Jeff Mills is credited with laying the foundations for legendary Detroit Techno collective, Underground Resistance, alongside 'Mad' Mike Banks, a former Parliament bass player.
Just like Public Enemy did some years before in hip hop, they confronted the mainstream music industry with revolutionary rhetoric.
Dressed in uniforms with skimasks and black combat suits, they were ‘men on a mission’, aiming at giving techno more content and meaning. Mills would never leave UR officially, but later on he still went his own way. He moved to New York and after a short stay in Berlin (Tresor) ended up in Chicago. There he set up his two labels, Axis and Purposemaker.
Mills has also been credited for his exceptional turntable skills. Tracks are almost chopped to bits to showcase the strongest fragments for his relentless sound collages. Three decks, a Roland 909 drum-machine and seventy records in one hour: at breakneck speed Mills manipulates beats and basslines, vinyl and frequencies.
In the course of the eighties he was an influential radio-deejay under the pseudonym ‘The Wizard’. He used to spin obscure dance and New Wave, far from the funk and minimal, throbbing club techno with which he would go on making a name for himself, inspiring lots of copycats.
External link: Axis Records
