Inventive artist and techno legend Jeff Mills spoke about the future of the scene in his latest interview for fabric.
The most interesting thing Mills shared is his prediction about humans and technology.
“Well, I’m almost positive that many physical machines will disappear. The thing you hold in your hand, whether it’s a screen or iPad, will disappear. The average person’s environment will become simpler on the surface, but much more complex in terms of what technology is in this environment. This will have an effect on how we listen to music, how we look at art, how we look at dance. And how we look at all cultural things. It will have an effect on how we socialise, what the party structure will be like, and DJing. Having a physical DJ standing behind a set-up could disappear. I don’t know what will replace it, but I’m almost sure that it will be gone.”
On the relationship between music and technology Mills revealed the following.
“I think in terms of electronic music, a lot of it will disappear. The machine, the drum machine for instance, will disappear, because computers will eventually disappear…I think from a classical point of view, where musicians are playing an instrument, those things will remain. But electronic music is quite different. We’re programming it, and these machines aren’t necessarily used in the programming. I think the physical computer will go away, and so will the machine. What could happen is that we find a way where our personality affects the music. Someone might create something in which one DJ can express themselves with music in a way that another cannot, because they’re two different people. The character of a person might become a feature of the music.”
The future of electronic music, and it’s conection with other forms of arts is also something Jeff spoke about.
“[My show] enables me to display electronic music in a way that we don’t see so often. It’s not always danceable, it’s not always ambient, it can be something completely different. I think because it has such a wide range of what’s possible, it’s very easy to see that the difference between electronic and classical music, or any of these other genres, is actually quite small. If you listen to any of these shows you begin to understand that the differences are not as wide as one would think. That the way I improvise an electronic vision as opposed to classical is not that different.”
