11 OctOber 19-25, 2023 miaminewtimes.com | browardpalmbeach.com New Times | Contents | Letters | news | night+Day | CuLture | Cafe | MusiC | 11 Month XX–Month XX, 2008 miaminewtimes.com MIAMI NEW TIMES | CONTENTS | LETTERS | RIPTIDE | METRO | NIGHT+DAY | STAGE | ART | FILM | CAFE | MUSIC | WARM UP As techno legend Jeff Mills says, “Always play like it’s your last set.” BY DOUGLAS MARKOWITZ L ately, when Jeff Mills finds a break from his globe-trotting schedule as one of the most celebrated and in-demand DJs in the world, he comes home to Miami. The techno legend tends to be more as- sociated with Detroit, where he was born and be- came a one-time member of the epochal group Underground Resistance. He also lived in Chicago for many years in the ‘90s. But with Midwestern winters being what they are, and after many visits to Miami starting in the ‘90s, he and his wife eventually decided to move for good. “I found myself spending more time here than actually in Chicago,” he says from his home in Mi- ami Beach. “We’ve been here for about for about seven years now.” Legendary musicians moving to Florida isn’t anything new. Iggy Pop, a fellow Michigander, lives in South Florida. But both artists tend to keep to themselves and rarely perform in the area. It’s what makes both of their upcoming sets at III Points, taking place October 20-21 at Mana Wynwood, so thrilling. Few figures are as legendary in the techno genre as Mills, whose influential DJing style is ac- claimed the world over. Even his gear setup — four turntables or CDJs and a Roland TR-909 drum ma- chine — is famous and well-studied. The DJ got his start on local radio in Detroit, playing a mix of genres that included hip-hop, synthpop, and tech- no’s early generation under the name “the Wizard.” Eventually, a stint in Underground Resistance, the collective that blended the hard, mechanical, yet still funky sound of Detroit techno with radi- cal, anti-corporate politics, shifted him toward the style he became famous for and defined in the ‘90s. Minimal yet expansive, surgical instead of brutal, and always full of forceful vitality, he mixes fast and doesn’t settle on any one track for long. And yet, he’s rarely seen at home. Techno may have been invented in Detroit, where he and other early DJs like Juan Atkins of Cybotron be- gan listening to and making futuristic music in or- der to escape the economic and social breakdown of the city’s industrial decline. But outside of America, especially in Europe and the UK, the culture surrounding dance music has grown and sustained itself to a much deeper ex- tent. The sheer amount of clubs, festivals, and other venues outside of the U.S. keeps Mills and other DJs “really, really, really, really busy.” Mills himself lives in Paris part-time just to keep up with bookings on the continent. “America embraced it, but not in the same way as outside the country,” he explains. “There are of- fers but not to the amount and level of outside the country, so that actually keeps me away from the U.S. most of the year. And I only really get just a few opportunities to come back to the U.S. throughout the year, and this has been going on for decades.” Witnessing a DJ set from Jeff Mills in Miami is a rare chance to watch a true master of the form at work in a place he rarely plays. But seeing him per- form is well worth traveling for. Earlier this year, I traveled to Amsterdam to see him play with the jazz band Tomorrow Comes the Harvest. The band was started by Mills and his friend Tony Allen, the Nigerian drummer famous for his work with Fela Kuti. When Allen died in 2020, Mills resolved to carry the band on in his spirit. The current ensem- ble includes French-Indian percussionist Prabhu Edouard and Guyanese keyboardist Jean-Phi Dary, along with other guest musicians and Mills playing percussion and programming the TR-909. “Before I had started DJing, I was trying to be a musician, a jazz drummer. And I don’t think I ever lost that sense or wish to become that, even throughout the ‘90s as a techno DJ,” he says. “I still wanted to play with other musicians, and if not play with them, then at least have conversa- tions with them, to work together to make certain things happen.” Mills’ project stems from these desires. He found himself wanting to blend his techno exper- tise with live instrumentation “to a point where there’s no compromising, where the musicians don’t have to tie themselves to a MIDI clock or some type of tempo that’s generated by a com- puter.” He wanted to work with musicians he could converse with in both the musical sense while performing and in a more literal sense. He looks for musicians who are “great talkers and al- ways have something to add or something to say.” “The more conversation we have, the more we get to know each other, the more interesting our performances become,” he says. “And this comes from my interactions and relationship with Tony Allen. Before performances, during rehearsals, whenever we would meet, we would often dive into these very, very long, complex types of con- versations about just everything. And then, just moments up until we take the stage, we’re still talking even as we’re walking onto the stage, and then when we get behind our instruments, it’s just an extension of that.” It may not seem like it relates much to electronic music. But in both Mills’ DJ sets and his work with Tomorrow Brings the Harvest, one can sense a certain indescribable feeling in both the performers and the enraptured audience. In interviews, Mills sometimes describes his experience DJing as something like an out-of-body experience or a fugue state he doesn’t come out of until he’s back in his hotel. That embrace of an otherworldly, communal spirit that only music can provide comes out in our conversation when he encourages fellow DJs to “always play like it’s your last set.” “It’s not about the audience, and it’s not about yourself; it’s about it. Right? It is it that is the rea- son why the people are there, and you became a DJ, to be the transfer of it,” Mills explains. “The in- dustry of dance music and the financial part of dance music often becomes this obstacle and makes people believe that you have to be a cer- tain thing or do a certain thing in order to be rec- ognized, which is true to a certain extent. But the most important thing is about the atmosphere that a DJ is going to create — and not by dancing around, but what they’re going to do with the music. And if you are serious about that, and you don’t compromise, and you try not to be intimi- dated by it, and you stay focused, and you just concentrate, then you will begin to see why. I mean, really, truly begin to understand why this music is so special and why you should always take it very seriously. When people give you a few moments of their time for you to play music for them, you should always respect that.” Oh, and one more thing. “Listen to other forms of music. Simple as that. Listen to as many different types of music as possible, then you’ll realize how unique electronic music is.” III Points 2023. Friday, October 20, and Saturday, October 21, at Mana Wynwood, 2217 NW Fifth Ave., Miami; iiipoints.com. Tickets cost $169 to $599 iiipoints.frontgatetickets.com. [email protected] Sbtrkt Once a fixture of the early 2010s post- dubstep scene, where he performed in a series of African tribal masks, Sbtrkt gained acclaim for genre-defying tracks that spanned house, hip-hop, R&B, and pop. His work often featured high-pro- file collaborators such as Vampire Weekend and A$AP Ferg, and his debut album arguably launched his career and that of Sampha, now a much more fa- mous vocalist often seen as a British an- swer to Frank Ocean. He was silent for years following a 2016 mixtape, but ear- lier this year, he finally made his come- back with the ambitious new album The Rat Road. With tracks blending soulful vocals from George Riley, Teezo Touch- down, and others with strong orchestra- tion, the 22-song record’s size and breadth feels like a conscious attempt to make up for that long absence. Tiga and Hudson Mohawke Out of a few choice B2B sets at III Points this year, this pairing of Montreal stal- wart Tiga and Glaswegian great Hudson Mohawke. Both have paved truly unique paths through dance music. Tiga gained prominence in the bloghouse era of the late 2000s and garnered acclaim for his indelible take on house. HudMo, mean- while, gained acclaim for hyperactive trap-EDM in the wonky scene of the early ‘10s, worked on a Kanye track or two, and dropped his best album yet, the gloriously hyper Cry Sugar, last year. The two perform together under the name Love Minus Zero and have al- ready released a series of dreamy, eu- phoric tracks that culminate with an album, L’Ecstasy, later this year. On Fri- day, they’ll play a special, rave-inspired set at III Points under the Love Minus Zero moniker. Two Shell Britain seems to have a thing for pro- ducer/DJ duos, from Orbital in the ‘90s to Disclosure in the 2010s and Bicep and Overmono today. But the latest of these fearsome twosomes is the weird- est yet. Much like Daft Punk before them, Two Shell prefers to perform masked, but they’ve updated the Ro- bots’ melange of humanity and technol- ogy for a post-internet, post-PC Music generation. On glitchy tracks like “Dust,” they play with sound design to create a glitchy combination of techno and hyperpop that burrows into your head. They’ve also cultivated an intense online following through curated com- munities and sites like shell.tech, where passwords grant access to an archive full of tracks, mixes, and other goodies. They’re digital tricksters thriving in the places where online and real-life feel as one. But what happens when the URL meets IRL in their live performances? Only one way to find out. Be There! from p10 Photo by Jacob Khrist Techno legend and part-time Miami resident Jeff Mills will perform at III Points on Friday, October 20.
