In which Jeff Mills catalyzes hand partialism
For the past ten months or so, I've been meaning to do a post about cultural apprehension of music as it pertains to various genres of electronic composition, and in particular about the vastly cerebral vistas of the Detroit and Chicago scenes and how very influential they were in shaping what we think of as techno, house, industrial, etc. (Not a small part of this is that so many kids today do not understand that it was really awesome African Americans in Detroit and Chicago who built techno and spun off so many fantastically imaginative sub-genres, not impassive Germans and Balearic-obsessed Brits.)
Any discussion of electronic music in the 20th and 21st century is woefully incomplete without a HUGE section devoted to Jeff Mills. Mills is a paragon of excellence, a siege engine of innovation and precision, the ne plus ultra, and it's almost impossible to understate his influence. (Underground Resistance and Axis alone ensure that he has a permanent place on the musical map that should last through the ages.)
So, this post is not the post I refer to above. But I was listening to Jeff Mills this morning and then remembered that some enterprising people on YouTube uploaded The Exhibitionist and Purpose Maker films in their entirety. For those that don't know, although Jeff Mills has been filmed probably thousands of times over the years, it wasn't until relatively recently that someone thought to put him in a studio, set up a bunch of cameras around him, have him set up his equipment, and then proceed to film him in close up while he performed two compositions. Why? Because we're talking about the guy that routinely uses over fifty records per hour in a set AND composes live on top of that. Hell, I'd pay to do nothing but watch his hands in close up all day long (he has extraordinarily graceful and adept hands, and he's preternaturally fast).
The result of the above was two films: the Purpose Maker Mix and The Exhibitionist Mix. For The Exhibitionist, they actually put Jeff in a storefront window in Barcelona for part of the filming and had him do a set. (The reactions of the passersby are pretty hilarious - you can see part of that here. At least one or two of the random Spaniards walking by do double takes and go "HOLY SHIT, THAT'S JEFF MILLS!!" and proceed to stop and dance in the street.)
Behold the awesome! The Exhibitionist, Part 1 (of 5):
The Exhibitionist, Part 2:
The Exhibitionist, Part 3:
Purpose Maker, Part 1:
Purpose Maker, Part 2:
The remaining parts of both of the above are on YouTube. Like I said, LOTS of hand porn, no?
I was going to do a HUGE Solicit-o-rama post, since June solicits have been out for a few days now, but then I saw that Marvel is celebrating Wolverine's 35th anniversary by letting artists go crazy with Wolverine Art Appreciation Month variant covers (the same way that Marvel did last year with the Hulk when they sent a bazillion different artists blank Hulk covers and told them to go wild).
Laura Martin's contribution:
Paolo Rivera's cover:
Gerald Parel's Klimt cover is fantastic, too:
WOW. You can see a whole bunch more of them here.
Well played, Marvel. Well played. DC Comics, you totally fail for not doing anything like this.
Oh, and flist? Am I the only person who is completely underwhelmed by Kings? I feel like I'm watching a completely different show than half my flist, because I find the acting from most of the cast completely flat. Then there's the problematic aspect of the female characters being nowhere near as fleshed out as the male characters, and then there's the fact that Christopher Egan looks and acts far too much like Matt Damon for me to give a shit about his David.
Any discussion of electronic music in the 20th and 21st century is woefully incomplete without a HUGE section devoted to Jeff Mills. Mills is a paragon of excellence, a siege engine of innovation and precision, the ne plus ultra, and it's almost impossible to understate his influence. (Underground Resistance and Axis alone ensure that he has a permanent place on the musical map that should last through the ages.)
So, this post is not the post I refer to above. But I was listening to Jeff Mills this morning and then remembered that some enterprising people on YouTube uploaded The Exhibitionist and Purpose Maker films in their entirety. For those that don't know, although Jeff Mills has been filmed probably thousands of times over the years, it wasn't until relatively recently that someone thought to put him in a studio, set up a bunch of cameras around him, have him set up his equipment, and then proceed to film him in close up while he performed two compositions. Why? Because we're talking about the guy that routinely uses over fifty records per hour in a set AND composes live on top of that. Hell, I'd pay to do nothing but watch his hands in close up all day long (he has extraordinarily graceful and adept hands, and he's preternaturally fast).
The result of the above was two films: the Purpose Maker Mix and The Exhibitionist Mix. For The Exhibitionist, they actually put Jeff in a storefront window in Barcelona for part of the filming and had him do a set. (The reactions of the passersby are pretty hilarious - you can see part of that here. At least one or two of the random Spaniards walking by do double takes and go "HOLY SHIT, THAT'S JEFF MILLS!!" and proceed to stop and dance in the street.)
Behold the awesome! The Exhibitionist, Part 1 (of 5):
Click to viewThe Exhibitionist, Part 2:
The Exhibitionist, Part 3:
Purpose Maker, Part 1:
Purpose Maker, Part 2:
The remaining parts of both of the above are on YouTube. Like I said, LOTS of hand porn, no?
I was going to do a HUGE Solicit-o-rama post, since June solicits have been out for a few days now, but then I saw that Marvel is celebrating Wolverine's 35th anniversary by letting artists go crazy with Wolverine Art Appreciation Month variant covers (the same way that Marvel did last year with the Hulk when they sent a bazillion different artists blank Hulk covers and told them to go wild).
Laura Martin's contribution:
Paolo Rivera's cover:
Gerald Parel's Klimt cover is fantastic, too:
WOW. You can see a whole bunch more of them here.
Well played, Marvel. Well played. DC Comics, you totally fail for not doing anything like this.
Oh, and flist? Am I the only person who is completely underwhelmed by Kings? I feel like I'm watching a completely different show than half my flist, because I find the acting from most of the cast completely flat. Then there's the problematic aspect of the female characters being nowhere near as fleshed out as the male characters, and then there's the fact that Christopher Egan looks and acts far too much like Matt Damon for me to give a shit about his David.