I recently caught up with visionary Detroit techno producer Jeff Mills. You can read the result of our meeting in issue 127 of Electronic Sound magazine.
Mills earned himself the nickname 'The Wizard' when he rose to prominence in the so-called "second wave" of Detroit techno. He co-founded the influential techno collective Underground Resistance, and he's been putting out stuff on his own Axis Records for well over 30 years,
He has produced techno scores for numerous old films, perhaps most notably for Fritz Lang's Metropolis. He's collaborated with NASA and made a black hole-themed cosmic opera. He's basically a spaceman. I interviewed a spaceman.
Mills was a lot of fun to interview. His pedigree is undeniable, so it was always going to be an easy interview. Lots to talk about. When he got onto metaphysics and telepathy, I felt my brain expanding. This is a guy who got into comic books at an early age, and he's been having wild visions ever since. So much fun.
It's always an honour to have a cover feature in Electronic Sound magazine. This now gives me extra privileges as a hotshot journalist. I can barge into any concert with the phrase "don't you know who I am". I get to ride around in one of those sedan chair things. And I get a chufty badge, which is a normal badge that I've scrawled "chufty" onto.
Other artists featured in this issue include M, as in the famous M who did Pop Muzik fame, Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark collaborator Claudia Brücken, and the quite brilliant Rival Consoles. Oh and Children Of The Bong too, whose trippy bleeps I was obsessed with in the '90s.
Blatant plug: get your Electronic Sound fix here.
Further Fats: Chosen Words: J is for Juan Atkins (2010)
Further Fats: It's just the sun rising (and being a bit too hot) (2020)
