JEFF MILLS - METROPOLIS

Label: Tresor
Format:CD, Album
Country: Germany
Released: 01 Oct 2000
Genre: Electronic
Style: Techno, Ambient

Tracklist
1 Entrance To Metropolis 3:18
2 Perfecture: Somewhere Around Now 5:54
3 They Who Lay Beneath 3:15
4 Convicted To Paradise / Maria (Bridgette Helm) 4:45
5 The Keeping Of The Kept 5:07
6 Landscape (Utopian Dream) 3:28
7 Blue Print 4:06
8 Transformation A 4:19
9 Transformation B (Rotwang's Revenge) 3:09
10 Robot Replica 4:57
11 Revolt 5:07
12 Flood 5:12
13 The Storm Among Us 2:29
14 Silence 1:25
15 New Beginning 3:13

Another exceptional release by Jeff Mills. Metropolis is an album which truly captures the essential aspects of Fritz Lang's masterpiece. From the intoxicatingly beautiful melodies of " New beginning " and " Landscape : utopian dream " to the haunting ambience of " They who lay beneath ", Metropolis is an album of intense enjoyment. Thought provoking and intriguing, this album is sure to tickle the fancy of any respectful of the genre of free thinking empirical sound. Obtain it before it is lost within the unstoppable progress of our metropoliptic society...

Jeff Mills was born in Detroit in 1963. By the 80s, he had become a popular radio DJ on Detroit station WJLB, where he was known as The Wizard. Many Detroit residents, even those who might not have followed the lineage of techno that Mills and other Detroit techno innovators helped develop, remember him for his technically amazing mashups of hip hop, early house and techno, new wave, and electro. On The Electrifying Mojo's radio show, Mills complemented the selection with his inspired technical skills, as he and The Mojo (AKA Charles Johnson) helped introduce them to a new breed of underground electronic music.

With former Parliament bass player Mike Banks, Mills created the now-legendary techno group Underground Resistance, whose early releases were some of the first to hint at taking the techno sound pioneered by artists like Derrick May and Juan Atkins in a harder, more minimal direction. UR were also among the first to adopt a full-fledged narrative and image for techno, based around militaristic resistance to established societal norms and artistic conceptions, while at the same time remaining faceless and rarely revealing their own identity or doing interviews.

En los años 80, Mills comenzó su carrera musical como DJ bajo el seudónimo "The Wizard" (El Mago), apodo dado en relación a su gran habilidad como mezclador. Sus sesiones eran uno de los platos fuertes del programa de radio nocturno de The Electrifying Mojo, influyente locutor que inspiró a la primera generación de productores de techno. Las sesiones de Jeff Mills combinaban una forma de mezclar pionera, que utilizaba trucos clásicos del hip hop junto a otras técnicas avanzadas, y todo ello al tiempo que mezclaba temas de Detroit techno oscuro, Miami Bass, house de Chicago o clásicos de New Wave.

Jeff Mills forma parte de la llamada "segunda ola" de Detroit techno. Creativamente, Mills comenzó produciendo a través del colectivo techno Underground Resistance junto a Mike Banks, un antiguo guitarrista del grupo Funkadelic. De forma similar a cómo lo había hecho unos años antes el grupo de rap Public Enemy, Mills y Banks se enfrentaban desde esta plataforma contra la industria musical con un discurso consciente y estrictamente anti comercial, de fuertes raices negras y con una estética futurista.

Mills dejó UR hacia 1992. En esta época creó junto a Robert Hood el sello discográfico Axis en el que publicó desde entonces un techno de corte fuertemente minimalista. Nuevos subsellos fueron creados más adelante, como Purpose Maker o Tomorow. Desde entonces no ha dejado de producir, sin dejar de lado su faceta de DJ. Ha sido considerado como uno de los mejores DJs de techno de la historia por su excelente habilidad. Para sus sesiones suele utilizar tres platos, normalmente una caja de ritmos Roland TR-909 y pincha aproximadamente 70 discos a la hora.