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There are techno DJs, and then there’s Jeff Mills. Schooled in the eclectic radio scene of early 80′s Detroit, Mills developed a rapid-fire mixing style that became the blueprint for virtually all the city’s techno DJs, though few have managed to achieve his mythical status and universal respect. A co-founder of the equally revered Underground Resistance collective, Mills took the plaintive sci-fi moods of his techno forebears May, Saunderson and Atkins into fierce and uncharted realms, stripping tracks back to their bare bones and unleashing them into the mix one after the other with nuclear intensity and unremitting funk. An avowed futurist, Mills’ own recording projects not only pioneered but pretty much set the high watermark for many of the scene’s most prominent movements, from industrial to hardcore, tribal and minimal techno, while recent years have seen him investigate slower, more hypnotic moods. In full force , pure techno is rarely finer than in Mills’ furiously flickering hands.
