OK, I was gonna wait until I'd updated my site to post this, but here you go (below): the finished text from my Jeff Mills interview the other week for Jockey Slut's November (or maybe December, I dunno) issue. The Slut hold copyright so PLEASE don't go posting this on other sites. And don't let this stop you buying the mag when it comes out!
In response to Andrew's query, the fact that it's only on CD (are you sure?) isn't a problem for me as I don't DJ (not more than once a year, anyway!). I think the music itself is pretty good on a standalone basis (closest to the Axis material), but having now seen the film I think it will work very well with the images. Mind you, the version I rented seemed to be the longest, most boring one available - over 2 painful hours with a really awful noodly electronic music soundtrack. Mills has re-cut the film to fit his soundtrack, but that aside it seems the one to see is the Giorgio Moroder recoloured version, which I think come in around the 80 minute mark. TOM (PS: the paragraph marked with a * may be cut from the final printed version for space reasons) --------------------- Jeff Mills Like constantly moaning that their music shouldn't be pigeonholed - even though all their tracks sound the same - dance music producers are forever whittering on about how they'd like to do film soundtracks. But while plenty get a track or two on an compilation soundtrack album and a select few even see their tracks actually integrated into a movie (such as The Aphex Twin, whose terrifying 'Come To Daddy' cut was positioned as the snuff gimp's tune of choice in '8MM'), how many make the transition from so much hot air to scoring a full-length film? After more than a decade of acid house, only David Holmes has really gone the distance, writing the music for the Jennifer Lopez/George Clooney vehicle 'Out Of Sight'. Now Jeff Mills has added his name to this most select group with his newest album, an original soundtrack to silent sci-fi classic 'Metropolis'. Originally released in 1926, 'Metropolis' was a movie way ahead of its time in every sense of the word, and still resonates today - as proven by the simple fact that, even now in the year 2000, the film is relatively easy to rent from your local video store. A massive production - the Ben Hur of its day, in fact - 'Metropolis' bankrupted the giant Deutsch film studio UFA and marked the creative apex of the German pre-war cinema industry. The film's German director, Fritz Lang, left for Hollywood soon after the film's release, but 'Metropolis' was his finest hour. Written by his wife, Thea Von Harbou, the film envisages capitalist society a hundred years into the future where an enslaved proletariat toil below the surface to keep the city's giant machines running so that the bourgeois elite can frolic in lush gardens atop the skyscrapers. Pioneering techniques that were still in use fifty years later, Lang's visual interpretation was astonishing and his portrayal of robots, futuristic machinery and vast, multi-level cityscapes set cinematic standards that were subsequently built on by the likes of 'Bladerunner'. Jeff Mills first watched the film as a youngster growing up in Detroit, yet claims it didn't make an immediate impression: "At that age I was more into Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica, the newer science fiction then. I knew of the film, but I didn't really understand what it was about until much later." But he is not the first to revisit 'Metropolis'. Just as several different cuts of the film exist, so do quite a few alternative soundtracks. In 1984, for example, Giorgio Moroder headed a project which recut and coloured the film, accompanied by a somewhat dodgy (Mills diplomatically describes it as "interesting but inappropriate") soundtrack featuring, of all people, Adam Ant and Pat Benetar. However, the impetus for Mills' version was not a reaction to previous attempts. Instead, it seems the idea was born of simple frustration: "I've been wanting to do music for films for quite some time and I thought - I know this is kind of silly - but I thought if I make enough interesting music, maybe I might be asked to do something. So I did that for a few years, but it didn't happen. After a summer of watching movies with rock'n' roll or hip-hop soundtracks, I just thought it was such a waste that they were overlooking electronic artists that could probably compose music that was much more appropriate to what they were doing on the screen. About a year ago I was in Berlin and I was having dinner with some people and we were talking about why there isn't much electronic music in movies, so I just decided that I would do something to try and promote some kind of interest. So the idea was just to make the music for the movie and deal with it later. And 'Metropolis' was on my list of the movies I could do something for." When you watch the film, it's easy to imagine why it would appeal to Mills. Aside from his interest in science-fiction, Mills' career to date has been marked by an attraction to European culture, particularly German - despite being a resident of Chicago, he spends more time in Europe than in the States and used to live in Berlin. Visually speaking, the illustrations used on his Axis and Purpose Maker releases mirror 'Metropolis's grainy, mono aesthetic. His catalogue of releases belies an ongoing fascination with both the future and landscapes, and he's often talked of his interest in architecture. Of course, the film's silent format does lend itself to musical reinterpretation rather well too. "Right, you could draw multiple conclusions to what is going on on the screen. And that is really parallel to techno - it's usually instrumental, nameless, faceless, and it's kind of up to the listener to decide what he or she hears. And because it's a black and white, it's a very one dimensional, very minimal type of film, so I thought that would be compatible." Yet Mills clearly empathizes with the sub-text of 'Metropolis's plot, hence the statement on the accompanying publicity material for his album in which he talks - in typical Mills-speak - about 'reintroducing the theories and ideology of Metropolis to the cyber-youth of today': "You know, it's a wonderful lesson that the movie has to teach - it's about the needs of the many versus the needs of the few," he says, echoing the Star Trek sample used on his former band Underground Resistance's 1992 release, 'The Theory'. "In this day and age, looking out the window here in Tokyo, it's very easy to imagine that there are a lot of people making decisions for a lot of other people that they aren't even conscious of. And that's basically what the movie is about. There are a few people, very powerful people, making all the computers for us to work off, for us to use, they're shaping the way that we live. And it's very important to not to forget that the people have the say in the end, not Bill Gates." *In the light of this statement and 'Metropolis's (rather clumsy) portrayal of class and economic structure, I wondered if Mills sympathized with Marxism himself? "In certain ways, yes. Theoretically of course, yes, it [socialism] is paradise. In practice we've learned that it just does not coincide with the mentality of Man. But the theory of it I think is really interesting. But being from America, from Chicago, I'm a capitalist [laughs], so I'm kinda caught in-between." Like Moroder, Mills has had 'Metropolis' recut to fit his soundtrack. On this he worked with Detroit's Pilot Pictures company, who also built his Axis Records website. The film premiered at Paris's Pompidou Centre in September, but Mills acknowledges that this was unknown territory for both him and Pilot. "They're actually a design firm, but we just work on everything if we're qualified to do it or not!" Yet while Mills may have been motivated to compose 'Metropolis' by a desire to promote electronic music in the movies, the irony is that of all the techno producers out there, Mills is the most likely to undertake such a task. Always brimming with ideas, he's already moving on to new projects. Top of the list is the launch of his new label, Mission 6277, which will be the first time Mills has released other people's material since Robert Hood departed from Axis in the early nineties. Mills says he's been overwhelmed by the response to his call for demos and expects the first of a string of Mission 6277 compilations to be released by the end of the year. "We're going to try to keep them small so that they're more concentrated and not just a barrage of names that you never heard before, because we're definitely trying to expose people." Then there are the planned additions to his website, axisrecords.com, like a global party and event calendar and the introduction of online games which will allow users to play with sound and images. Another solo LP, 'The Eyes Of Edward Molten', based around a fictional character Mills has created, is also in the works, destined to for release on Tomorrow. And he's still searching for a suitable individual to take over the next run of Purpose Maker releases. Four record labels, a busy website, a steady flow of releases, a clothing line and now his first movie soundtrack, and all from a tiny office in Chicago, staffed until very recently by just Mills himself, and fitted in between a punishing DJ schedule which means he's away more often than not - you have to wonder how he does it. Mills grins. "We just work hard, that's all." Tom Magic Feet Jeff Mills' 'Metropolis' is released 30th October on Tresor.
