Here is part 3 of our radio transcription of an interview Jeff Mills gave to RBMA. You can check out parts 1 and 2 here. You can listen to the radio show in full here or download it here. The accompanying tracklist is as follows:
Jeff Mills – Landscape (Utopian Dream) – Tresor
Jeff Mills – Blue Print – Tresor
Underground Resistance – Eye of the Storm – Underground Resistance
Underground Resistance – Predator – Underground Resistance
Underground Resistance – Base Camp Alpha 808 – UR
Underground Resistance – Final Frontier – Underground Resistance
X-101 – G-Force – Tresor
X-102 – Ground Zero (The Planet) – Tresor
X-102 – The Rings Of Saturn – Underground Resistance
Jeff Mills – Perfecture (Somewhere Around Now) – Tresor
Jeff Mills – The Bells – Axis
Jeff Mills – Transformation B (Rotwang’s Revenge) – Tresor
Jeff Mills – Robot Replica – Tresor
Click the vinyl sticker pictures to hear the tracks.
Life in the Jeff-set
We started with Saturn, we chose it mainly because of the physical aspects of the planet, in that it resembled a record. We were interested in using very small things to relay certain messages so the label design was used as the main part of the explanation of the release and the music would explain or support it – in the grooves. So the Rings of Saturn was a perfect release. The rings, like a tree when you cut it open and look a the rings of time it tells the history of the tree itself. We looked at the planet as the rings telling the history of it. Months and months of research about the planet, and then we began production in the summer of 1992. From X-101 we learned that each of us have a very unique way of producing music. We designated who would do what for that particular release. Rob didn’t have that much experience at the time. He had set up a small studio in the corner he had very small pieces of equipment but very interesting sounds. So we designated that he produce very simple, very minimal type of tracks. Mike would produce more orchestrated strings because he could player better than both of us. And my job would be to have the more experimental parts. We would put all these things together and that would be the album. X-102 would be something we always wanted to finish we never thought that we ever finished that release. So that brings us to the year 2009 so we decided to go back and revisit it, update the album and create a performance.
Ring ding
I got an offer to move to New York as a resident DJ at a couple of clubs. Part of the deal of my moving to New York was that I would have to have an office so that I could run the label from there. When I moved and realized that Mike did not want to bring UR to New York, I had all these resources – and office, telephone, all these free things that this club had given me. With all this I should start a label myself! After a few months of thinking about it and thinking about the type of music I would like to do I came up with the idea of Axis. Until then the music was very song structured so you would have the introduction and bridge, even though they were instrumentals you got the idea that if someone was to sing on top of these songs that would be OK, they were structured in that way. So I thought that being a DJ it would be great to produce music that was more simplified so that you could manipulate it more. By limiting how layered the tracks would be – it would be better. Back then as DJs we used to really seek out dub versions and instrumental versions so that we could extend and create our own songs. I thought that producing in this way would set a tone with DJs. It was always my intention to make a label where the music was more simple, easy for the DJ to play and program. I asked Rob who was recording on his own label in Detroit, if he would do the first recording on the label jointly with me. It was called Tranquilizer, it was so different it did not take off so well. The second release which was Inner Sanctum by Rob only, did a little bit better as it was more danceable. By the third release which was Step To Enchantment, the Mecca EP, things began to take off, at that time.
Mecca steps
The label Purpose Maker was created soon after I had moved to Chicago from New York. I had no friends, I was basically alone, so I had plenty of time to produce a lot of music. I thought I can produce so much that it would be interesting to produce a case of records just for me. So records that were even mastered, pressed. But no one had any copies, I had all the copies. I had begun to make music just for me to play. Things like The Bells, Alarms, they were just for me. I had begun to play them as I was making this box, as I was playing them DJs were asking what these songs were. I got the indication that The Bells was something people really responded to and DJs wanted to have. So I said ok. Maybe I should make it available to release these tracks. That’s how I started the label Purpose Maker. Once I got he notion the DJs understood exactly what the music was for, and began to hear other producers and DJs try to emulate it. I thought the task is done, now I can move on to the next.
The bells, the bells!
Metropolis is an epic film by Fritz Lang that was produced in 1929, it’s become on of the most popular science fiction films of our time. There were many years that brought me to the point of working on that project. There were many discussions about how electronic music could play a role in cinema, where it might serve cinema the best and vice versa – what type of films it might work the best for. After so many discussions with so many people I thought that someone should do something, so I’ll try to produce an entire soundtrack for an entire film! Just to see what happens, even if it doesn’t turn out too well at least the news that I tried to do something, if that news got round to other producers, maybe it would give them some indication that somebody’s trying to do something to broaden and expand electronic music into different areas. So without permission from the film company I just went and bought a VHS tape of Metropolis, took notes, divided it into 12 different parts and produced music for each section. Many different versions for each section and chose one that would work. I went to an editing studio, taking the VHS tape and put the music that I produced to this tape. Then I began to search and find out who might have a contact to the film company in Munich that maybe IU could show this film to them of what I did and maybe that they would allow me to show it to other people. I did that, being lucky enough find a contact through Tresor Records in Berlin who knew someone who knew someone, who knew someone that worked at Transit Films in Munich. Luckily someone in that office was young enough, maybe an intern or something to know who I was as a DJ. They decided to say ok, they would give me rights to show the film for academic reasons, just for the example of putting electronic music to this film, we could have one of rights to show the film. That’s how the project came. That’s how I did it.
