Jeff Mills

GENERAL MILLS The techno tactician invades NYC.

“I’ve always tried to find ways to describe the music that I do, usually not very successfully,” Jeff Mills muses. “Dark? Not really. Utopian? I wouldn’t say that. Futuristic? In a certain way, a Futurist Manifesto sort of way, maybe.” For those thinking he’s referring to some Jetsonian, warm and fuzzy plan for things to come, think again—Mills, the leader of the Axis label and one of techno’s most revered figures, is referring to Italian writer Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s 1909 tract disavowing the old and embracing a destiny based on violent change, speed and machinery. (It’s probably no coincidence that Mills once composed a soundtrack for the dystopian silent film classic Metropolis.) That ethos is evident not only in his own productions, but in his mind-blowing DJ sets as well, and New Yorkers will be treated to an intimate night of the Detroit-born Mills’s sonic philosophy when he plays at Sullivan Room on Saturday 6 for Sleepy & Boo’s Basic NYC bash.

Mills, 45, is considered to be part of the second wave of Motor City techno artists, along with the likes of Carl Craig and “Mad” Mike Banks—he also worked as a quick-mixing radio jock at the influential station WJLB, a stint that earned him the nickname the Wizard—but his roots in music go farther back, to his days in the mid-’80s playing in industrial band the Final Cut. “Having been in that band has probably played as much or more of a role throughout my career than anything else,” Mills, who’s lived in Chicago since the early ’90s, admits. “It was through that genre that I really learned how to make music. The equipment that I bought, the way I programmed it, the types of sounds that I was trying to imitate, like pipe hits, certain string sounds…I still search out those sounds. I think that might help to explain why I’ve always been into the more experimental, darker shade of dance music. You always want to go back to what makes you feel most comfortable.”

Comfortable isn’t the first term that comes to mind when talking about Mills’s sound, one that can be both driving and harsh, and awe-inspiringly beautiful. “We take it for granted that music should make you feel positive,” he says, “but that’s not necessarily true. Music—music that you can dance to, as with any kind of music—can generate a whole range of reactions so I never believed that my music must make people feel good. A very stark track like [1994’s] ‘Growth,’ for instance—at the time, what I was trying to say was that perhaps we should consider some of the things that we’re doing, that we should look forward rather than stay with this very comfortable way we have of thinking about dance music. Whether someone even likes my music is not even in the equation. Once the record is out, people can choose for themselves.”

That attitude also informs his DJ sets, turbulent sessions of driving rhythms and machine-age melodies that may see Mills crosscutting through 70 records and CDs in the course of an hour. As one can imagine, perfection is not the goal. “Mistakes happen all the time!” he says. “I’ll be thinking about something so hard, or I’ll be searching for some piece of music and I’ll change my mind like four times, that the record that’s playing will just end. But mistakes are human, and a human is playing records for other humans, so it’s part of the process. It’s when you don’t hear mistakes, when you don’t hear a human—to me, that’s not very interesting.”

And, whether you dig his music or not, Mills is never boring—for a guy who’s been in the business for two decades, he still seems to enjoy exploring the inherent possibilities of his work. “One of the great things about electronic music is that what it’s supposed to be about was never pinned down,” he says. “Yeah, a lot of people assumed that it was this music that’s played late at night while lights are flashing, a very transient kind of sound. But really, it’s whatever you want it to be, and the freedom that we have in this genre is unlimited. I’ve always just let the music show me what it’s about. Some things work, some things don’t, but that’s how I have to go about it.”

Jeff Mills spins at Basic NYC Sat 6.

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