Jeff Mills will always be most famous as a DJ of often punishing techno cut and blended together with extraordinary skill and often discombobulating audacity – something he still does to huge crowds worldwide well over three decades since he first honed his craft as “The Wizard” back in Detroit.

He’s also revered as a producer in the genre: first as part of Underground Resistance and then solo he has classic upon classic under his belt.

But he’s also expanded outwards in various directions. 

He’s been a drummer, a keen student of architecture and fashion, and spinner of sometimes delirious, visionary sci-fi narratives that adorn the sleeves and websites around his musical work. 

But he’s also worked extremely hard over the past 20 years in incorporating his DJ and techno practice into performance with live musicians. 

Where some might just get hired hands to replicate their tracks on acoustic instruments, for Mills this has meant real collaboration – most notably with the late, great Afrobeat drummer and fellow adopted Parisian Tony Allen – and also keeping his raw techno instincts very much to the fore.

His new collective, Tomorrow Comes The Harvest is named for the album he made with Allen, and is a deliberate continuation of the four years of work they did together between 2016 and Allen’s death in 2020.

This month they played London’s Royal Festival Hall, and with this as the opening of a new phase in Mills’ long career, we grabbed a few moments with him to find out where his thinking was currently at.

Please tell us about the live show. How does it draw on your previous experiences with live musicians, and what's new in it?

The performance of Tomorrow Comes The Harvest is designed to be improvisational – where musicians come and join together to work towards achieving a higher level of consciousness together.

There are no planned or prepared compositions and the structures we play are left open and free.

It’s an idea that the late Tony Allen and I used during the years we played together and one that I continued, and made as the foundation of all Tomorrow Comes The Harvest presentations.

So, the musicians must not only be great players, but great spontaneous thinkers. Also, to play and create together in real-time, there has to be a certain level of discourse and respect for each other, and that often shows between us. 

What does 'jazz' mean to you in 2022?

I’ve always defined jazz as Black classical, and as the means to achieve the freedom to express one’s self.

In 2022, it remains that but also, for me, it serves as a wealth of knowledge in which to apply in other genres, art forms and creative expressions. As an electronic musician, I’m studying and borrowing ideas that might make me look different at what I create.

What keeps jazz as a forward thinking form in the current era?

The solo. To be able to pick up and instrument and just play it based on how one feels at the moment. The instant transcription of emotions to sound.

The power of the regular 4/4 rhythm remains obviously potent. How much of that is because of convention and sequencers and how much because it actually has a primal effect on humans?

Yes, it has a lot to do with our primal sense as well as our internal heartbeat rhythm.

The 4/4 rhythm pattern – four beats in one pattern – was probably the fundamental start or beginning of any genre and from that comes the intricacies that we apply as new ideas emerge.

It could be that this pattern is still prevalent in electronic dance music because the genre is still young.  

Do you think techno has been around long enough for us to think of it as a kind of folk music? What kind of culture do you think techno 'folk culture' could be described as?

No, I think "folk music" is a bit of a stretch, but in some ways it is the music of the people.

I think that where there is difference is when we examine the different styles of Techno Music – particularly the one where music is created "by the person, for the person". A projected or almost dictated, one-way transmission that often escapes the attention of the public, media or social media.  

You've always included visionary science fiction thinking in your work. Do you have any current favourite writers, artists, thinkers on that front?

C.L. Moore. She paved the way for female pulp sci-fi writers in the 1930s. Zora Hurston and Octavia Butler. 

Hurston and Butler are often seen as key figures in Afrofuturism. What does that term mean to you now?

Afrofuturism is a by-product of futurism. The term Afro applies to a notion that somehow, the two can be separated from one another and that they are different. Which should not be true, but it is.

The general appearance of Afrofuturism revolves around the idea that a person’s colour and their outlook on a place or space in the future equates to a certain mindset and mental and physical state today.

There is a certain amount of exclusiveness to this that is questionable. Whereas the term “futurism" means the relentlessness of modern life – the glorification of now with a great emphasis on the excessive aspects. Both are at the core of insightful beliefs.  

We now have whole new electronic styles emerging from African cities at an astounding rate - amapiano from Johannesburg, cruise/freebeat from Lagos and of course Afro Latin forms mutating in the Americas and Caribbean too. What are your visions for the near future of African diasporic music?

Some of the direction might be the influences of future instruments and how they allow musicians to translate and transcribe, but I have a strong sense that the boundaries between "the artist" and "the listener" will narrow more and more as the desire for people to be recognised grows and enhances. That, the concept of voyeurism will take on a whole new multi-dimensional definition.

One clue that we can already see is from how and what we define as “original”. If one replicates someone else’s rhythm and call it their own, we accept that. Taking a step further, if one chooses to be someone they’re not, we accept that.

The lines separating difference might blur to a point that it becomes useless to try. At this point, music might not be defined by territory or region, but by mindset.   

What are your next creative moves? Or do you prefer to let one project run its course before moving on?

The identity of techno, as a culture is something I always thought was overlooked or ignored. What does techno look and feel like? Outside of hearing it, when do we know we’re in the presence of it?

This is something I’d like to explore in the years to come. I usually work on various projects simultaneously. Sometimes, it can be as many as four or five at a time…

Cover Credit: Triangle Agency

Writer | Joe Muggs

Joe Muggs is a writer, DJ and curator of many years standing, covering both mainstream and underground. His book 'Bass, Mids, Tops', covering decades of UK bass music, is out now via Strange Attractor / MIT Press, and you can subscribe to his newsletter at tinyletter.com/joemuggs.