Review: You wait ages for a Detroit legend to go a little off-piste and then two of them do it at once! In the same week that sees the release of Robert Hood and Femi Kuti's 'Variations', fellow UR veteran Jeff Mills brings us the debut album from his new project The Zanza 22, a loose collective with whom he sets out to explore the connections between jazz, lounge, Latin and electronic dance music. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the project was a child of the Covid-19 lockdowns, a time that saw many artists, suddenly free of the need to satisfy dancefloors every Saturday, turning out more introspective productions. There's not much in the way of glitterball abandon or 3am warehouse stompery going on, then, but if you're after 70 minutes of chilled, groovy listening, step right on in.
Review: Jeff Mills is releasing a jazz album in collaboration with multi-instrumentalist Rafael Leafar! Said to 'reflect on the precise moment people decide in their minds that the only way to improve a situation is to act,' Mills personally points out that The Override Switch is an "improvisational electronic jazz in the way Detroit can only produce." Hooking up with Rafael Leafar, live horns and handplayed acoustics waver and swim overtop pulsating 909 drum machines, seering Detroit techno melodies, pads and deeper jazz themes that delivers an exceptionally unique blend of orchestral, instrumental and freeform techno. Deeper dancefloor highlights include "Breaker Breaker One Ten", "Soul Filter (The Dancer)" and "Homage". As for the rest, flick the switch!
Review: The Paradox is a new collaborative project helmed by Detroit legend Jeff Mills and keyboard wizard Jean-Phi Dary, a pair who first worked together - alongside the late Tony Allen - on the Tomorrow Comes The Harvest project. Counter Active, the pair's debut outing, was apparently inspired by the pair's desire to make music with no set boundaries. The set's six tracks lean heavily on jazz and jazz-funk, with Dary's impressive keys-work rising above Mills' impeccable drum programming, sci-fi synths and, on occasions, surprisingly loose-limbed basslines. Highlights include the tech-jazz goodness of 'The X Factor', the far-sighted deep techno lusciousness of 'Residence' (an alternate tech-jazz take can be found at the end of the EP), and the intergalactic deep house lusciousness of 'Ultraviolet'.
Review: After focusing on purely synthesizer and drum machine-based music for the last 28 years, Jeff Mills has decided to broaden the musical horizons of his Axis label. That means releasing music made with more traditional instruments as well as the sci-fi techno fare that the Motor City label has long been associated with. To showcase the potential of this new era, Mills has first offered up a fresh album from Byron The Aquarius that adds jazz-funk instrumentation (think spacey synth solos, fluid piano lines, breathy flutes and rubbery bass guitar) to a combination of organic and programmed deep house and nu-jazz grooves. It's a brilliantly expansive and spiritual set full of intricate musical details, with a number of the best tracks being accompanied by equally as inspired alternative mixes.
Review: Fusing radical freeform techno and ambient percussion with poetry, electro-charged bass mechanics and earthly sound design, Jeff Mills, Eddie Fowlkes and poet Jessica Care are The Beneficiaries. Drawing inspiration from Detroit's rich musical heritage, present and future, The Crystal City Is Alive sees Care lace her spoken word rhetoric through Mills and Fowlkes' ambient and experimental techno compositions. With woozy rhodes, three-dimensional bass and spacious percussion dominating the album's extended numbers like "The X" and "People", you'll find more classical sci-fi Mill's themes in tracks like album opener "Metallic Stars". Dubby techno takes shape furthermore in the title-track with rhythmic spoken word shining through its low frequencies and sci-fi tension alongside some classic instrumental Detroit spacescapes in "When The Sun Loves You Back". Can you feel it.
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