We are heading to Toulouse this weekend to catch the last representation of Jeff Mills’ new conceptual electronic-classical project, ‘Lost In Space‘, which is a collaboration with Orchestre National Du Capitole De Toulouse.
Jeff Mills in cooperation with Orchestre du Capitole present Lost In Space
Continue reading “Jeff Mills – Lost In Space – Classical Debut (Toulouse)”
Last year, Jeff Mills provided the soundtrack for a curious Japanese film by Tatsushi Omori called And Then There Was Light. The movie was based on a novel called Hikari, which focuses on a teenager who kills his girlfriend’s other lover while mistaking their affair for sexual assault. The dark tone of both novel and film naturally shines through in Mills’ refreshingly electronic score, which flits between moments of quietly spacey ambience, creepy intensity, Reichian minimalism (see “Danger From Abroad”), icy soundscapes, industrial strength intensity (the panicked “The Players of Consequence” and “Lost Winners”) and, on the “Hikari Mix” of “The Hypnotists”, full-throttle Detroit techno with Giallo overtones.
It has been 4 years since I made the last ‘review of the year …’ or ‘best of … ‘ list and it was not planned for 2017, but looking back at last year somehow the music scene shifted in a good way. From the music point of view, I think we are living better times now, we can see a revival of the old school electro and acid house, afrobeat is still hot, EBM is going strong.
The five-track EP will be the first material from Mills’s latest electronic-classical project, Lost In Space, which is a collaboration with Orchestre National Du Capitole De Toulouse. Following the 12-inch, Mills will release a Lost In Space album at some point in 2018 and perform live alongside the orchestra on April 5th and 7th in Toulouse. “Lost In Space” is an exotic music excursion into the unknown – discovering the sectors of Outer Space and encountering unexpected occurrences which is to be the objective, narrative and attraction. Like the architecture and habitation structure of a jungle, life exist and persist everywhere, but only by the degree of our 5 basic human senses.
Spiral Deluxe is a band led by Jeff Mills. Initially formed for the performances in Japan (Tokyo/Kobe) and released “Kobe Sessions” EP (AX070) last year, they gathered again in October 2016 for European tour, when they named themselves as Spiral Deluxe. This record is live recordings from that tour and will be our 2nd series of “Axis Audiophile Series” with HD sound.
The history of Planets … It has been 100 years since the British composer Gustav Holst introduced his most famous score «The Planets». An elegant musical tour to each one of our Planets in the Solar System, Holst brought forth imaginary visions of space that would survive many generations and decades after. As an important piece to the classical universe, ‘The Planets’ is regularly played throughout the World every year as it had been the most vivid translation of our cosmic neighborhood until now. The Electronic Music artist and producer Jeff Mills, pays tribute to this century of incredible musical production. He embarks to compose a sonic journey to re-discover our neighboring planets in a 18 piece suite that explores the nine planets, including the portions of space in between the Planets, the nine regions Mills calls Loop Transits.
The album is newly recorded sound track of the “A Trip To The Moon” film by Georges Melies in 1902. The Lobster Films in France has released a DVD of the same film with Jeff Mills’ sound tracks in November 2016. The famous silent film is only for 16 minutes or so but Mills has finished the entire tracks for this sound track album.
‘When Georges Méliès created Trip To The Moon in 1902, the world was just beginning to feel the tightening, yet exciting effects of another giant leap in modern civilization with the Industrial Age. It was a place in time that was transformable and in all dimensions of an evolutionary process: social, economic and political revolutions were buzzing. As man worked hard under the Sun, exposing his efforts and determination, it was the Moon that hatched his dreams. It was a time of realization and a time of romance’. – Jeff Mills
The Kill Zone EP by Jeff Mills. Taken from the recent Free Fall Galaxy album. The 12″ contains two previously unreleased tracks.
A dark space in time absorbs whatever is on its way; without a sign of sensitivity nor compassion and on behalf of its own continuity, the Free Fall Galaxy is a threat to all which it surrounds. Beyond our ability as humans to distinguish or analyse galaxies, the Free Fall Galaxy does not retain any kind of order in its nature. Devouring and moving in unexpected orbits, all that is known is that it endlessly consumes without becoming larger in mass nor in size. Other than that, everything is yet to be discovered. We must conjecture that this Galaxy holds many keys to unsolved speculations regarding space, time and our own existence.
The first installment of 12inch EP from Jeff Mills’ new solo LP, Free Fall Galaxy, the ninth chapter of his ”science-fiction story” Sleeper Wakes, and first since 2014’s Emerging Crystal Universe.
The third EP of the Exhibitionist 2 EP series is here. The recordings are taken from Jeff Mills‘ live performance in Leiden, Netherlands on 21st February 2015 and bring the EP series to a close after two first EPs which focused on the studio mix part of the follow up to his groundbreaking 2004 film Exhibitionist.
11 years after the release of Exhibitionist, Jeff Mills reveals the follow-up to his innovative film with Exhibitionist 2. Exhibitionist 2 explores DJing as an art form and gives us a peak into how a DJ makes use of current technological means to create seamless mixes and complex transitions to levels that were thought impossible not long ago. In this second volume, Jeff Mills goes deeper and not only shows how he approaches the mixing process but also how he thinks in real time, spontaneously creating, just like a musician playing an acoustic instrument or a soloist thinking of rhythms on-the-fly. The ambitious project captures the DJ over the course of multiple sequences, with closeup and multi-angle shots that allow us to see exactly what a DJ does and how music is programmed and played for the purpose of dancing.
The second installment of 12” EP from “Exhibitionist 2” DVD+CD. All the tracks are created by Jeff Mills during the session in the Studio Mix in the DVD, where the audience can see and learn how Jeff Mills produces tracks.
The first installment of 12″ EP from “Exhibitionist 2” DVD+CD due out in September 2015. In Jeff’s words: “Expanding the art forms in Dance Music has always been an agenda that needs constant monitoring because it has the ability to evolve and develop each and every idea. At angles that are not easy to see or understanding for most of the listening and dancing audiences, I’ve always felt that Dance music would make more sense to the people if they were allowed chances to understand how the music is being programmed and made – to witness this process from beginning.”
Jeff Mills has always tried to do things differently, but few could have foreseen his collaboration with classical pianist Mikhail Rudy. Back in February, the two men joined forces to write, and subsequently perform, a soundtrack for Henri-Georges Clouzot’s unfinished 1964 film L’Enfer. When Time Splits is a recording of that performance, with Rudy providing evocative piano motifs and thoughtful solos, accompanied by typically spacey, sci-fi inspired electronics from the Detroit maestro. At times it’s willfully discordant, at others immensely beautiful. Throughout, it remains a fascinating study in combining the worlds of modern classical, jazz, ambient and experimental electronics.
Woman In The Moon is a science fiction silent film that premiered on 15 October 1929. It is often considered to be one of the first ‘serious’ science fiction films, written and directed by Fritz Lang, who is the one of the biggest names in German expressionist cinema, the creator of Metropolis (1927). Detroit Techno music producer and a futurist Jeff Mills composed the new sound track for this classic film, initially for the Fritz Lang Film Retrospective event for Cinematheque Francaise in Paris in 2011. Since then, Mills has been consistently performing the soundtrack in the form of a cine-mix.
Since its debut at the auditorium of Le Louvre in February 2014, ‘Man From Tomorrow’ has since been shown across the globe in cities such as London, Berlin, Milan, Tokyo and New York. Jeff Mills partnered up with French filmmaker Jacqueline Caux to create this feature film about him and his arresting perception of the future. With his spectacular poetic sound and Caux’s invasive cinematic imagery, this film is an extraordinary portrait of one of the most innovative DJs and producers in the world of electronic music.
Jeff Mills: “Understanding what Man From Tomorrow could possibly mean and say to others, we greatly discussed the ways of how we could go about materializing this in a manner that detaches the subject away from normality. We wanted to show what deep thoughts, dream escapes and unconventional expressions of our future could look, sound and feel like through ever-expanding and dimensional lens of Techno”.
Axis Records present the 8th chapter of Jeff Mills Sleeper Wakes series. After the previous release of the exotic expedition to The Jungle Planet, his continuing science fiction story makes a significant turn to a Parallel Universe.
Here is the third and final part of my 2013 review, featuring my favorite albums released last year. In the first part of the review, the preferences of hipodrome followers are shown, according to the number of click and stars. In the second part, I presented some of my favorite events and performances from last year.
Now here it comes the serious business. Because there are so many good albums and different genders, I took the same approach as in the 2012’s review.
The list is covering all the genders that I like and post on The Hipodrome Of Music, so I came up with no more than 20 gender lists, going from house to techno, disco and funk to electro and new wave …
Here we go.
The theme of “Chronicles of Possible Worlds” is exoplanets, new planets discovered starting in 1995 which revolve around a star outside our solar system. Mixing music, dance and visuals, this creative work testifies to the advances of science and hints at the existence of possible other worlds. Following a period of investigation and a meeting with researchers from the Marseille Astrophysics Laboratory, Mills chose to focus on six planets (Wasp 12b, 13b, 14b, 15b, 16b and 17b). Their specific physical and structural properties were then translated through music, sound, images and dance. Together with Mills, the choreographer Alexandre Roccoli created a roaming choreography spread out across the Vasarely Foundation that explores the correspondence between the physical properties of these planets and choreography’s own body states. The show’s soundtrack, composed by Mills, is broadcast by the dancers costumes (designed by Berlin designer Anke Bruns) that are equipped with speakers. The music, the different sonic trajectories, the dancers and the public ambling freely through the halls can spatialize, orbit, or even fuse in the naves of the Foundation.
The Hipodrome Of Music 