JEFF MILLS

Deeply inhabited by science-fiction, DJ, producer, and artist Jeff Mills adopts its ideas, concepts, stories, and aesthetics from the outset. For him, Space is an obsession and his music almost becomes a musical science-fiction. Conquering space, his music embodies the future while both respecting the past and remaining well into the present. When he founded his own record label Axis in 1992—a logo consisting of four triangles pointing to an invisible center—Mills took the rotating principle of the solar system as aesthetics, concept, and model for creativity. From the beginning, his first releases explore futuristic and science-fiction topics such as “Mutant theory,” “Tomorrow,” “Art / UFO,” “Time Machine,” and “Alpha Centauri”. For Jeff Mills, the future is a powerful creative drive that explains the artist’s ceaseless activity.

The 2000s, a turning point in Mills’s artistic career.

Jeff Mills has never wallowed in his DJ status and has kept on multiplying outstanding performances. When creating Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” soundtrack in 2000, Jeff Mills re-engages with his prime inspiration made of utopia, futuristic thought, and a real passion for the extraordinary worlds and scenarios offered by science-fiction. He is the master of extraordinary scenarios and borrows from science fiction the common man’s notion of Tomorrow. In 2001, he conceived “Mono,” a monolithic sculpture and installation inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s film “2001: A Space Odyssey” which was exhibited at the CCCB Museum during Sónar Festival in Barcelona.

Mills keeps on fusing his love for music and image. Reframing his extraordinary DJing skills in 2004, he released “The Exhibitionist,” a series of real-time, unedited films capturing Mills in creative DJ motions. A multi-angle filmed collection of DJ sets allowing him to approach video production while beautifully complementing his art form on the turntables. In 2005, he released AX039 “Expanded” with the consciousness of creating for future generations, as opposed to creating for now. Expanding his mind became more important than the music production itself, and he took a strong interest in things that would provoke and question his thoughts about The Future. Science-fiction being one of them.

“Sleeper Wakes” – a science fiction series.

The Wizard likes to take his inspiration from the little music of the cosmos and keeps his head well ahead, in the stars. Since 2006, Jeff Mills has created and written a story of the life and obscure times of a fictional character that would eventually be called The Sleeper. With each chapter of the evolving story, the character gets increasingly deeper into plots that have so far traveled the universe in search of new worlds (“Sleeper Wakes”), contracted an unknown virus resulting in controlling electricity (“The Power”), to the end of humans (“The Messenger”), and the eternal search for purpose and meaning (“The Jungle Planet”). In 2013, Jeff Mills collaborated with Japanese astronaut Dr. Mamoru Mohri and released the album “Where Light Ends,” inspired by Mohri’s first trip into space, aboard the Endeavour Space Shuttle in 1992. “Emerging Crystal Universe,” released in September 2014 as a limited object of art, is the 8th chapter of this series, and the 9th chapter, “Free Fall,” announcing a cosmic menace, is out in June 2016. To be continued.

Cinemix

After the “Metropolis” soundtrack as mentioned above, Jeff Mills was involved in numerous film soundtrack projects, collaborating with the Cinémathèque Française and the Cité de la Musique in Paris, which included his unique cine-mix performances of “Cheat” (Cecil B. DeMille), “October” (Sergei Eisenstein), “Fantastic Voyage” (Richard Fleischer), “Études sur Paris” (André Sauvage), and “Woman In The Moon” (Fritz Lang).

“Space is our destiny so let the punishment begin.”

In 2009, Jeff Mills presented “The Trip” in London. With his science-fiction fascination, Jeff Mills pursued his work on images started in 2000 and offered a sound and image mix, inviting the audience to a fully sensorial experience. “The Trip” explores how humans will endure the mental and physical constraints of traveling through Outer Space in order to discover the Unknown. Mixing live more than fifty science-fiction movie extracts (from the 1920s to the 1970s), following the same principles as DJing, Jeff Mills invited the audience to enter a pulsating atmosphere of the abnormal… Psychedelic meets electronic.

During Autumn 2013, Jeff Mills presented his first solo show as a contemporary artist entitled “Centrifugal Force” at La Passerelle Saint-Brieuc, where he developed the concept of infinite spiral motion through various sound and visual installations. In the meantime, he presented “Chronicles of Possible Worlds” at the prestigious Vasarely Foundation, a 7-hour performance based on the exploration of exoplanets, in collaboration with the astrophysics laboratory of Marseille.

Time Tunnel experience

“Time Tunnel” is an all-night-long DJ set with special surprises and attractions. Based on the American science-fiction TV show “The Time Tunnel” (produced by Irwin Allen in the ’60s), Jeff Mills creates a sound, visual, and performance odyssey that pulls the dancing audience back and forth in time through a simulated visual Time Machine to explore the past, present, and future of music. Time Tunnel has visited several cities such as Paris, Nantes, and Strasbourg. The last performance of “Time Tunnel” happened in Amsterdam in October 2015 during ADE Festival.

In 2014, Jeff Mills partnered with French filmmaker Jacqueline Caux to create “Man From Tomorrow.” This film is more a portrait of Jeff Mills’s music than the man himself. A wandering, poetic, and sensitive portrait, graphic and musical, full of filmmaker Jacqueline Caux’s intimate perception of the futuristic sounds of the DJ/producer. The Louvre Museum hosted the Premiere showing of “Man from Tomorrow”.

The Louvre Museum residency

Thereafter, he was commissioned by the Auditorium of The Louvre to be the 9th resident artist of “Duos Éphémères” for the year 2015, a program of 4 different shows mixing music, film, and dance. At the same time, Mills worked closely with choreographer Michel Abdoul on an original performance entitled “2001: The Midnight Zone,” paying tribute once again to Kubrick’s masterpiece “2001: A Space Odyssey,” shown at La Cité de la Musique in May 2015.

Classical performances

Jeff Mills has collaborated with symphonic orchestras for many years and was the first DJ to perform and capture it on DVD for a wider audience. It all began with the Montpellier National Orchestra in 2005 at Le Pont du Gard, France. The piece was called “Blue Potential” and had been arranged for orchestra by the young French composer Thomas Roussel. In 2012, Jeff Mills played a new version of this orchestral project, now called “Light from the Outside World”. Several concerts were scheduled across the world in the following years. In 2013, Jeff Mills presented a new piece called “Where Light Ends”. A third project, inspired by Holst’s “The Planets,” premiered in 2015. All these performances have consistently been sold-out shows. This shows that techno fans have been waiting for such opportunities, alongside the fact that classical audiences can discover new music.

Recent releases

Almost ten years after the successful “The Exhibitionist,” Jeff Mills revealed “Exhibitionist 2” in September 2015, in which he goes even deeper into the art form to display not only how he uniquely mixes music, but how he thinks in real time to create and work spontaneously like a musician playing an acoustic instrument or a soloist thinking of rhythms on the fly.

This was followed by “Kobe Session,” a special improvisational performance created by Jeff Mills for the Exhibitionist 2 DVD project. Along with 3 other musicians, their objective was to create, shape, and perform compositions in front of a live audience setting. Debuting in Tokyo in September 2015, a live recording was captured in Kobe, Japan, and a vinyl was released in May 2016.