How many countries do I play in? I would guess it would be ... hmm ... well, I do on average 160 to 200 parties a year ... 40.
40 countries a year.
40 countries, yeah.
Quite a lot. Where’s your favourite place to play?
Ummm, there are a couple. Japan, there’s one. Italy, that’s another one. Switzerland.
Switzerland? That’s an odd choice.
Yeah, it is! I mean … well, come on, it’s not, I mean, they’re nice people.
(laughs)
But I’ve played in Switzerland for a long time, very quietly. It’s a very small country but I’ve had a long relationship with places like Zurich and Geneva and Lausanne and in Austria, places where I played when I first came to Europe. Places like Linz, and of course Vienna.
I just didn’t know Switzerland had a big techno scene.
Actually, it’s been quietly very consistent for, well, over a decade. You know, it just doesn’t have a large media like the UK or anything like that. So it’s a very quiet place, but it’s been consistent for the longest.
And why do you always play at Sónar?
Well, because I’m always asked. You have to get to be asked to come here. Well, I don’t know, you’d have to ask the organizers of Sónar. You know, I mean, to be asked you have to be involved in something and you have to be at a certain level of creation, so we’ve always made it a point to work on numerous projects that create new things and keep the DJ set up to a certain level, take chances and things like that, and I think the organizers recognize that.
Anzeige
I mean, they asked you, but you also have to accept.
(laughs again)
It’s come to a point now where we reserve the time. I think, not only that, but June is one of the months that we kind of take a break, or we do just a few …
And they love you here.
Well, and I love them.
When you started it was like, whoah! We were watching Jimmy Edgar before you and there was no-one there and then suddenly everybody just arrived! So, how’s Berlin’s techno scene?
It’s good. Berlin is one of the older markets, one of the most mature markets in Europe. I don’t want to say it’s the best, because there are places in Europe in very small towns that have incredible nights, you know, but it’s very, very, very active and very healthy.
But when you say this, what qualifies a really good night?
Anzeige
Umm, the makeup of the people, the relationship between the DJ ... You want everyone to have a consensus to what the night should equate to, and people, not just the DJ, but the audience works towards this active feeling or state. Scotland has a long history of the relationship between DJ and audience. And in many ways they push the DJ more and more and more …
I was wondering about that, because, I mean, when you’ve got sort of 8,000 people in front of you going nuts, and you’re trying to change like 70 records in an hour, like, are you concentrating really, really hard on the technicalities – because what you do is incredibly precise – or do you sort of interact with the audience at the same time?
Yeah, of course, yeah. Well, you take indications, you take signs from the audience based on the record you’ve just played, and what the reaction is. That determines the next few records that you’d want to play.
So your set isn’t planned beforehand?
No, no, because you can’t, no, you just can’t. You can’t plan it. You can only plan the first … I mean, logically, a good DJ only plans the first maybe ten minutes. I mean, after that you get all your cues and all your directions from the audience. So if you’re a DJ that has a set and you’re going to play this one then I think you’re not a very good DJ because you’re not taking into consideration the atmosphere and the audience and things like that.
Because, I mean, you change records at a considerable rate …
Well, well, I mean, with DJing at a much higher level, you know how to manipulate the situation, and, you know, I have three turntables, I have two CD players … We have a much more advanced way of playing. At times I don’t play the records as records. I play them as just, umm, sound tools. So I’m not grabbing the record because of the song structure, I’m grabbing the record because of frequencies this record has, and because I’m using three turntables mixing them all together to create one track. So it’s a much higher level of DJing. And that level unfortunately in most cases is not possible to have just with one record. You need three turntables to create this force, this thing …
Anzeige
The beat.
Yeah, this layering.
What do you think of European techno? And what are the differences between American techno and European techno? I mean, because you’ve been around since the beginning.
I mean, it takes on the influences of the people it’s made for. Umm, in America, when I do parties in America, I have to assume that the people I’m playing for, they have a lot of influences, just in general. Whether they like it or not, you hear hip hop, and you hear country, and you hear jazz, because this is the country that actually created it. So they have, I think Americans have a wider palate of influence. Their parents, how they grew up, where they get their influences from, has an important role as well, so I know that their parents probably used to go to discotheques, they probably were into jazz, maybe at college, when they were young, or their parents were musicians. On the other side, when I come to Europe, I know that it’s not as adept, and that music for a lot of people started at a particular time.
Do you mean dance music, or music in general?
Especially dance music. Yeah. It started at a certain level, so their influences don’t go as far back, or it’s not as wide.
Do you mean it’s not as sort of integrated into the general music culture?
Anzeige
Right, right. I mean, when I first went to Germany, back in 1990, we were asking the people we met: Where are the older DJs in Germany? Because in America, we were taught by older DJs. We were young, 17 years old, and this is the crowd and they’re your records and this is what you have to do. So when we went to Germany we were asking questions about where are the older DJs, we wanted to listen to older DJs, and they were like, there aren’t any.
That’s because they were all rock musicians.
Yeah. Yeah, and then DJ culture came and up came a lot of names like Westbam and Paul Van Dyke and all those DJs they started from a definite point.
There was a definite explosion.
So I think, I mean, I don’t want to say Americans have a larger capacity, but they have more history. So if I’m playing in New York, you’re never quite sure who’s going to walk through the door. It could be someone that used to party regularly at Studio 54 or at the Paradise Garage, that know the history of dance music as well as or maybe better than the DJ. So you really have to prepare for when you play in America.
So are you saying it’s harder to play in the US than in Europe? Or that you’re more free?
I don’t think that it’s harder but you should … In the times that I’ve played, you could play a much wider range of music. You could stop and play some Stevie Wonder and there will be a certain amount of people there who know
why
you’ve played it. Here, I think, it would be the opposite, I think a lot of people would figure he’s done something wrong here, that maybe he’s going to fit it back together or something, bring it in or something, you know, how did that record get in there?
(laughs)
And I’m not saying that one is better than the other, but here it’s just so embedded in the culture that people will allow you to go forward very slowly.
Anzeige
They want it very pure.
Yeah, they want it pure, which is great, which I think has saved dance music actually, if it weren’t for Europe, dance music would have died away, because in the American scene it was sort of, they let it …
Beginning to dissipate into…
It was being chipped away.
People can be very concentrated in a way. We have people here who’ll go to break beat nights and go, this is funky house, I’m not listening to this. Even in England a lot of the people I know are musical fascists, they’ll be like "I want it in a certain beat per minute range".
Right, so in a lot of ways it’s helped the progression of that particular style because now you have people that support it. Whereas in America we’ve got MTV and things like that and popular culture and it’s not so happening.
OK. The music that you make is very precise, very ordered, quite sort of obsessive and relentless. How is that matched in your personality?
Anzeige
Well, because I think, the way I look at music is the same way that I look at communication. So if I’m speaking to you and I’m speaking with logic and direction, it’s important that you understand what I’m trying to say. So music is no different. So it’s really important to make it very precise and to only say what is necessary, to make sure that those words or notes are very firm so that you understand it. So I would think as a composer it should become easier to digest, easier for one to understand, if it’s very simple. And I’m not confusing the communication, so I have the opportunity to be able to leave those things out in the studio and only present the things I really want to say in a fashion that you will have more chance to understand it. So DJing is the same. Everything that I play, there is a reason why I’m playing it, even if some of the records – well, a lot of the records – that I carry with me are not hit records. But they all serve a purpose. They set the audience up for something that they will react to.
When you say "set it up", I mean, because you say you’re not planning, do you have a curve when you do a set, a flow, a way of getting up and down?
Sure, because I’m pacing the audience and I don’t want the audience to get too excited too quickly. Because I need to pace them, so you, you know, you hold back. Because I could make the first record just be a bomb, you know, and all the records could be a bomb, one right after the other. But it’s better to create a transition and grow and grow and grow, so you create a different sort of equation. So using certain records I can make the audience wonder what is coming next, based on, by doing an act of certain things. So I can create complete curiosity, thus meaning that people are vulnerable to anything. So after a while you know these tricks, I suppose, or you know …
… ways to build the pressure.
Right. So I can use silence, you know, and then you can allow the people to hear how quiet they really are, and as a result how alone they are in this sea of people, you have and things like that, and you know, you develop these tricks.
Um, you’ve talked in other interviews about techno as a means of communicating between people, as a means of bringing people together. What is it about techno that can cause people to communicate and unite?
Well I mean, well, in the past, there, you know, techno, house music has been used as a tool to be able to express the voice of … you know, rave, rave culture. So acid house, for one, and house music, and you know I think that at times music is used as a weapon, it’s used as a tool, and, um, well, I mean, everyone has their own objective. Why they listen to it, why they play it, why they go to places where other people like it as well, because they want to associate with like-minded types of people or the way people look, they want to be part of the … it’s a social preference, and I would think that most people think this music signifies a certain kind of mentality, a level of awareness to technology and how that makes up the soundtrack for their social life, and things like that.
Anzeige
But you wouldn’t normally think – well,
I
wouldn’t think – of techno as being the number one music for getting people together. You have all these songs where it’s not like a song where everyone can hug and things.
True. Well, I mean, it really defines a culture. And you have some people that do not want that type of deeper love, you know, something reminiscent of the Bee Gees and sexy and things like that, they want things that are more thought provoking, they want more by saying less. They want to be alone, they want to experience things with 3,000 people but they want to be alone. They all want the experience. So I think that’s how …
So it’s like a personal, individual path, which is enjoyed by thousands of people at the same time?
Well, I think electronic music has always been more towards the, you know, the figure of one, more so than the many.
Is this why it doesn’t have lyrics?
Um, that has helped, well, that kind of fuelled the direction of it. If there are no lyrics then you can make up your own meaning. You can decide your own perspective of what the record is trying to say, reinforcing this idea of being open …
You’ve done a lot of work recently with audio-visual projects. Like when I saw you in February there was a big white Jeff Mills behind you sort of playing(he laughs)and you’ve done some film soundtracks and things like that. How do you feel about using audio-visual technology? Do you not worry that it will sort of reduce that personal abstraction. Do you know what I mean? Because personally, for me, when I’m listening to techno it’s very much about going on your own journey: whatever colours, whatever shapes, whatever forms it suggests to you, are suggested purely by the music. Do you not worry that when you start to play big images as well you’re attaching something concrete to that music?
Anzeige
Well, that’s the idea. I think that we’ve worked a lot with the idea of focusing on just sound. I think that we’ve reached the point where we can get beyond that now. The position of electronic music is safe. There has been a new force, people
have
made it known that they like it, there’s a fascination there, so to stay there is not very helpful. So to go beyond that, to begin to show more of what you’re actually looking into, should create a better understanding. And I think that we’ve been able to tap into more and more senses, not just hearing, but actually seeing, smelling, feeling, and that should enhance the overall understanding of it.
But don’t you worry that it will take away that level of personal …
No, no, I think people have a greater capacity than what we’ve been giving them. People are not bipolar. They have the ability to look at things and still imagine. Most of us look at TV all the time anyway, we look and we understand, so we’re already conditioned to understand by seeing, anyway. So we’re just using what’s already there. And I’m sure it won’t stop, it’ll continue.
Where is it going to go next?
I have a sense that because of the direction in which things are going now, everything is, or feels, more personalised. So technology is making our world more personalised. And I would think that the club atmosphere, club life, should eventually go in that direction. That it probably won’t be enough to just stand there and experience someone performing on stage or DJing, surrounded by people. You probably will want to experience all of the aspects of the situation, in other words, how the DJ is feeling, what his senses are.
Do you think that’s why there are more and more cameras showing people’s hands?
Yeah, because I think it’s an attempt to try to explain to the audience what the artist is doing and what makes him special from the next person. And that will probably grow more and more as the genre becomes older and things should become more interesting and people want to know why it’s becoming more interesting, why these people are doing such things. And there’s more and more information, different camera angles, more virtual reality, interviewing … media should become better over time, the questions should become more interesting.
Anzeige
Do you think that we’re reaching the limits of what you can do with turntables and CD players?
That’s a difficult question because technology, unfortunately, plays a greater role in the creation of music these days. I’m not exactly sure how to answer that.
Why are you saying "unfortunately"?
Because it allows less time to problem-solve in electronic music. A lot of the history of electronic music was basically based on problem-solving. How could I use multiple machines, all ensynched to play together to give you the feeling that you’re listening to an orchestra? So they created midi and special kinds of synchs to push it together. And then it reached a point where the discovery became more important than the original idea. So you have a lot of music now that isn’t designed to say anything. It’s just what the machines produced, with a little help of the producer. Which then kind of makes all, a lot of music sound the same, because they’re all using the same programme, which has certain rhythms. So I think it’s the proportion. It’s great to have so many options, but it’s not a good thing to depend so much on those options. You know there are artists who have literally based their whole career on certain software programmes. That’s what they’ve become famous for. That’s a very generic way of approaching music, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way.
You worked with the Montpellier National Orchestra last year, didn’t you?
Yes.
I was really curious, when you could technically and in theory have a whole orchestra in your computer, how was it to work with a real orchestra? What’s the challenge?
Anzeige
Technically it was basically the same way. Instead of programming a machine, it’s sheet music. So you alter the sheet music as you would alter the pattern, and that’s what the musicians would play. It was basically the same. The only difference is that in the protocol of an orchestra you have very little contact with the individual musician, because you have to speak to the composer or to the conductor to be able to communicate. I can’t walk up to the violinist and say: "Look, can you play this part a little bit funkier?"
(laughs)
Whereas with a machine you just shuffle and it’s there! But you programme the musicians the same way you would programme the machine.
So would you want to return to using more instrumental music, like an orchestra?
Yeah, I would love to experiment more, to modify the situation. Now that we’ve done it, enhancing the situation, making the musicians do things that perhaps they don’t want to do, the same way a machine was designed to do …
What’s next?
We work on many different … well, there’s another film project with the Tate Modern in London, for an event in June next year, and I’ve been asked to recompose the soundtrack for the movie "Things to Come". There’s another conceptual residency that we’re doing in Japan in the month of October, called "One Man Spaceship". It’s based on one person with no compromise exploring new ideas, the new thing. So the whole residency is based on a single person. That’s the theme but the people that we’re inviting to perform are … not … which is single people (29.35). We’re asking people like Richard James, Aphex Twin, a guy from Berlin whose name is
(???), Tenechi
…
(His manager looks at him intently.)
Yes, but it’s not confirmed yet, so …
(embarrassed silence)
. But it’s people that have approached … It’s more of a soul-searching kind of thing. And there’s Sónar Japan, that will happen the first week of October, … another performance with an orchestra, and …
What’s your favourite song in the mornings? What does Jeff Mills listen to when he gets up in the mornings and brushes his teeth.
Anzeige
There isn’t one. No, I don’t think I have one. No.
What sort of things do you listen to when it’s not techno?
Ah, everything. I listen to the radio a lot. It depends where I am. If I’m in the office, I’m listening to demos, if I’m at home, the radio is on, in the car it’s the radio, disco, funk, soul, jazz, it depends, it varies.
What’s your earliest musical memory?
Chubby Checker. My mother used to listen to Chubby Checker when she’d vacuum and clean the house. Yeah, Chubby Checker. The guy who used to do the twist. Yeah, yeah.
