Image via Jeff Mills/Instagram
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Michael McKinney is the resident expert on the greatest modern-day DJ sets.
Jeff Mills has built a career upon futurism. Since his debut on Detroit’s airwaves in the 1980s, he has played a pivotal role in bringing the sounds of techno to a worldwide audience, whether that’s in his early work alongside “Mad” Mike Banks and Robert Hood, his piles of solo LPs and Detroit-techno classics, or his more contemporary collaborations with Tony Allen and Jean-Phi Dary. No matter the venue, though, Mills sounds as though he is broadcasting from a distant future; it’s no coincidence that he was tapped to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the moon landing.
Mills’s latest two records showcase the breadth of his styles. The Override Switch, a collaboration with Rafael Leafar, a multi-instrumentalist steeped in jazz history, is a rich collection of simmering nu-jazz. Throughout, Mills and Leafar find the intersection between Coltrane and Kraftwerk, stitching together slow-and-low grooves and astral-plane acrobatics. Mind Power Mind Control is downright minimal by comparison: here, Mills focuses on elliptical rhythms, every drum laid just so, each synthesizer stretching towards infinity. The records sound almost nothing alike, but they are unified by their precision and clarity of vision, each a product of Mills’s decades-long devotion to his craft.
Prior to his performance at Primavera Sound LA, we got a chance to chat with Detroit dance-music legend via email, touching upon science fiction, the importance of collecting, and the urgency of creation.
Outside of musical ideas, what forms the core of your current practice? Are there any key philosophical or extramusical ideas that you aspire toward?
Jeff Mills: What motivates me most is the observation that a human life (even in good health) is short and that when it comes to creating, there should be a certain level of urgency to extract and transcribe the vision or idea to pass it along to others. Time, and the lack thereof, is what fuels the passion.
Throughout your career, you have shown an interest in possible futures—often, but not always, through science fiction. Where did that interest emerge from? Does it actively fuel your work now? If so, what does that process look like?
Jeff Mills: I assumed the interest came from growing up in a NASA/Apollo environment, watching all the activity around the tasks of sending people and other things into outer space. As a kid, I don’t remember being obsessively attracted to the subject, but maybe I assumed it was “normal,” especially when that interest was supported by collecting and reading comics and watching science fiction films. Searching for, collecting, and preserving things was a large part of my youth and it still affects my thought process.
Your latest solo record, Mind Power Mind Control, is centered around “the art of mental persuasion.” Would you be willing to elaborate upon what you mean by that? What fuels your interest in this idea?
Jeff Mills: Mind Power is the defense against Mind Control. It is focused upon strengthening the mind in order to be able to decipher and rationalize reality in the most confusing and chaotic times. The narrative of the album focuses on the industry of social media as an example and the way people have become consumed by the notion that “someone” might see, watch, or “follow” them. And for this, we are willing to forfeit our privacy and mental health. I chose this subject because of what we all are witnessing since the arrival of social media. The consequences of what happens when people become socially closer to one another.