4 Aug 2011

My name is Jeff Mills I originate from Detroit, I live in Chicago now, my main profession is to produce music and also to DJ. I try to explore as many different things as I can on behalf of electronic music. I was a street DJ doing residencies at many clubs and happened to be in one club during a live “simulcast” I think it was back in 1982 or ’83. It went so well that I was asked if I could come to the station to do an audition which I did and luckily everything went well so I was offered a job to do a radio show. I assumed the name The Wizard and curated a radio show for about 10 years. At that time the hip hop culture had really moved into the urban centres of the country in America. So much so that it was really dominating the clubs. The clubs that had the DJs that were remnants left over from the disco era and the funk era, these DJs were occupying all the dance clubs in Detroit but when hip hop came, young DJs like myself were somehow replacing those DJs that had been there for years.
You had to be very fast, you had to be technically really advanced, you had to learn the tricks that were happening from DJs from other parts of the country like New York or LA. I was lucky enough to have the time to really master these things and when the radio came it just broadened the idea of being a DJ that was very quick and could transform and do all those kind of things, to manipulate the music to the point that you create another version. I was one of those kids that did that. We were just beginning to start to get the very early releases from Def Jam, Cooky Puss, early Schoolly D things. So I was mixing that with funk, with Chaka Khan, Billy Ocean, I remember having to mix with Millie Vanilli, mixing all these things together with rock and industrial with anything I could get my hands on that was really happening in the street.

I was a DJ for many years before I went to radio, I had done residencies every day of the week at three or four clubs. At the time I was so busy as what we used to call a ‘street DJ’. I really didn’t have an off day. I have always had this skill of programming of being able to cue records very quickly and smoothly, to manipulate three turntables and tape machines were things I learned very early. Now I still have the ability to do those things but just the style of music really dictates how I approach it. As music over the years has gotten more minimal and faster in tempo and almost to the point where you are dealing with individual tracks like you would in a recording studio, so has the technique that you apply in order to program it for people. Three and four turntables has become a way of dealing with that. Not so much reorganising compositions, but using frequencies so you hide sounds within the track by manipulating the EQ and layering, and things like that.