On Jeff Mills and musical freedom

Plus Beatrice Dillon, Champion and more

A cow by Alexandra Sans Massó

I’ve always seen electronic music as representing a kind of freedom. On the one hand, there is the musical freedom that comes from using instruments like synthesisers and (especially) samplers that are not bound by the sonic limitations of, say, the guitar. 

On the other hand, I associate electronic music with dancing and there is a special kind of freedom to be found on the dance floor of a good club, where normal rules of behaviour are temporarily suspended. This is why lazy electronic music particularly annoys me. You could, essentially, create anything with a computer. So why makes something that only rakes up old leaves?

But if electronic music means freedom, then how many electronic musicians are genuinely free? Freedom, in this case, means the ability to follow your creative thread wherever it might go and the talent to do so. This implies a certain financial security too. I imagine most musicians - hell, most people - would love to spend their days at the behest of their muse but they simply can’t afford to.

However, there are a few electronic musicians who seem to be genuinely free of all of this, free to record and release what they like, when they like; free to experiment as they see fit; and free to play the gigs they want to. Aphex Twin is one; Moodymann, too; Squarepusher; Pepe Bradock maybe… I am sure there are more. These are musicians whose unique talents have carved out their own particular zones of liberty, where they have a total freedom of musical expression.

Perhaps the one name that stands above all of them in sheer musical freedom, however, is Detroit techno pioneer Jeff Mills, an artist who has specialised in doing whatever the hell he wants since making his DJ debut as The Wizard back in the 1980s. (And, yes, this included playing the Soundstorm festival in Saudi Arabia in 2021.)

Mills is both utterly revered and strangely under-appreciated. He is seen as one of the most important artists in techno, the author of numerous classic tracks and albums, and one of the greatest DJs in the world. He co-founded Underground Resistance in 1990 and flipped techno on its head with Waveform Transmission Vol. 1 in 1992; his Live at the Liquid Room album is perhaps the best mix CD ever released. 

And yet such is the volume of Mills’ activity, with release after release flying off the Axis shelves, that much of what he creates doesn’t get the respect and attention it deserves.

A case in point: in 2024 Jeff Mills has released both Enter the Black Hole, an album-length rumination on what might happen if you entered a black hole; and The EyeWitness, an album inspired by the psychological effects of trauma. I count myself as a Jeff Mills fan and I had heard neither of these before embarking on this piece. And those are just the albums. This year alone, he has also released three Millsart 12 inches and The Human Experience, a three-track video compilation.

Mills’ music isn’t just viscerally moving; it is thematically fascinating, the work of one of techno’s great thinkers. A full list of Mills’ artistic experiments would take forever. But among my favourites are X102’s Discovers The Rings Of Saturn, a record in which each track refers to a ring or moon of the titular planet; The Occurrence, a 2010 hybrid vinyl / CD release; and Life To Death and Back, a film made with three dancers during Mills’ artistic residency at the Louvre. And this is only a fraction of his conceptual work. Mills is very much an artist to ask, “What if…?”

To these projects we must add Tomorrow Comes The Harvest, Mills’ new(ish) three-piece band with tabla player Prabhu Edouard and keyboardist Jean-Phi Dary. It is, in keeping with Mills’ rich history, a band of pure musical freedom. They have released one album, 2023’s Evolution, a live recording from a 2022 gig. But as Mills explained to me when I interviewed the trio late last month, they are very much a live act; and this record is meant as an introduction to what Tomorrow Comes The Harvest do.

“[Evolution] was only really the second time that we had performed together, the three of us,” Mills explained. “It wasn't planned that we were going to release it. We just wanted to record it because we thought it might be valuable at some point.”

What Tomorrow Comes The Harvest do live is remarkable and all the more so in the world of electronic music. Every concert is totally improvised, with the three players (and occasional guests) sparking off each other and the crowd, a skill that Mills has learned over his four decades of DJing.

“It's a very unique skill to have,” Mills explained. “Not just when you're DJing but in life in general: being able to watch, engage people and to pay attention; and to have a certain type of focus of how to communicate or approach people, or come up with some assumption of who they are and what they might want to have at certain times.”

“We can only do this live because the very root of the concept is that we don't want to decide anything we would do,” Edouard added. Sometimes, the tabla player explained, Mills would come up with something in the sound check and the group would decide to start their gig in that way. 

“And then, because he [Mills] is a person who feels the temperature of the audience, and he checks the energy of the audience, [we play] nothing of what we decided to do! And actually it's even better. Because some days it rains, some days there is sunshine, someday the majority of the people went through a very bad traffic jam, and you don't know what people have come with. You participate in tuning the audience. And the audience participates in tuning your musicianship.”

I saw Tomorrow Comes The Harvest at Barcelona’s Jazztronica festival this weekend. Jazztronica is a strange but always fun event, which tempts a Catalan crowd who don’t seem to show up for any other kind of show: older, perhaps, but hedonistic and with musical tastes that take in the wide variety of jazz-influenced music, from hip hop to techno.

Their most recent event took place on a stormy Saturday, at the Forum, where a strong wind and the unfolding tragedy in Valencia gave everything a vaguely apocalyptic feel. (And you can donate here to help the people affected by the terrible flooding in Valencia.)

Having listened to Evolution, I was worried as to how the band would go across with a Saturday night crowd. Tomorrow Comes The Harvest’s music can be hard and fast, often driven by a techno kick; but it can also be abstract as hell, breaking down into thoughtful, elongated solos that I thought might get lost on a hedonistic crowd.

Maybe I was overly influenced by what the band had told me a few days previously. But it really did feel like the trio - who were joined by Emile Parisien on saxophone - were feeding off the crowd’s energy, sometimes giving them the hard bass they demanded, other times teasing them with meditative breakdowns that picked at a particular thread of the band’s sound. 

All three band members were masterful, while Parisien, after a little initial reluctance, grew into the gig. Mills played his trusty drum machine, as well as congas and a cymbal (he could also sampled and loop his own playing), while Edouard was on tablas and occasional vocal, the two providing the band’s considerable percussive thrust. Dary provided the melodies, which verged from jazzy solos to techno-ish chord vamps, his expert musicianship the splash of hot sauce that brings a meal to life.

The band played right on the improvisational edge, too. One of my favourite moments of the gig was when it felt like the music was just starting to come apart at the seams, a rhythmic overlay not quite gelling, only for the foursome to ease it back into step and lock into a fearsome groove that I would love to hear again but won't be able to. This, in itself, felt very special - you know you're only hearing this music once... and then it's gone. 

Tomorrow Comes The Harvest aren’t the only people bringing improvisation to live electronic music. But I don’t think I have heard anyone do it with such finesse, style and incredible confidence. 

Their musical set up, too, is unusual. Tomorrow Comes The Harvest was initially the name of an EP that Mills recorded with legendary Afrobeat drummer Tony Allen in 2018, on which Dary also featured. After Allen’s death in 2020, most musicians would have retired the name. But Mills decided to push on, recruiting Prabhu Edouard, who he had previously worked with live. 

Edouard both is and isn’t a replacement for Allen. Tabla drums don’t sound like Allen’s drum kit; and Edouard told me there is no connection between the way he plays and Allen’s drum style. “When I came in, I saw a very rich environment of rules, tones, rhythms and frequency, so we had to work it out,” he said. “I'm a core fan of Tony and it actually suited me that I was not going to imitate him, in any way, was not going to do anything that he was doing, because we just cannot imitate the maestro Tony Allen, he is so unique.”

But Edouard said there is a connection between the energy of Allen’s playing and Qawwali, a form of devotional music from South Asia in which the tabla often features. “Tony Allen is, for me, a kind of Qawwali and a very robust drum player,” he explained. “If you translate tabla into drums, because the way drums drive or groove, he actually is invoking gods and goddesses. That's something which really penetrates my mind when I think of him. I think more of the energetic way he plays.”

Edouard is a brilliant tabla player. But adding him to the musical mix represented a risk for the band, given that the tabla is not often used in techno or, indeed, in Western electronic music as a whole. (It’s not unknown, of course. But it’s not a typical instrument in the way, say, the conga drum is.)

It is perhaps for this that on Evolution the band’s musical mix occasionally sounds a little off, the drum machine a little too rigid in comparison to the tabla’s evocative, expressive sound. Live, though, the combination fits perfectly and the band’s combination of sonic sources feels inevitable rather than outlandish.

I do recommend listening to Evolution to give an idea of how Tomorrow Comes The Harvest come together. But it is live where the band are at their most expressive, emotive and free. “It's about discovery, Mills concluded in our interview. “In electronic music, it's kind of unheard of, because everything is always pre-prepared and pre-planned, and you just hit a button and then you kind of dance around until hitting the next button. But in this case - and the way that I'm interacting with Prabhu and Jean-Phi - I can play these machines and modify them based on how I feel at that moment.”

Maybe, Mills said, Tomorrow Comes the Harvest will help to bring about change. “Maybe a whole generation of young DJs and producers will start to program less and start to play their instruments more,” he said. “I don't know, we'll see. The feeling of being free and not tied to one another and not have to be a slave to a tempo, it's that thing that ties all creative people together.”

Some listening

Beatrice Dillon / Explore Ensemble - Seven Reorganisations 1

As I sat watching the torrential rain outside the window, nerves slightly jangled, Beatrice Dillon’s new single with contemporary classical sextet Explore Ensemble felt just about perfect. The music is somewhere magical between calming and slightly on edge, a piano part like jittering waves meeting subtle percussion and the passing drone of a bass clarinet, every listen revealing new layers and complexities.

Champion, Four Tet, Skrillex, Naisha - Talk To Me

If I’ve not been entirely convinced by the music that Four Tet has put out of late, he earns points for his, erm, championing of Champion, one of the greatest producers to emerge from UK Funky. Talk To Me adds Skrillex into the mix, which might help to explain the ultra-springy, slightly metallic bass line that drives the song ever forward, a kind of Smoke on the Water for the bass line set, while the skippy, joyous beat h feels like Champion’s work. To this rapper / singer Naisha adds a superb vocal that is half tough lyrical drive and half angelic trill.

Things I’ve done

Line Noise - With Tomorrow Comes The Harvest

As you have probably gathered from the above piece, I interviewed Tomorrow Comes The Harvest this week for Line Noise. As well as the above, we touched on spiritual process, going on forever and whether techno can still evolve.

Quincy Jones interview

RIP Quincy Jones, a absolute master of music and one of the most charming people I have ever interviewed. (Plus a name dropper extraordinaire - because wouldn’t you?) I spoke to him in 2010 for a Music Week Master Class interview, which doesn’t seem to be anywhere on their website so you can read it here. 

The playlists

If you have got this far down in the email than a) I salute you and b) I hope you might have some interest in the same music as me, In which case, I bring you my playlists. There are two: The newest and the bestest, with all the best new music of the last three years; and the Newest and the Bestest 2024, which is a variation on the above that you can probably work out. You get all the songs here. And you even get some more.