Great review Wojtek. Makes me jealous that I didn't make it to the
San Fran show. =)
On Nov 28, 2006, at 3:42 PM, Wojtek wrote:
So the Wizard killed it this past weekend, in one of his few stateside
appearances, both of which happened to be within driving distance of
where I live.
His three-and-a-half hour show in LA started with the fast-paced "Call
of the Wild", and continued with other pacey techno tracks, with a
nice sprinkling of a few of tracks from Minimal Nation for good
measure. About a third of the way into his set, Jeff started playing
various classics and old school goodies. As Marina said before me, he
played "Work it To the Bone", Chip E.'s stuff, and then, he started
playing Detroit classics! After he transitioned into playing the
older tracks, he dropped Reese and Santonio's "How to Play Our Music"
and the place went wild! He then went on to jam on the 909 for a bit,
and continued with obscure acid and early Detroit techno. One of the
highlights of the Detroit part of his set was the way he programmed a
slightly syncopated 909 beat and blended X-Ray's "Let's Go" into it
and kept the two going for the duration of the track!
In that night's show alone I heard more Detroit classics than all of
the other Detroit dj's I've heard combined! (yes, he dropped Strings
of Life and Jaguar, too, the timing of which worked very well,
though). It truly was an enjoyable show for anyone who's into the
harder side of techno, and definitely a treat for anyone who enjoys
classic Detroit techno, made even more enjoyable by the fact that he
played late 80's Chicago acid alongside some New York house classics
like the above mentioned "Work It to the Bone" and an instrumental
version of "Searchin'" on Nu Groove, for added musical context. If
all those Detroit and Chicago classics weren't enough, he also played
a a version of Basic Channel's Phylyps Trak (the track called Axis, on
the Phylyps Trak ep) alongside the more straight ahead techno, and
that had just sealed the deal for me as probably the best techno show
I've ever seen; along with Mills' next day appearance a few hundred
miles up the road in San Francisco.
His saturday gig was also on point. He played the 909 live (again),
along with a little sample he played off a cd that sounded like a
repeating ping-pong noise (which he also incorporated into the set he
played the night before). He layered that over the somewhat minimal,
introspective, or just plain old Mills-y-sounding tracks at a few
points throughout the evening, to a good effect.
Now, just to keep us old school Detroit fans happy, he even dropped
Derrick May's Wiggin' (in its original version, alongside the New York
and Chicago classics he played the previous night) before moving on to
the harder Tresor stuff; however, the classics focus that night was
definitely on the Tresor side of the Berlin-Detroit connection. He
played quite a few tracks from the x-102 and x-103 albums, a few Rob
Hood tracks, and towards the end he even dropped Maurizio's
hard-as-nails Ploy, which to me was the summit of the evening, making
the the energy at the venue feel like what I would imagine the old
Tresor club in its heyday to have felt like. A few tracks from
Minimal Nation were there too--just like during his LA show, and the
musical selection was kept current by some newer techno tracks by
Sleeparchive and a Joris Voorn track (from the newer tracks that I
recognized). Apparently he also "did something amazing" with a Basic
Channel track at the SF show, but I got there too late to witness it.
I don't know if these two shows are representative of how Mills plays
now, but if he usually plays with this much intensity, creativity and
variety nowadays (as opposed to some of his recorded minimal/loopy
techno sets I've heard in the past), then he has my vote as the
world's best techno DJ/live act (oh, the live 909 action...) These
were by far the best techno shows I've experienced.
Wojtek
P.S. For those interested, he has a new album coming out in January
On 11/26/06, Wojtek <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Mills ROCKED IT in both LA and SF this weekend!! It really was a
techno lovers'/313ers' heaven at both shows. A longer review will
follow.
Wojtek
