MANIFESTO FOR
CHANGE
Jeff Mills is a true techno original. A founder member of Underground Resistance but now fiercely independent; a radical producer with a genuine manifesto that extends to his productions, art and performances; and a lightning-fast DJ with skills to put most others to shame. With a sumptuous new boxset and photography book looking back over 20 years of his label Axis, there could be no better time to interview the isolationist astronaut himself to discuss the positives and negatives of technology, the art of photography, what he thinks of laptop DJs, and much more…
techno as art and we have a lot of work to do in terms of convincing them there is an art to this music… I’m driving towards the point where it means more than just dance music. It doesn’t have to say ‘nothing’, and you can’t say it says ‘nothing’ if there’s someone trying to refine notions of what electronic music can be.”
“People don’t regard
a DJ in Detroit called Jeff Mills, who had been spinning electro, hip-hop and disco alongside embryonic techno on the city’s WJLB radio station under the name The Wizard, and would also explore a synthesis of art and political ideology as a founder member of Underground Resistance alongside “Mad” Mike Banks. So it made sense to some that Mills would take part in an exhibition to mark the 100th anniversary of the Futurist manifesto at the Pompidou Centre in France. Even more so, considering that the piece he exhibited wasn’t simply a soundtrack of the galvanised techno he’d made his name with after splitting from Underground Resistance, but an audio-visual installation featuring archive footage of the First World War amongst other images, confirming Mills’ credentials — following exhibitions of his sculptures, a collaboration with the Montpellier Philharmonic Orchestra and his scores for silent movies such as Fritz Lang’s Metropolis — as a Renaissance man as much as a Futurist.
I
To others of course, the idea of techno being elevated to the same status of high art as Futurism or the Renaissance seems a little ridiculous.
And we’re not just talking about elitist art critics, or parents complaining about “that bloody racket” their kids
listen to, but also many of the hundreds of thousands of people who’ve seen Jeff Mills DJ across the
www.djmag.com Words: PAUL CLARKE
n 1909, Italian poet Filippo Tomasso Marinetti published the Futurist manifesto. A veneration of technology, and the role art could play in driving humanity forward, the Futurists’ fetishisation of the machine would strike a chord over 70 years later with
globe but who regard techno as nothing more than the soundtrack to a night of dancing and drugs. Which, even though he’s wrestled with plenty of weighty ideas throughout his career, remains one conundrum he’s yet to solve. “People don’t regard techno as art and we have a lot of work to do in terms of convincing them there is an art to this music,” he ponders. “Rock and jazz are considered art because they have a voice that tries to say something, whereas there’s this perception that techno is just music for dancing. But the structure of techno means it can say something, and I’m driving towards the point where it means more than just dance music. It doesn’t have to say ‘nothing’, and you can’t say it says ‘nothing’ if there’s someone trying to refine notions of what electronic music can be.”
SEQUENCE Jeff’s ideas about what techno can “say” were formulated
in his own manifesto penned when he formed Axis Records to release his music in 1992, excerpts from which can now be read in the lavish new book and box-set ‘Sequence’, released to mark Axis’ two decades, in which Jeff describes his intention to “…create a different kind of record label”. “Axis is the aura of all things,” he writes. “Like many other record labels past and present, it was created to touch others. Though one area where Axis differs is its realization that ‘all things’ are not necessarily good, comfortable or easy. I understand that an experience of interacting with something that appears strange and bizarre at first glance, could eventually be the comfort someone was looking for later.”
Although it’s taken 20 years for Jeff to publish these words for people to read, those ideas have always been present for people to hear in his music, perhaps most
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