Jeff Mills on Science Fiction, Art and the Discipline of Techno

From the interview archive: Mixmag’s long-form conversation with Jeff Mills explored an artist whose interests reach far outside a conventional DJ career. The conversation is useful precisely because Mills treats techno as a serious creative practice without separating it from the dance floor. Across the feature, science fiction emerges as a language for thinking about music, technology and worlds that do not yet exist. Mills also reflects on the weight of dedicating a life to an unusual artistic path. Those themes help explain his movement between tightly focused club tools and ambitious audiovisual work. The interview captures a distinction that is easily missed in short social-media clips: physical performance and conceptual work are not opposites for Mills. Both depend on concentration, repetition, rhythm and an ability to imagine an audience differently.This is an editorial reading of an interview originally conducted and published by Mixmag, not a CLBCLTR Q&A. Readers who want the full account and the artist’s exact words should follow the original interview. It offers a deeper look at why one of Detroit techno’s most influential figures keeps reaching into the future.