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Jeff Mills | At First Sight

The resurrection of a master. Comeback of the year.
CD, Axis/N.E.W.S.

Tekst: Omar Muñoz-Cremers

Publicatiedatum: 23 oktober 2002

I confess to almost having given up on the man. Jeff Mills, once a mysterious dark force, at the turn of the century had completed a move on to worldwide fame and growing sophistication which overall let the love for conceptualization overshadow his music. As Kodwo Eshun once noted, Jeff Mills worships rotation, and this obsession with cycles eventually had to undergo a self-reflexive phase. Which, at one level, is what At First Sight presents: Mills going back to his Underground Resistance days to force a dialectic with his past to come up with fresh insights into his music. The results, as with the recent work of his ex-colleagues Robert Hood and Mike Banks, are nothing short of sublime, easily forming his strongest collection of work since the Waveform Vol.3 compilation.

Opener The March immediately brings the classic Detroit sound with some vintage building string lines, cold sounds that paradoxically warm the soul. This is followed by the more atypical Imagine, which the brief theoretical liner notes on the back cover hint, should form the centerpiece of the album. It is without a doubt one of the greatest tracks Mills has ever produced, a sanctuary of My Bloody Valentine style flute loops, chiming keyboard sounds, echoing strings and ecstatic trumpets over a strange fast-yet-slow rhythm track. Imagine is a utopian sound world, one that shelters, provides hope for the future, quenches fears. There are some distinct nods to the past with the excellent reworking of the classic Punisher as Punisher: Last Confession or the way Urbana revisits the cosmic choirs of X-102’s Iapetus.

A couple of tracks in the Zen minimalism mode fail to impress in the company of more pleasurable anthems such as Fantasma, the acid track Aperture or the jaw-droppingly great Stark (Detroit Story) featuring sweeping strings which are interwoven with exquisite alien melodies. At First Sight truly is a feast for the techno lover, which Mills in a generous mood closes off with the subtle See This Way featuring yet another melody from a musical galaxy we thought lost forever. Of course with Mills in recent interviews surprisingly returning to a political discourse and in light of the recent Underground Resistance inspired work by Hood and Banks one wonders if a reunion isn’t just a matter of time. These are pipe dreams and matters of speculation, for now we will treasure the resurrection of a master. Comeback of the year.