Jeff Mills

Torsten Schmidt

So you’re going into New York today, Paris tomorrow and Tokyo the day afterwards, so how funny is that in real life?

Jeff Mills

Well, yeah, it can be, if you’re able to find time to actually go around sightseeing, take pictures, but most the time that’s not the case. It takes you a day or a day and a half to get to where you’re going. When you finally make it there you’re either hungry or sleepy. And you do that up until the time that you have to play, and the only relief time that you have is normally after.

Torsten Schmidt

After you play?

Jeff Mills

Yeah, after you play. And if it’s on a day like this, if you find time and energy to get up out of the bed to go see... But you never really get into seeing the city, you just don’t have that time. So it can be quite lonely, especially if you travel alone. Because you really don’t see that much, you really don’t get to meet that many people. You can’t really buy things because you know, you travel from country to country, and you need to travel with as less as possible. Right now, I’m down to a very small bag that I carry and I just wear the same clothes for six weeks in a row.

[laughter]

Wash the underwear in the sink in the hotel, the socks and things like that. It’s kind of degrading, actually.

[laughter]

Then the other side, yeah, it’s quite nice, you get to go to places you never thought you would go to and see.

Torsten Schmidt

But on the other hand, you’ve been known for a special style of DJing, just showcasing particular parts of records, which is not that prominent among techno DJs, especially. I mean, you’ll sometimes be playing a record just for 30 seconds. You must need crates and crates of records, how do you pack them up?

Jeff Mills

Well, you know, when I buy records, or the ones that I pick for my record box, usually have... You know, very rarely do I ever play a record that only has one good track. They have to have more than two. So then I can play the same record at least twice a night. So I carry very few, and it always seems to just balance out that that record is of, say, Adam Beyer, or someone like that, or Marco Carola, a DJ Sneak or something like that who has just a particular sound that just sounds good. So it has to have more than at least one, unless the one is really good, and then I normally pack it. But that’s to keep everything down to a minimum when I travel. If I should have more records than my box should hold, I won’t buy another box, I would just re-circulate the tracks. I’ll take the ones that I don’t play so much out and put the new ones that are really hot in, to always keep a certain amount of records. So it will seem like I’ve got like, maybe two boxes because I’ll go through them so quickly, but actually, I’m playing the same records maybe twice, three times a night.

Torsten Schmidt

This particular style, how did it evolve then? I mean, you just didn’t grow up to be an instant Jeff Mills and playing the records that way.

Jeff Mills

Well, in my case I used to do a radio show in Detroit. And over the years the show got shorter and shorter, because of that’s just how radio stations are, they make your show shorter because of precious time. But still, there was an abundance of music that had to be played. So I had to figure out a way to be able to play all this music in a very short time very smoothly, so that people would at least hear a little bit of it so that they would go to the shop and actually buy it. We developed a way to be able to play them very, very quickly, or just use the best part of it, and then move on to the next one, best part. Applying that type of idea along with a long mix or to have two records just play for two or three minutes creates another option to be able to play records. It’s not always the same way. In some cases, as I look out into the crowd and I see that the people just need to be able to get started, the party just really needs to get started, then yeah, the quick mix doesn’t apply. I should take my time and let the people really get used to actually the soundsystem, the sound, the type of records and things like that. It varies. If the people really want to party and I can see it, then, yeah, I can apply it.

Torsten Schmidt

So, one of the main problems then is, after all this hard traveling, and to read this crowd and to get the motivation from that, how do you manage that?

Jeff Mills

Well, you..You just have to do it. You don’t have a choice. You can’t say, “OK, I changed my mind.” I flew all the way here then people are paying me, people are at the club, you just can’t change your mind, you just can’t say, “Well, I’m sick.” [laughter] This is the job, and this is what you’re there for, this is what you spent all these years buying records and reading magazines... This is what it’s for. So you find the energy, even if you’re tired. In some cases, I’ve been so, so tired I could barely open my eyes, but then when the first record hits, then you never know the difference. But then after, I usually pass out or something like that. It can be really rough. Especially night after night, flying country after country, late night, in the middle of the night and things like that, it can be really hard.

Torsten Schmidt

This radio job you’ve been talking about, was this your first assignment as a DJ?

Jeff Mills

Well, that was the point where I became like a professional DJ. Up until then I was considered like a mobile DJ, where you put everything in the back of your car and you travel to places and you pull everything out, you put everything together and you play the night, pack it back up and you go home. And I just so happened to be at the right place at the right time, and did the right thing, and got this job working for a radio station. That radio station had other stations around the country. So I travelled around the United States, going from coast to coast, city to city, doing what I do on the show, live. I travelled all over the United States before I came to Europe. I was used to playing for people that I’d never seen before, walking into a club, not knowing what people may like. So the experience of having to have to read the crowd within 15 minutes I learned at a very early age, actually, maybe 20.

Torsten Schmidt

When was it exactly when you got that job?

Jeff Mills

Around 19 or 20. I wasn’t old enough to get into the clubs, so they had to kind of sneak me through the backdoor. I wasn’t old enough to drink, so if you’re not old enough to drink, you have to be 21 in the United States, they would have to sneak me in, let me play, and then get me out through the back.

Torsten Schmidt

What kind of stuff were you spinning back then?

Jeff Mills

That was pre hip-hop, so it was more like post-disco, funk, Teena Marie and disco was still lingering around, so you could still play some of that and people would still remember. Things like Junior, I’m sure you remember Junior... Really poppy music, but on the vinyl copies was always a mix that you could play that was like an instrumental or something like that, or like a bonus beat, so you would mix those things. Or you would just buy two copies and repeat the same part over and over again. That actually made you a better DJ, because if you didn’t catch the mix, then the vocal would come in and mess the whole thing up. So you would learn how to repeat the intro over and over again and then jump to the part, which made you much more nimble on finding certain parts very quickly to be able to make a different mix. I got so good at one time that at the radio station we would do like master mixes of a particular track which is normally done by edits. But I would do them in like one shot. I would physically take the record apart and just do like a mix on two turntables, and redo the entire record without a single mistake. That was a long time ago. [laughs]

Torsten Schmidt

So from that until what we call techno these days, what happened in between?

Jeff Mills

Hip-hop came along, and that elevated the DJ much higher. The DJ gained much more respect and he was put more upfront, in terms of how he was perceived. He became much more instrumental in the actual music, not just playing the music after it was made. And I was at the age... I was at a certain point where I was really acceptable to learn all the tricks that were being done at that time, that were being created and things like that. So I actually had the opportunity to learn all these tricks really early. I had to jump on the hip-hop DJs in the United States, and I also had the opportunity to be able to play them on the radio. That reinforced the idea that maybe this guy is much further ahead.

Torsten Schmidt

When did you start your first steps into production?

Jeff Mills

In Detroit there was a lot of competition amongst the radio stations and it was quite unique because we had the authority to be able to do anything we wanted to which was really rare at that time. Usually, a radio station will tell you what you have to play, and when you have to play it, and for how long. But because the competition was so serious, they gave us, myself on the station that I was at, and the opposite station, they gave us complete authority to be able to play anything. So the competition got really hot very quickly, and I needed to be able to have music that the other guy couldn’t have. So at first I began to contact the rap groups to actually come into the studio and record different versions of this hit record. So, I remember contacting like UTFO, and The Fat Boys, and a couple of other groups. And we would cut different... It was a big station, the station had a lot of money, so we could actually do that, and I was like 21 or something like that. So we would come up with this idea to bring them in to actually do different versions that the other stations didn’t have. So that was the first thing that we did, and then the other stations started recording the things that we did and were playing them, so you really couldn’t tell the difference. Then I came up with the idea to bring live instruments into the studio and to actually make the music just prior to the show and actually play it during the show, and then never again. One of the first artists, one of the first pieces that helped me do that was the guy [Channel One] that made the track “Technicolor,” that was on [Metroplex]. We were really good friends and he brought his 808 into the studio, and we recorded a completely different version of it, and then soon that led to me actually making music along with three turntables in the studio for the actual show. Then I thought, “Well, it’s not so difficult,” so then I built a studio at home, to do the production there. And they would bring it in, to make it even more complex. Then I decided to make an album, and then one thing led to another... So, if you can imagine a kid, say, 16 years old, listening to all this on the radio, you can see why people like a Claude Young comes around or like a Terrence Parker, you know? After listening to all this battling and all this how to edit music and making certain mixes and things like that, then it kind of makes sense. Like, there’s a group of DJs that just listened and recorded all these things at the radio at that time.

Torsten Schmidt

Just to make sure, when we’re talking about live instruments, we’re talking drum machines and stuff like that?

Jeff Mills

Drum machines, yeah.

Torsten Schmidt

From then, we’re talking more or less hip-hop right now, but in the pre-U[nderground] R[esistance] days you took something like a more industrial influence to cut up things. How did these things come together?

Jeff Mills

Detroit at that time was really diverse in dance music. There was a very strong industrial scene in Detroit. And it was beginning to mix with techno. Some of the techno DJs... Like, Derrick [May] would play at like, an industrial club, and all of the techno people would go to this industrial club, and then vice versa. Those two formats of music became very close, and the music reflected that, actually. The earlier stuff on Final Cut album was actually now fusing the two together. I had like a techno background and the other guy had like an industrial, Ministry, Revolting Cocks-type thing, so we got together and made this album.

Torsten Schmidt

So very European.

Jeff Mills

Yeah, that was the first album that I made in my studio, actually. So as I was building the studio, and learning the equipment and how to use it, that album was made. That was the first time that I had learned how to bounce tracks on an 8-track to get a total of 24, or something like that.

Torsten Schmidt

From there on to UR, how did that go?

Jeff Mills

Well, I had split with the guy from Final Cut and we had got involved with some major labels that would not work out. So I was completely disgusted, I was still doing the radio show at this time. I knew [“Mad”] Mike [Banks] because Mike had a lot of keyboards so I would borrow keyboards from him, because the two, three things were the recording equipment that I had in my studio.

Torsten Schmidt

So this was Mike then, or just you know...?

Jeff Mills

Well, I met Mike another way. I met him through another person who suggested that I should go and meet this guy and his crew to see if I could help them with a mix that they were stuck on. I met Mike and this other DJ in the studio. We remained friends and we eventually got together and came up with this idea to put together this group and label called Underground Resistance. We talked about it for a while and the most important thing at that time was that we looked at what everyone else was doing in Detroit and what they had failed to do, and where they made a mistake. At that time Kevin had just...

Torsten Schmidt

Kevin Saunderson?

Jeff Mills

Yeah. He had just finished the second album for Inner City and we had heard that Virgin was kind of jerking him around, and they wanted him to mix much more commercial music and Juan [Atkins] was making much more commercial stuff too, and Derrick was trying to sing or something like that and so we thought that that was not the way to go, that the original idea of Detroit techno was being lost. We thought we should be more bolder, that we should do everything that they failed to do, so that’s exactly what we did. We didn’t license music out to everybody, we didn’t. We just didn’t. We kind of constructed our own way of how we work, and how we do things, and so that was the beginning. Neither of us had much experience in running a label, that was more like a trial and error. So we lost a lot of money in the early part of it, we got a lot of interesting phone calls from a lot of interesting people. I still remember today and... Yeah, at one point Aphex Twin has sent us a tape, and it was at the first Analogue Bubblebath and we passed on it. [laughs] So, you know, things like that.

Torsten Schmidt

You started quite soon with the merchandising, which hadn’t been known in that sector of music before with the bold logo and the inside out wear and T-Shirt and everything, but when did you get to know about this stuff happening or how this stuff was perceived over in Europe?

Jeff Mills

Joey Beltram called us, we don’t know how he got our number.

Torsten Schmidt

He’s from Queens in America.

Jeff Mills

Yeah, we didn’t know him then. You know, “This is Joey and I just came from like Germany and I’ve played this track called “Elimination,” and the crowd went crazy. We were like, “Who the hell is this guy?” You know, Germany? We didn’t have a clue what was going on over here. We had heard some things from Kevin about what a rave was, you know, 10,000 people but we didn’t know.

Torsten Schmidt

How large were the crowds in Detroit then?

Jeff Mills

The parties, well, they were parties actually, and the parties were in clubs, so it was a capacity of the club. But the Music Institute was open at that time, and from my memory the Institute was never really crowded. It was always half full, which made it really interesting. The music was always amazing, but it was always half full. That’s how we found out exactly what was happening, through Joey, actually. Then I made contact with the only person that I knew in Germany, which was Dimitri from Tresor, because he had a label Interfisch that had licensed the album Final Cut. So I called him and told him, “Do you remember me? My name is Jeff Mills from this group?” And he said, “Yeah.” He asked us if we would want to come over and DJ. I said, “Yeah.” I didn’t want to go by myself so I asked Blake [Baxter] to come with me. That was the first time that we had come to Germany, it was Blake and myself representing Underground Resistance. We toured a little bit in Germany and I went back to Detroit and reported exactly what we’d seen and then we came up with this project, X-101, and then licensed that through Tresor. And then that was the first release of their new label Tresor.

Torsten Schmidt

How did it feel to that a half-full club was spawning off such a big thing and first realizing it?

Jeff Mills

I mean, at that time it was considered like an alternative club. It wasn’t like a main club in Detroit, it was like a late night, all night, just one strobe, really progressive. There were a lot of dancers, and a lot of artists and musicians that would go to that club, and that’s it. So the place was only really half full at times. It was almost kind of almost like a workshop, in a sense. I can remember a lot of people just standing around listening to the music, because Derrick, Kevin and Juan would come back to Europe with all these different versions of all these records that we never knew existed. So I would just go and listen to them at times.

Torsten Schmidt

But when you came to Europe the first time, how did that feel, with all that in mind? With the feeling of, “It’s probably us who started this.”

Jeff Mills

Well, Germany really wasn’t that much, I would say... It was more the UK. They were going to the UK, so we...

Torsten Schmidt

Because at that time there was already a rave scene in existence.

Jeff Mills

Well, Mike and I, we didn’t like UK. We didn’t like England. Before we even went there we just didn’t like it. I don’t know, it was just something we decided, we just didn’t like it. We thought the people from the magazines that we’d seen, and the mixes that we heard, and the things that we heard, we just didn’t like it. And also, what they were doing to Kevin, we didn’t like it. So we thought that Germany makes much more sense for us. So this is where we wanted to come first, and this is where we came. That’s how that came about.

Torsten Schmidt

Even though there was some kind of alliance between certain parts of England and Detroit before the was this merchandising, and Kevin, and later on the 4Hero]/Reinforced crew and get them to know and doing tracks together which is still in existing to this day.

Jeff Mills

Yeah. When I came to Germany, I did not go to the UK until maybe two years, almost three years after coming to Europe. I never went to the UK. I went everywhere else but not to the UK. At the time, it was too much of fanfare and I think Grooverider and Carl Cox and I remember hearing how great of a DJ they were and things like that. I just wasn’t interested in going there to play, the big gigantic raves and things like that. Because I had a little bit of industrial techno background, this was much more appealing to me.

Torsten Schmidt

Even though the records on UR and all the other Detroit labels and the Plus8 stuff as well, you could tell when the people from Detroit had been to Europe for the first time because there was a certain shift in the music.

Jeff Mills

Yeah, better understanding. I think you automatically understand that there are other people around you and your city that like the music that you make. I think as you’re making the music you have that mind, how other people dance to it, how other people accept it and things like that. And over time you get better at actually making music for a broad audience, I think.

Torsten Schmidt

Say, for example the X-101, compared to the rest of the X-10 series; it’s a lot more steady than the rest of the series.

Jeff Mills

Yeah. Earlier, maybe when I was 16, 17 my older brother was a DJ and there were a lot of labels in Detroit. Prior to Detroit techno there were a lot of disco labels. There were a lot of studios and a lot of manufacturing companies in Detroit that actually made disco records. There were a lot of labels, actually, that kind of just disappeared. So he knew a lot of people from that and he would tell them, “Yeah, I have this little brother. He’s trying to become a DJ, can you help him out?” So I was actually able to go into these really big studios and watch how they recorded music. So I learned really early how to lay out the mix, how to separate stereo, how to wire all the effects into the back of the board, so I had like a technical experience really early. So that helped out with the albums, especially with Underground Resistance. As time went on, and the equipment got more and more easier to use, I learned how to enhance the sound. If you listen to the very first Underground Resistance tracks, the sound separation really wasn’t that good. Because I was bouncing tracks over, and once you bounce over, you can’t delete, you can’t take them apart, because they’re permanent. So as time went on, and I began to get more into recording, and understand how a studio should work, and how to get certain sounds, the sound got better. I began to learn a way to be able to manipulate the sound to get a certain feel actually over time. So, of course, it wasn’t as choppy, and also, I made X-101 with Mike and Rob, X-102 was more so with Rob and myself, and then X-103 was with Rob and myself again.

Torsten Schmidt

Probably that’s due to the persons [involved], but X-102 or X-103 made a landmark for putting another approach to techno records. In a way, how a concept is included to making a record and not just from the bloody machines.

Jeff Mills

Yeah, there is where we learned. Actually, X-102 was the first time where we, especially me, where I learnt how to relate the physical aspects of the vinyl to an actual concept, using the label as the most centerpiece and the hole in the label as the more defendant piece and the grooves leaning into the label and the edge of the record. The idea came to... When we were on our way to Italy for the first time, the three of us. I was half asleep and I woke up, it was more like a dream, and I thought, “Saturn.” So I woke Rob up, he was sitting next to me and I explained him the whole idea, and then when we got home we started the project. We did research for a little bit to find out the names of the rings of Saturn and what they were made out of and then we relate that to music. So, we were learning at that particular project, actually.

Torsten Schmidt

You’re using these concepts these days as well, like on Axis [Records], on The Purpose Maker.

Jeff Mills

Yeah, it’s still the same. At times though, because there is a balance you don’t want to get so far into it that it’s boring, so you just give enough information to hopefully jar an interest. If not, it’s OK. You still have the music to listen to. But, if I can make a record and also send a message along with it as well, then I think it makes it a little bit more interesting. Maybe it lasts a little bit longer, maybe someone might get more out of it than just listening to it.

Torsten Schmidt

Apart from the sound, do you get these messages across to people who don’t speak the language like, say, English?

Jeff Mills

Yeah, what I learned in the last six to eight months is that maybe the best way to communicate to people that don’t speak the same language, say, some kid in the countryside of Spain or something like that, is to maybe not use words at all, just images. And even if the person does understand English and you say a word, it’s difficult to understand maybe the depth of the word. For instance, like “Growth.” If you understand English and you read the word “Growth,” you know what the word means, but you don’t know the depth, and that was actually what the release of Very was about. It was Axis #16, and it was the degree of what “Very” meant, actually. That was the question. Is it “Very” or “Massive,” even, depending on who’s actually saying it. So I learnt that maybe no words at all is maybe the best way to communicate in relaying like an idea or a concept. Just images.

Torsten Schmidt

When you saying just images, you’re always trying to keep things as simple or some people might say minimal. But minimal is kind of big word as well, it could mean so many different things.

Jeff Mills

It’s truly big, yeah. Well, if it’s minimal, but in an order, then it’s easy. If the images are minimal but in a specific order along with texture, then as one looks at one picture, and then the next, and then the next, and then the next, you kind of create a language. As you flip the page of the CD thing and one picture it gets darker and the picture gets rougher, then you’re actually creating a different way to be able to communicate. If you, say, put together an album where the first beginning tracks are much softer and as you get closer to the center label, it gets darker and more harsh, you physically put character to the actual record. These things, maybe subconsciously, they communicate to the people listening, so you can use these vehicles to be able to communicate without using language, actually.

Torsten Schmidt

But how do you keep these minimal things still functioning that they don’t get too abstract so that people still can relate to it?

Jeff Mills

Sometimes abstraction is your purpose, to confuse. Yeah, in some cases abstraction was actually the application. I wanted you to be confused or I wanted you to wonder, “What the hell is he doing?” I remember when I came up with Cycle 30, I didn’t tell anyone that there were loops on the second side. I wanted that to be discovered, and I remember being at Hard Wax and a kid would come and he listened to the first side, which had three tracks, and then he’d put on the other side and then the needle would slide all the way to the label, and then he’d take it off and they put the record away. I thought that was great, because if he didn’t really take the time to really look at the record then maybe it not only works for him. But then over time people discovered it. I thought that was maybe a little bit more special than to put the needle on the record and then you go, “Yeah, I’ll take it.” In some cases, confusion, or in terms of like DJing, sometimes to just stop music, because the people are not going to go anywhere. And if they get mad... They’re at a party, they’re not going to kill you. Just stop the music, for a couple of seconds or maybe a half a minute, just to let the people down or to get them ready... I mean, if you stop the music, they know that something else is going to happen. If there’s silence, after all that, they know that you’re probably going to come with something, so the people get excited. So to do things like that you know, or to purposely break the music down to almost a whisper, kind of gets the people excited. When Rob and I were discussing the whole minimal thing before he released the album, we discussed the idea of, in terms of time, how long it takes for the people to really get excited to listening to the same sequence over and over again. It was about two-and-a-half to three minutes. If you put the needle at the beginning of a record and you just simply let it play and you stand back, somewhere within that time frame, someone’s going to scream, because the music, it just doesn’t change. And because you know that it doesn’t change you become more relaxed. And if you become more relaxed, then you know that you can move your body much better if you don’t know what to anticipate. It brings this excitement. It’s almost like the reverse of what it used to be. To make someone excited you have to build the record up with snares and have it go to a certain point and drop off. But we discovered by just letting it do nothing, and let the people react to it, is actually an application as well.

Torsten Schmidt

At that point you have to invest a lot more of work to the actual part you’re putting on your record, some people say, “Oh this is just another one of his minimal records. I could do that just in a couple of seconds. Throw the machines on and that’s it.”

Jeff Mills

Yeah, that’s the hard part. There has to be a certain sequence, a certain rhythm that enhances over time. Or it enhances the more you hear it, the better it gets. I’ve heard some records, where the more you hear the least you care to hear it. It’s too monotonous. From what I see, we’re just getting started with the minimal sound. There are many other things that can be done with it. So it’s at the very beginning. A lot of people we’re starting to hear are quite discouraged that the records are sounding old, they’re sounding the same, all of them are trying to sound like the same record. But it’s this frustration that’s going to create something different. Without it, if people were all satisfied by the same record, then nothing would happen. It’s this disgust with the fact that it all sounds the same that someone’s going to say, “OK, look, I’m tired of the same sh--. I’m going to do something different.” And there is where the new things come from. So it’s actually necessary for us to get disgusted with something to be able to move on to the next.

Torsten Schmidt

I think this will lead to other aspects with other minimal arts, like architecture, photography and stuff like that, I think we’re not too far away from what we’re dealing with. But you once said that, if you don’t try to paint a picture with your music or the records, then you’re just using the vehicle of music at a minimum. Could you explain that a little more?

Jeff Mills

Well, it’s impossible to be able to create music without thinking about it. To say “I just turned it on and I played something, and it just came out there and I didn’t have an idea,” it doesn’t make sense. You have to think about it in some way. Even if you’re not conscious of it, you have an idea because in the midst of actually the machines are running, at some point you say, “OK, that’s it.” So you thought about it. So you’re always conscious of it, that phrase doesn’t make sense. You always think about what you’re doing. Otherwise you wouldn’t turn on your equipment, you just leave it there or you wouldn’t reach for a specific machine. Why this one and not that one, right? Because it has a certain sound that you want, that you’re looking for. So, some people get more in-depth, like myself, in creating a whole concept. Some people just turn them on and they’re looking for something and they find it and that’s it. It’s just the degree of what you’re looking for. I’m sorry, I forgot the rest of the question but I thought that was really important to get to the thing.

Torsten Schmidt

Could you explain that saying on the Waveform Transmissions: “As barriers fall around the world, the need to understand others and the way they live, think and dream is a task that is nearly impossible to imagine without theory and explanation”?

Jeff Mills

Usually, with me, it’s the ratio, it’s the “How many women to men,” so then I know how to start this off. If there are older people, I know that I have to maybe take my time a little bit more because they aren’t used to the music starting right away. So I can have some type of idea of the first couple of records that I need to grab first, or how long I should I let it play before breaking it down to give the older people a rest. If the club is hot, I know that I’m going to have to at least create pockets in my set where I can let the people breathe, to not make them dance as hard; to give them a chance to be able to go to the bar to get something to drink and they come back. Yeah, I mean there’s many different factors. You know, how many guys you see with their shirt off? [laughter] You know at a certain point you’re going to have to pick it up. All these things help design how you play the records for the set, actually, and what you’re going to end with, what you’re going to start with, what records you put closer to the front of your box because you know you’re going to grab it quickly and things like that. Did I answer your question?

Audience Member

Yes. It’s more like the message or the feeling you want to get across.

Jeff Mills

No, that varies. If it’s a situation where people have been telling me how good the scene is like, for instance, I went into Brazil on Thursday, and prior to getting there they were telling me, “The scene here is great, they listen to Detroit and it’s really good.” Well, I want to see how progressive and how diverse they really are. So that night I spent seeing how far we can go in different areas. At certain points we got really minimal, at some points we got really aggressive, and at some point I got house music. And it turned out, yeah, it was really good. It was Sao Paulo, yeah. It varies. If I know that I’m going to Scotland, I know that it doesn’t matter what I play, the people go from crazy anyway. It doesn’t really matter because the people work all day and they want to party. It doesn’t matter. So it varies, per country, per city and things like that. If it’s someplace that I’ve never been before, usually, I’ll put a little bit of everything in the record box, just in case. And maybe I’ll take a little bit more records, just to make me feel a little bit better.

Audience Member

Doesn’t it make you crazy to change the countries and continents so quickly? I mean, is there space that you could decide, “I want to stay a week,” or, “I want to stay two weeks,” or...?

Jeff Mills

I know that it’s unlikely because everyday, or every other day, it’s a different city. So I can’t, I can’t; but what I do is I say, “OK, this is where we’re going to come back to,” actually. And we normally go back to that city, or I take a vacation or something like that. If I had days off, then I’ll go to that place or something like that. But it’s not frequent when I can take two weeks off or something like that.

Audience Member

Is it a question of money, or I mean...?

Jeff Mills

No, at a certain point it’s got nothing to do with money. Time is so scarce.

Audience Member

And your time is money?

Jeff Mills

No. I have to be honest, at this point I don’t care about the money. I can think of many times where it would just be great to go home and watch TV. I mean, forget the money. I mean, at certain points.

Audience Member

Then why is it not possible? That is my question.

Jeff Mills

Because in a lot of cases, very nice people ask you to come and play because people really want you to come. And it’s hard to say no. It’s really hard to say no, especially if you run a label and the people want you to come because they like the musical on your label. It’s really hard. Carl Cox will tell you, it’s hard to say no. There is a sweet little girl on the phone and she’s like, “Come and play, and we’ll pay anything you want.” How can you say no?

[laughter]

So you go. From here to here to here. But in the end, it’s quite rewarding when you eventually go home, and you think about all the things that you’ve done and that you’ve seen. And one day, when it’s all over when I decide to quit, I think about the things that I’ve done... I have a lot of good memories. But yeah, I mean I could say OK, I’m not spinning for six months. I’m staying home. I’m making music, but it never works. I have tried to quit seven times ever since I started.

Audience Member

Do you actually have the feeling that you have been there, if you just came and played one night and then leave again?

Jeff Mills

For me, I have a tendency to forget that I’ve been there until I actually get there and I go, “Wow! I’ve been here before.” But the parties are never the same. It’s always different, the parties are always different. Every night is always different.

Audience Member

Can I ask another question?

Jeff Mills

No. [laughs]

Audience Member

But I do it anyway. Didn’t you say that you started out making disco or hip-hop or something like that?

Jeff Mills

Yeah, I tried to make hip-hop.

Audience Member

And how did you change from hip-hop to techno?

Jeff Mills

Well, I had always played techno. Part of my job on the radio was to find any in everything that was new. They actually gave me money to be able to go anywhere and find anything. It was amazing. So, these were like major radio stations, they were big stations and they were battling, so they didn’t have anything to loose. They gave me a budget, separate studio, with production, it was crazy. And because I had to go out and find everything that was new, techno was one of the things. So I would play that along with hip-hop, and it was just my job to find anything. So I discovered MC 900 Ft Jesus and all these groups from Texas and a lot of different alternative music that I found during that time and I played it on the radio. It wasn’t a particular type of sound, I just played everything mixed together.

Audience Member

Then you decided that you want to do techno.

Jeff Mills

As I got older, it was hip, techno was really hip. Well, I started partying at a very early age, like 10 or 11. Like, every week. In Detroit you could actually do that. There were like three or four parties that you could go to. Of course, you would have your parents drive you around, but there were parties that you could go to at an early age. I learned party culture at a very early age. How to go to a party, how to talk to a girl, how to dance, what is good music, what is really good, at a really early age. Maybe I noticed that techno was really progressive. It was much different, you had to have a certain type of mind to be into it. I thought out that was for me, so I faded out of the hip-hop. And, actually, I really liked hip-hop because I liked the tricks, the DJs. I didn’t really care for the rapper what they were saying, like Kurtis Blow. It was the DJ culture that I really liked in the hip-hop culture, breakdancing, things like that and b-boy stance and all of that. The rap, I didn’t particularly care for. So I kind of faded out of the hip-hop thing and got more into techno. And there were more techno records coming, and I knew all the people that were making them. I had met Juan through another friend and I began to know them better.

Audience Member

And you stuck to the techno thing, or you mentioned that you...?

Jeff Mills

Yeah. In my early twenties I had decided this is it. This is the type of music that I wanted to play. I played house music, too, because that was the most music that you would hear in Detroit and Chicago and in New York, so it was kind of like between techno and house music. And then, in my late twenties I just decided, techno was it. I don’t care if the music changed, this is the music that I want to make, this is the music that I want to stay with, to marry, forever. And maybe four years ago the trend changed, I’m sure you remember, when house music became much more popular. So a lot of people in Detroit changed suddenly to house music. I stayed the same. I think that’s maybe how I got a little bit further in being known in techno. Because it changed, Carl started making much more house music type things, the Transmat sound kind of faded away and things like that. I knew that I should just stay focused no matter what happens.

Audience Member

With damage in your ears, do you have problems when you make tracks?

Jeff Mills

Nope. I don’t think so. Maybe the high end. Well, in my studio I have Alesis [monitors], the Pro 1s, which aren’t excessive on high end anyway. So they are very flat monitors and they only give you a little bit of high end. So I also use some small Cube speakers. So I can’t really tell the way that my monitor system at home is set up. Where I can kind of detect it is when I send the DAT or the CD off to be mastered, then I compare the sample that he made compared to the actual master. Then I can tell the difference between how much high end that I thought that I heard that I didn’t.  Yeah, it’s a loss of high end, especially in this ear [indicates right ear]. Yeah, but I don’t think it’s as much, but it’s definitely something.

Audience Member

But not a big problem?

Jeff Mills

No, I can still hear. Where, if you hear me DJing and the mix goes off, it’s not because I can’t hear. At times, if the monitor system is not very good, when you get into really bass-y records, the low end becomes mushy, and you can’t distinguish of what the bassline in this record is and that one is. So they have this tendency to each fall off. So you have to listen to the highs to be able to keep the beat. If this should ever happen to me, it’s because I lost concentration. That’s usually where the record goes off-beat because I’m thinking of something else, but my mind is on the third turntable and it goes off. It’s not because I can’t hear.

Audience Member

I’m just wondering, because you’re one of the so-called megastars of techno business.

Jeff Mills

That’s another question!

You’re one of the guys that shows that it’s really a goal to achieve, for a kid, they see you spinning and they say, “OK, I want to be a DJ. I want to get my money from DJing and producing records,” which is like, especially nowadays a hard job to establish yourself in that scene. What would you say to those kids? Like, imagine you would be like a big basketball star and you would be sitting in front of some not grown-ups basketball players thinking of going pro.

Jeff Mills

I think it varies from person to person so I can only answer for myself.

Torsten Schmidt

Is that like a serious goal to achieve or would you say finish your [school]?

Jeff Mills

You know, when I was younger, I had this goal, it was a silly goal, but I had anyway, it was to be the best DJ in America. I was 17 years old, so I had this determination to be able to learn all the tricks that I could. I did, I learned everything. How to spin behind my back, you know, the feet, the toes, everything, how to break the record down into syllables, and also too, there’s one thing you should know: Some things I was taught, from some of the friends of my older brother, they actually took me, snuck me in through the back door until we’d get to the booth, and they literary said, “OK, there’s the crowd, here’s the box of records. Watch me and this is what you’re going to have to do.” So they taught me how to be able to read the crowd, how to be able to anticipate, when you can see the crowd is getting tired and things like that and how to break it down. So I always kept that with me, even until today, I constantly watch the crowd. So other than the fact that I had a silly idea when I was younger, I never really took it seriously, I never considered myself like a professional DJ until my late twenties.

Torsten Schmidt

You’re not one of those guys that, just like Mr. Sven Väth used to say, “Close to backdoor and there is no way back.”

Jeff Mills

No, I don’t have a clue why I’m doing this.

Audience Member

So you’re just going to get on the road and spinning again, but you don’t know why exactly?

Jeff Mills

I don’t know why. No. I just have to assume, that when I’m 80 years old, I’ll be able to answer that.

Audience Member

Compared to a professional sports player, tennis, basketball or whatever, it’s almost the same from what you’re saying. It’s not that rock & roll image, that you want to be a superstar.

Jeff Mills

No, I wanted to be an architect. I always had this inner drive, I think, to... I always had this idea that like, “OK, this is the way that we should all listen to music, this is the way that music should be received.” It’s kind of strange, because I don’t have a specific way that, it should just being perceived, just in general. That’s music. It’s this ideology that I have, that keeps this drive going over and over again. I probably will never ever reach this point, I’ll probably never think that, “OK, we’re finally here.” So, it’s that that keeps me going. Why? I don’t know. What pushes it? Why I do so many parties? I don’t know, I know it’s for something. But what, I don’t know. Because the music is still new. New markets are still opening, and new DJs are still coming, and new labels are still coming. Companies are coming and new situations are opening up, that... It just keeps expanding, so... The road becomes even longer. I hope I can stay on the road and stay focused and not stray away from what my goal is. What it is, I don’t know, but I know it’s there. This is the direction I should go.

Audience Member

Where do you see the future as a DJ, in the next few years? Maybe we come in a big town in a club with high technology and you have no records, just discs, there are sampling computers in there. Is this a way, maybe?

Jeff Mills

I think that maybe there might be... Because, I can imagine that there might be a lot of people that like the way it feels to be able to be in the middle of a dancefloor, surrounded by 200 people. But, they don’t want to be bothered to actually take the time to get in their car, get dressed, go to the party, and then actually deal with that. But they would love to feel this way. So, very far into the future, I can imagine simulations of that, really vivid simulations of that, to be able to actually stand in the middle of a Tribal Gathering [festival]-type situation, but you never left your living room. Or maybe the idea of being able to emulate the sound of a particular person might be enhanced. For instance, there might be a computer program called, “Jeff Mills.” In the program, there are characteristics of the things that I normally do in mixing a record. The person actually has the option to be able to put this character on this particular track, to have it do these things, or the way that I mix. Or you can actually take this program and put this on these group of records and sit back and watch this program mix these records the way that I would normally do, or Sven [Väth] would normally do it. So, the things remain the same, but they become more enhanced. The options become more, I think. Those type of things. For instance, studio equipment that you don’t touch, but you think about. And it works. Or... Many, many, many different... The situation of ISDN becoming airborne, there are no wires attached, to some type of program. I’m actually able to make the track with someone just here. Or, we can actually hear someone spin in Cleveland or something like that. I can imagine those type of things coming into play. Of course, DJing a party and not even being there, holographs and those type of things. We’re trying really hard now, we’re doing simulcasts, some person is in another country and there’s a big screen, or something like that, and you actually hear the sound in real time and things like that. We’re trying really hard to make those things happen, and to make those things more frequent. But as computers become more [advanced], we can apply them.

Audience Member

You’re not fed up with it, right?

Jeff Mills

Yep basically, yeah.

[laughter]

Audience Member

OK, what would you do after you stopped spinning?

Jeff Mills

I had this big plan to eventually finish all four of the labels that consist of Axis... [inaudible] ...To, of course, stop spinning, be able to stay home with my wife and my children, and to continue to make music whenever I want, or to go out to play and DJ whenever I want. And to administrate and watch all this music that I made over all those years, or maybe do really do really special things like that. Still stay in the music industry. For me, it’s just a comfortable life, you know? To be maybe more instrumental in advancing the music in terms of like an art form, things like that. After spending so many years and time dedicated to it, it would be crazy to ignore it and walk away and say, “OK, I’m finished. I’ll leave it to someone else,” you know. To watch all the things that I’ve done, in addition to new things. And I can see that it actually, may be possible to do that. Like I said, the music is still quite new. The whole structure of it is quite new. Maybe 35, 36, 37 might be maybe the oldest age, so it’s my generation that will probably lay the groundwork for many other DJs and record producers to come. So it’s really important that we do things, for instance, like the exhibition that I’m doing now. It’s just another way to be able to advertise, from a different perspective, the same thing. It’s a purpose-maker thing, but it’s just from a different perspective, using a different format. So my ideal is that other people can actually use the same idea to promote a different idea. It’s just an example that it could be done. And me and other people we have the same ideal. We need to be able to do as many things as possible. Just so that, we can say that it’s been done and other people can use them as well.

Audience Member

Do you think politics should stay out of music?

Jeff Mills

In some cases. And in some cases no. I think because the message of music can be so strong. If the message is positive, or say, for instance, the message is to promote more open thinking, yeah, I think music is actually a perfect vehicle to... For instance, to try to explain the idea that it’s not a question of this or that. But, it’s everything in between. Or, no, that’s the grey area. Music is the perfect example. Basic Channel is a perfect example. It’s not house, it’s not techno, it’s something between. It’s good, so then you begin to ask the question, “Does it really matter what’s it’s really categorized as?” In the end, no. It’s just good. Those types of things, we’re beginning to learn. Like, where you’re from, how old you are, what it’s called; in the end, it really doesn’t matter. I’m originally from Detroit, I lived in New York and Berlin, and now I live in Chicago and in London. So, what types of music do I make?

Torsten Schmidt

[to participants]

Ich denke an der Stelle können wir das langsam dem Ende zuführen. Ich denke, wir danken ihm... [I think at this point in time we can lead this to an end. Let’s thank him...]

Dismissed for today.

Jeff Mills

Ah! The end.

[applause]