looking for. It doesn’t have to be experimental. I can’t really say what different is until I hear it. For the people who are sending demos: Don’t worry about (starts giggling)…

… copying you?

Yeah, or copying anybody else. Just do what you feel.

Yeah, but still, if somebody copies you, you ask for the full demo like you did with a friend of mine…

The thing is this: if I listen to a demo and I can figure out how he did it there’s no need for me to release it. If I listen to it and I can’t quite figure out how he put it together, then it’s probably something really, really special.

Well, shall I also put in the interview that people should hurry up because they might find life on Mars in the waters there…

That’s right! There is a deadline, but we plan to create more of drive to get more people sending in demo’s.

Next to the excellent Axis website you also run Electronic Directory. Could you briefly explain what this project is about and in which directions it is developing?

I noticed that there were really a lot of websites with information about parties, but there really wasn’t one that collected information from around the world, that people could input in themselves to let other people in other places know about the events. I’ve always realized that the more we know about the scene in different places, the more assured we feel knowing that the music that we like and listen to is everywhere. Sometimes we need to have some type of display knowing that something is happening in Brazil and at the same time something is happening in Tokyo and things like that. So we created this information hub where people who are doing the events or people who just know of an event can input for free for other people to see. That was the main idea. And also within the section ‘labels and companies’ people can advertise for one dollar. If they have a short video or Flash type of thing they can advertise for a dollar a day. Last time I’ve checked we average twelve to fifteen thousand visits a month which is quite a lot of people. It’s basically for people to inform other people what is happening so we ca all become informed, so our worldwide community can be much wiser.

It has been a decade since you left Detroit for NY and since then you have lived various places. What do you miss the most about your native city?

Ah, what do I miss the most? I miss the occurrence of seeing someone I could have possibly gone to high school with or that I could possibly know because they look so familiar. It’s a strange thing about Detroit. I don’t know if it’s the same with you in your home town, but in Detroit, when I go back there to visit people or my family… We kinda have a saying in Detroit: ‘Everybody is related’. When I see an older man that is probably around the age of my father, chances are that if we would ever happen to have contact, I would probably react to him in the same way I react to my father. I just love this natural relationship with people in the city. I can’t quite explain it.

Would that be a sort of community feeling?

Yeah, I think it could have something to do with Detroit, what the city has been through, what the black community in Detroit has been through. I can see like an older man around my father’s age. I can imagine he probably went through the same things in the '60s (ed. the race riots) that my father went through or he probably has a son my age. You go into the banks, into the restaurants and there’s this really comfortable feeling that you are probably talking to someone who has done the same things as my mother or shopped at the same shopping stores.

Well, there aren’t too many around so…

(laughs) Right!

Is it a feeling of solidarity?

Something like that. I just realized over the last few years that you can talk to people in a certain way because you probably grew up the same way. Even though you went to different high schools, know completely different people chances are that you probably did the same things. When you were young, when the street lights came on you had to get inside the house. That was just a common thing young people had to do. It’s a really comfortable feeling.

So you love going back…

I LOVE going back. It’s homebase. That’s where you have learned how to live basically.

When your international career took off and you started traveling the world, how quickly and in what way did your view on the world change, especially since coming from Detroit?

Oh, it changed in many ways. It changed in very bad ways, it changed in mostly good ways. I could write a book about how much it changed, but I’ll just tell you a few points. Detroit is a very isolated city. You have a metropolitan area which is predominantly black surrounded by suburbs where most people are white.

With 8 Mile Road dividing it up…

Yeah, it’s 8 Mile Road and, you know, certain places where you don’t have any reason to go so you kinda stay in your area. Growing up in Detroit I really didn’t have that much contact with any other people than black people, through grade school and high school. In a way I was very isolated. I had this idea – and this is really sad to say, but it’s the truth – growing up in Detroit, always hearing from my relatives and people that white people in the world are trying to do wrong, that there is this conspiracy and that they are purposely putting more liquor stores in black neighborhoods and so on. Growing up in Detroit and not having been around, I never really believed it. I always thought it was just something that black people make up because they don’t have anything else to do. And then when I left the city of Detroit to move to New York and I began to see the other sides and the other perspectives I began to realize, and it’s really sad, that a lot of what I was told and taught is actually true. I wasn’t able to see that until I left the city. I can see the difference between the other neighborhoods and how other black people live in other places in other cities. It’s really sad, but most of it is true. When I travel to other places I don’t see the billboards I see in Detroit. I have to conclude that, yeah, there is some intent to keep the black people at a certain level. That’s one of the saddest things that I’ve learned in traveling around. But again, most of the things that I’ve learned were good things. I’ve learned that not everybody is the same and that there are some very interesting people in the world doing some very interesting things. I’ve kinda become addicted to wanting to know as many people and going to as many places as I can because with that I can learn more about the world. And by learning more about the world, the more you can call it home. Being a black American from Detroit, as you can figure, it’s difficult to call America home. If you turn on TV and you see things that are not directed for you, it’s very difficult to call that place home. Actually, the more I travel and the more I see the more I can consider myself a person of the planet because I’ve experienced it. That’s one of the greatest things.

To what extent has the fact that the majority of US techno producers is Afro-American worked against the success and the distribution of the music in the US?

Probably very little. It’s not because we have no desire to play more in the States or do more things in America. There has always been a lack of attention. For as long as I can remember there has always been at least somebody at any time trying to do something in America. It’s just that the reception has been zero, not only from the media, but even from the people. They don’t show a lot of interest. It wasn’t until maybe three or four years ago that America really began to show some attention and that was because there was so much happening outside America that they wanted a piece of it. It wasn’t until then, but earlier than that there was just no interest.

What makes Europeans so different then in that field or is it the same thing: ‘the grass is greener on the other side…’?

Maybe it could just be the mentality of the people. On one side it could be ‘the grass is greener’. It could be that in America there’s this illusion that America has everything, that you can find, do and be anything or anyone you want in America. It’s really difficult to get people excited about anything. They have so much to choose from, which in reality is not true, but there’s this illusion that they do. It made the people kinda passive. There’s this illusion that made the people passive. They also don’t care so a lot of us decided to leave the country to promote what we do. It got to a point where we became so involved outside of America…

… that the home country was left undeveloped?

Yes. It’s very undeveloped, but not only in music. I begin to see it in other things now. The young people in America are missing out on a lot of what is happening in Europe and outside of America and they don’t know it because they are thinking they are getting everything the world has to offer. If they don’t travel and see what’s happening in Tokyo they don’t know. In reality they are very far behind in terms of trends, very, very far. It wasn’t always like that, but now it’s very apparent.

What’s your opinion on the current political climate in the US?

I can talk for hours about this because I can see the two perspectives because I’m in Europe most of the time. And then I go home and see the news and what the people are being fed and it’s completely different. There has always been an effort to create a balance between rural and urban in America. There has always been a struggle between the people who live in the cities, like Chicago, New York, the East Coast, you know, the more democratic states and the more republican states in the south, in Texas, in very conservative places. What it is with America is that there is an imbalance and it appears that the rural, more conservative factions of the political society in the States have more attention at the moment. A perfect example is president Bush, you know, Texas, old, money, conservative,… It’s apparent that he doesn’t care about certain things, like environmental issues. It doesn’t really appear that he cares about the working class people. They do things to keep the people quiet. The country is getting older. For instance Detroit, it’s predominantly people over 50 years old. It’s less than a million people in the city now and the city is very quiet. And it’s the same thing all over the country.

Exactly, who is going to take care of them?

Right! Health care obviously is a very important issue, but instead there’s this urgency to go to war with Iraq. It just appears that they are trying to find reasons and do things like maybe stage the attack on the Iraqi embassy in Berlin. It’s strange. There are a lot of people, though they are not saying it on the news, there are a lot of people thinking the same as what I’m thinking. A lot of the media is controlled by the politicians. But if you go into the street and talk to the people they’ll tell you that something is not right. People have lost their jobs, millions of Americans have lost their jobs and even more have lost their savings in the stock market crash and nobody is talking about these people. It’s very quiet. The focus is on other things like children being kidnapped and molested. They are creating this diversion. The country is in a very bad shape.

So, with all that in mind, don’t you feel like moving to Europe?

How did you know? (laughs) I’m considering it. I know for sure that I would like to retire in Europe, that’s definite. We are thinking maybe in France, Paris.

The only form of black music that is really popular in the US (and abroad) is the kind where there is talk of easy women, violence, lots of money, etc. To what extent do you think the fact that techno profiled itself as intellectual black music has worked against the success of the genre?

Techno music in the black community is not existent. It doesn’t exist in the black music in America. So there is not much I can say about the inclusion of techno. If we were recognized the people may actually be kinda proud of what the guys from Detroit have accomplished. At this point it doesn’t exist, it’s zero.

Has the DEMF changed anything in that?

If you remember going to the DEMF, how many young black people did you see? It was mostly white. You have to imagine that there are many high schools, young people interested in music, in that city, but for some reason they weren’t down there that weekend.

Back to your question of the violence and womanizing and all in music. It’s really ridiculous. In the black community we really don’t have any strong leaders. There are people left over from the civil rights movement and things like that. We were watching something on television some time ago where they were talking about educating young black people. They were saying that maybe the best way to do it is through what they are interested in. So if they are interested in hiphop, R&B and womanizing do it through that medium. There seems to be a lot of confusion about how to reach people with information. As far as I know, I’ve never known anyone from Detroit who has ever been approached by any black magazine or news media about what they do with music. And don’t expect! It’s not considered black music although it is.

So it’s too white for the black people and for some maybe the other way around…

Yeah, from my perspective that’s what I see. It’s not recognized as black music because mostly white people listen to it. I don’t know what it does in relation to rock & roll where it basically started off the same way. Maybe there’s still hope, but there are too many interesting things going on to stop and wait.

Exactly, so let’s change the topic. You are very fond of architecture and you even have studied it for a while. Your tracks are all very well structured so I was wondering to what extent this interest and training have found their way into your music?

Yeah, I think it’s just methodical intent. My intent is to create some kind of foundation and build from there. The foundation has to have reasoning, at least to me. I have to understand why I’m doing it in the very first place. Why even sit down to press the key on a keyboard? I have to have some reason for that. I think that kind of relates to architecture. There has to be a need to build a building. It needs a purpose. Why are you building it, for what reason? From there it’s easier to construct. If you know that it’s an office building then you know people have to have space for their desks. If it’s residential you know it has to have a kitchen and so on. Music works the same way. If it’s designed for a DJ to use in a club, but he wants to use it for a transition, then it should be laid out in a way so that he has time and that things occur at a much slower pace and it gradually builds up and you leave and escape. In a building you have to have fire escapes. Music for the most part is the same thing. The DJ chooses to mix out of it so he needs to have a break in it to depart into another track. So in a way the building, the construction is very similar to architecture.

To what extent has your love for architecture influenced your choice of residence?

Yes, it actually does. I was always very fond of Chicago and the layout of the city. Back in the twenties and thirties, Frank Lloyd Wright and most of the avant garde architects were based in Chicago. My office is actually just around the corner of the boulevard (, which is State Street,) where most of the architectural bureaus were located. The architecture in that area is really interesting. I’ve always been fond of metropolises and urban life.

You also have an apartment in Berlin which brings me to Music & Machine. How did the idea for that come into life and what is it exactly you are trying to achieve with Music&Machine?

I and others in the industry found getting ourselves together to talk about things within the music industry, problems that we have etc. We realized that just getting together and talk is actually an asset itself. Finding the time and discussing with people that do the same things as you can learn a lot. That gave Dimitri (Hegeman from Tresor/Interfisch) and me the idea to create some kind of meeting of people in the industry to get together, meet each other in the hope that they could understand more of what other people are doing, possibly do business among one another and just learn more about the industry. It’s difficult because this industry is so large and it spread so far that at times it’s difficult to find out what other people are doing. There’s not one magazine, website or resource that can tell you what’s happening in the world with electronic music. So we thought we’d create this event which is around every year where we invite people to come and we make the surroundings and the locations as comfortable as possible. We allow people as much time as possible to just talk.

What can we expect from you in the future?

Definitely a more visual aspect to electronic music. And (pauses), OK, I can only say it this way: At this point in my career, ten years or so into it, for some reason I have the feeling that I have nothing to loose. I’ve done most of the things that I wanted to do. Now I really, really have this urge to not experiment, but to express more how I feel about particular things. There’s this frustration that I have about my country and what’s happening. I really, really want to put that more into the music. I’m not saying it will get more political, but it may. I’m really, really furious about what is happening and I’m tired. If music is my way to be able to communicate then that is going to be the way that I will express how I feel.

And you’re in a position where people will listen

Yeah. What I mean by not having a thing to loose, if it makes some people upset, then so be it. That is what I am feeling at the moment.

That’s like going back in history a bit, if you know what I’m referring to, the old cohorts (UR)…

Yeah, maybe man, but I’m tired of all the wrong shit I see. If I use music in a way to be able to communicate then that is going to be the main way I’m going to express how I feel. I talked to my colleague Yoko at the label about this type of using the label to express political ideas and I think I’m just about to get the green light. I’m trying to figure out a way to do it. I’ve done dance music, I’ve done experimental stuff and I really want to get more subjects that mean something to all of us, not just Mars, or 6277 or Rings of Saturn. We have time to explore those things, but now we have to get back to reality. If we don’t start saying anything we’ll have these George Bushes coming all the time.

Interview by John Osselaer (22/08/2002)

[joeg]

wow, that was cool.

[djgrant]

Thanx.... Jeff has been an influence to me. Nice read.

Long live...