Artist profile
About
Jeff Mills is a Detroit-born DJ, producer, composer and visual artist whose work helped define the language of techno while reaching into cinema, science fiction and contemporary art. In Detroit's early techno scene he became known as The Wizard, developing a famously precise, high-speed turntable style before co-founding Underground Resistance with Mad Mike Banks and Robert Hood. Mills later established Axis Records in 1992, an independent label whose four-triangle mark and futuristic catalogue gave his solo music a focused home and extended techno into an art-led practice. His records use repetition, machine rhythm and stark melodic detail, but his ideas have always moved beyond the club. In 2000 he created a new soundtrack for Fritz Lang's Metropolis, a project that grew into cine-mix performances for film institutions and festivals around the world. The Exhibitionist films document his live technique, while The Sleeper, Escape Velocity and related Axis projects turn space, technology and speculative fiction into recurring musical themes. Mills has also worked with orchestras, jazz musicians, filmmakers, choreographers and museums, including the Louvre, Barbican, Centre Pompidou and Cinémathèque Française. Collaborations such as Tomorrow Comes The Harvest and The Paradox show his interest in improvisation and cross-genre dialogue. He continues to release through Axis and perform internationally as a singular Detroit techno artist whose musical, visual and scientific interests remain inseparable.