šø THIS IS A TRANSMISSION FROM JEFF MILLS
Techno's foremost futurist on AI, telepathy, and alien encounters
Jeff Mills is playing in San Francisco this weekend, at a very special double-header where he will celebrate the 30th anniversary of his iconic Liquid Room, Tokyo mix at 1015 Folsom, and perform his 2023 live score of Fritz Langās Metropolis on March 7 at Palace of Fine Arts. The shows are part of a yearlong series of events celebrating Detroitās originators presented by local promoter As You Like It. Tickets and info here. LA heads can also catch him playing with Developer on Sunday at Work.
Techno Wizard Jeff Mills beamed into the simulation known as āEarthā on a laser, piercing through the clouds through a hole in the sky and taking in the possible utopia surrounding him with unblinking, amphibious eyelids. Perhaps the DMT entities who watch over this god-forsaken realm sensed that the earthlings needed something different amid the dust of collapse. So they gave us techno, an immaculate technology manufactured at the nexus of the ancient-future, and appointed The Wizard as one of its storied keepers. At least I think thatās how the mythos goes.
Even as he coasted through 80s Detroit on a skateboard, raising his fist with Underground Resistance, and absorbing the synth disco, cosmic funk, and proto-electro on The Electrifying Mojoās airwaves, The Wizard hovered in a threshold outside of time. While peers looked to submerged civilizations and cybernetics for inspiration, The Wizard spoke to the stars, his antennae permanently tuned towards the frequencies of the future, his mind spinning through the rings of Saturn. Here was a man with an extraordinary talent: the ability to jump between timelines and intercept otherworldly transmissions.
Listen to Live at the Liquid Room, Tokyo, enshrined as the greatest DJ mix of all time. In that seventh-floor club under the seedy neon of Shinjuku, The Wizard flexed with a raw manic energy so pure that he had the crowd on their knees as records flew to the floor, scratching and twisting and teetering on the verge of collapse as he tore open wormholes in search of communion with the machines. As the needle slid across the surfaces of the discs, motorik rhythms driving against whiplash backspins, propelling forward before bringing it all back, the precarity of it all became a metaphor for the frailty of information transmissionāand the insistence that we persevere when it all goes wrong. The Wizardās undying desire to go beyond merges sci-fi and fantasy to conjure sounds weāve yet to feelāif you wanted to believe in something, why not believe in this.
But even as he probed the impossible, the Wizard gazed into the dark halls where he presided night after night, and saw inside the dancing bodies a decay caused by wanton hedonism without directionāa rigidity of the mind that needed to be further coaxed open, towards the limitless possibilities beyond the decadence of the dancefloor. The membrane between this world and the next was thin, but few dared to walk in. Instead they shuddered at the thought of it, closed their eyes, or held up their phone screens. Still, the Wizard refused to retreat into the gilded memory palace of nostalgia, or the bloated inertia of success, ascending into his role as an elder statesman without ever losing his cool. He stretched the elastic skin of techno over new formsāorchestras, spiritual jazz, psychedelic scores to silent filmsāand never stopped preaching his prayer of techno-optimism.
But as Big Techās oligarchs tightened their grips of enslavement by algorithm, some wondered if The Wizard had become an avatar for a future forestalled. Can the speculative Afrofuturism of the techno elders still be a counterweight to the grim reality of digital feudalism? How quickly have the instruments of our promised liberation turned into the tools of our surveillance. Even the machines know we are lost. As I wandered through the mist wondering how to download the reality upgrade, a disembodied voice suddenly emerged from a black screen. From behind the veil The Wizard granted me a few moments to hack his mind, and learn how heās thinking about some of the most pressing questions of our time.
Jeff Mills is playing in San Francisco this weekend, at a very special double-header where he will celebrate the 30th anniversary of his iconic Liquid Room, Tokyo mix at 1015 Folsom, and perform his 2023 live score of Fritz Langās Metropolis on March 7 at Palace of Fine Arts. The shows are part of a yearlong series of events celebrating Detroitās originators presented by local promoter As You Like It. Tickets and info here. LA heads can also catch him playing with Developer on Sunday at Work.
šļø As a bonus for paid subscribers, the audio version of this interview is available at the bottom of this post! Also a reminder that our first subscriber hang is today at 4:20pm PST, details here.
Michelle Lhooq: Hi Jeff, I wanted to start with kind of a fun question. Whether itās through dreams or mind-expanding psychoactives or spirituality or even direct experience, I was wondering if youāve ever had a compelling alien encounter?
Jeff Mills: [laughs] No, noā¦ Iāve never had a compelling encounter.
Not even in the subconscious mind?
Well, in my youth, a few strange things happened. Butā¦ I think that those were more dreams than anything else.
[laughs] I believe in dream visitations.
Well, actually, a few years ago, Iāve seen something quite interesting on a flight. You know, looking out the window, something clearly was at an angle going up into the atmosphere, not that far from our plane, that was a brownish, grayish color. And it was at an angle that was definitely not an airplane. But I think thatās kind of common now, right? I think that many people are seeing things like this, even more so now.
Well in the age of SpaceX, I think itās getting harder and harder to distinguish.
I mean, if you run the numbers and you do the calculations, chances are great that weāre not alone. Thatās for sure.
So I was watching Metropolis the other night and it struck me that the speculative vision of the future that the film presents has in many ways already arrived. Iām curious, as so many advances that once seemed like science fiction become real, how has your vision of the future shifted from back when you were thinking about this in the 80s and 90s?
Iām getting more and more excited, actually, as time moves on. I like to look back to compare say, 100 years ago, 1926 to 2026, looking at similarities between what was happening then and whatās happening now, in order to be able to have some type of idea of what may be happening in 100 years from now, and how weāll get there. And itās kind of interesting to look at the signs, you know, the signals and the signs.
The signs of what?
Well, 100 years ago, we were in the Industrial Ageāthat ended around 1950 after the war and the Computer Age started. Itās looking very likely that the same thing is going to happen. The Computer Age is going to end around mid-century and weāll move on to the next boom. And I think that might have something to do with telepathy. I think that either our senses will be enhanced, or we will gain more [senses]. Or technology will allow us to be able to do things in those types of directions, with that type of skill. So reading someoneās thoughts and reading someoneās mind and feeling and sensing and understanding things non-verbally and things like that, I think might have something to do with the latter part of this century.
āThe Computer Age is going to end around mid-century and weāll move on to the next boom. And I think that might have something to do with telepathy.ā
Thatās fascinating. So you think weāre going into a post-verbal paradigm.
I see the signs of it now, with AI and what we may need advanced technology for. So, protecting ourselves from nature, and making ourselves live longer, and be more healthy, and learning more, and experiencing things that we physically would not normally be able to experience.
Right now, if you want to go to Chile or Italy, you have to get on a plane to do that, and you have to experience it [by] walking around. But I think that by [the latter half of the century], the simulation of it will be so advanced that basically youāll be able to experience and feel everything that you would normally feel if you were physically there.
That shift that youāre talking about is one thatās based from language to feeling, right? Telepathy implies some kind of intuitive sense, rather than direct communication. Itās the realm of psychic connection and feeling.
I think that either by consequence or by choice, we will have to change as well. My sense is whatās coming is going to require us to change the way that we think about certain things, in order to be able to go a bit beyond history, and go a bit beyond mathematics, and go a bit beyond science, into things that we probably never thought that we would be thinking or exploring. But I see the signs of that now, actually.
I wanted to talk to you a little bit about AI. Itās obviously been such a mind-bending shift for all of us in this era, and itās making a lot of people think about things like the consciousness of machines, the ethics of machine-human relationships, and things like that. Iām curious how this AI era has altered your thinking on our relationships to synthetic consciousness, or synthetic agents?
The creation of AI isnāt something that just popped up. We have been thinking towards this type of existence for quite a long time. In this film Metropolis, the character creates the robot, and the robot transforms into an unrecognizable form, and people are fooled by this robot. I think that weāve been wishing to have this for a very long time. So I think that AI is something that weāve all worked towards: technology to the point that it becomes our best friend and our helper and our assistant. It can solve problems that we canāt solve, and can see things that we canāt see. Iām actually quite optimistic about it. The discussions around AI remind me of the discussions leading up to the change of the century, Y2K, when people were panicking about all the computers crashing. Because no one figured out how to make the dates change or something like that. So this panic is valid, but I think that the benefits and the rewards of how itās going to help us outweigh and overshadow the fears that we have now, right?
āThe discussions around AI remind me of the discussions leading up to the change of the century, Y2K, when people were panicking about all the computers crashing.ā
I guess the big difference though is that when the Y2k thing happened, everyone could see that it was much ado about nothing, whereas weāre already seeing examples of real world harms that are being caused by AI. But Iām curiousā
āI just have to add, itās not like we did not have opportunities and chances to create safeguards so that people can save their jobs, right? And still, for some reason, weāre letting it evolve in this direction where people are going to be allowed to fire massive numbers of workers, and the societyāwe are letting this happen. So like I said, we have been working towards this for quite a long time, and there are things that we can do: we can really press our politicians and our government to actually do something about it. But I donāt know. In my opinion, weāre a bit too passive about it. So I just have to assume that weāre on some course [that] everybody is wishing to have.
Thereās a big debate right now within the music world, too, about working with AI. Obviously Bandcamp caused a lot of drama by banning music that uses AI. Have you experimented with using AI and producing music? Or are you interested in doing that?
No, I havenāt. I havenāt made an effort to, really. The way I produce music is still veryā¦ itās the old way. Itās connecting one machine to the next machine. Thereās no computer in my studio. Itās very old fashioned, and itās very hands on. But Iām waiting for the moment where, even in my small little studio, I can have this assistant that can do things for me and work on things while Iām working on other things, and and someone that I can speak to and throw ideas at, and those ideas could be kicked around. I look forward to situations like that. But yeah, I like options when Iām in the studio. I donāt record music really in one particular way. So for very complex things, for instance, if Iām working on a conceptual album and itās on the subject of something that is just a bit beyond my knowledge, or just beyond understanding it, AI might be able to rationalize certain things to make sense [of it]. I might be able to sit down and compose music, for instance, [about] traveling through a black hole, and what that could feel like physicallyāif that were possible. You know, thinking about things like that. So I can see myself using [AI] at some point.
I love your optimism around all of this, but sometimes I find it a little bit hard to connect with, because I think that as people living in this technocratic hellscape that seems to be the present, thereās this feeling that the system is really closing in, and that the scale of technological greatness thatās so magnificent to behold is also being gate kept by the elites. Even the counterculture of raving and these tools of our liberation, like psychedelic drugs, theyāre all being co-opted and commercialized and used against us.
You know, I hear you. But I just understand that the people have the power. The power is with the people. Itās not what politicians orā¦
Itās all so lethargic, and it feels like what you said before: thereās barely any pushback. How do we reclaim some of this agency?
I donāt know. But we have the power, we can change things when we want, and I think that the world is the way it is, because we allow things to happen. When we donāt want things to happen, we change them. I think people are thinking maybe more about the consequences of what it may take to be able to change things, and put things in the right direction. Maybe that is creating the reluctance to get out into the street and shut the country down and shut it down, right? We have what we have, because this is what weāre allowing ourselves to deal with. But I never forget this point: the power is always with the people. Itās always been that way, no matter what it looks like, or what it seems likeātrillionaires and billionaires controlling everything. But they canāt do anything without people, right? Thatās just how I feel, and I donāt know why we donāt shut it down. At times I think we should, I think itās necessary, but I donāt know why.
āI never forget this point: the power is always with the people. Itās always been that way, no matter what it looks like, or what it seems like.ā
Well, I think partly itās a crisis of imagination. And youāve spoken about this a lot: about how the techno scene suffers from this lack of imagination, to come up with a vision of a future that isnāt based in hedonism and nostalgia and escapism. Do you feel like the rave can come up with the new vision of the future that fits the needs of today?
Sure, sure. I think so, and I think that there are enough people thinking in that direction to make it happen. But will they do it? Will they say, OK, enough is enough. We want something that we can really be proud of, and we can hand down to generations, and they can practice this art form and and be able to live a normal life, and send their kids to college. I mean, we can do that. Itās always been this possibility to have discussions about certain things that we could be doing to make things better for us in the music industry. But people would prefer to go to Ibiza instead, and just party and not think about things like that. So I hear what youāre saying, but in the back of my head, no oneās controlling what I do with music. I have an incredible amount of freedom of what I can do in my own studio. I just need electricity and a little bit of time and ideas and dreams, and thatās all, really, that I need. Everyone that produces music in this industry has the same situation.
So it raises the question, why donāt we have a large variety of different types of ideas, and reasons why we were making this music is? Itās by choice. People are choosing to not do certain things, not use music for certain reasons, by choice. Weāve been working for this world that weāre living in right now for quite a while. And many of us, like myself, are shocked to see the way that it is, and how people are getting away with doing all these crazy things. But we definitely have the override switch. The people have that. I donāt know why we donāt use it. Itās a mystery.
Thank you for the reminder that we have this override switch and itās time for us to push the button. All right. Thanks so much, Jeff. Iāll talk to you later.
Thanks, Michelle
