Artist: Jeff Mills Title: Late Night Label: Tresor Ca. No: 56183-6 Release: April 2002 Distribution (UK): SRD
TRACKLIST A1 "Late Night" (Mills Mix)(4:49) A2 "Late Night" (4:39) B1 "Basic Human Design" (5:52) The Tresor Archiv series continues to roll on, unearthing previously unavailable or deleted material from the depths of the vault. This latest release features a long-missing track from Jeff Mills - a remix of the classic "Late Night" from 1993. The original version appeared on Mills' debut album "Waveform Transmission Vol. 1" (1992!), but his "Mills Mix" remix has remained one of Tresor's most infamous 'lost tracks'. It is believed that the last DAT of the remix was destroyed in a Chicago basement flood. However, in October 2001, the track was re-mastered by Moritz Von Oswald at Berlin's Dubplates & Mastering. This is the first time this long-lost Classic has been available on Tresor. The B-Side "Basic Human Design" is actually an instrumental version of "Spider Formation" (from Axis Records AX-009), originally found on "Waveform Transmission Vol. 3" but mastered and cut at D&M; Berlin by Moritz Von Oswald (one half of Maurizio). *** Jeff Mills' "Late Night" (Mills Mix) also appears now for the first time on CD format via "Tresor - True Sprit" (Tresor 185, ca.no. 56185-2). Jeff Mills plays Homelands on 1st June. LATE NIGHT: meaning deep or deeper in the night. Mid-Town Manhattan, New York, the summer of 1993 shortly after I moved from Detroit. I just started my DJ residency on Friday nights at the Limelight called "Future Shock." As I was beginning to get used to the rush of New York, my tensions from culture shock of moving from Detroit, a smaller city with less than a million people to New York City, the Metropolis, I had began to relax again as my fondness for those infamous New York Nights was beginning to grow. It was a unique time. The sound of Rotterdam was the favorite Techno style, the beats were dark, fast and lethal but, still green. It was the summer: DJ Hell and Patrick Pulsinger had moved to Manhattan and every week, the Limelight was in competition with the Palladium and flew in Techno Artists from Europe to perform. I can remember a lazy afternoon Richard (Aphex Twin) and crew flew in from London and all of us eating takeaway barbecue chicken on the roof of Lord Mike's apartment. Then, the daytime was only a cocktail for the night. In those days on Friday night, the Limelight would reach its high intensity level around 3:00am onward until the end of the night. High meaning, full capacity, swinging cage dancers, the rave flares of Authur's odyssey lightening and the ritual microphone introductions by Romeo Romeo were in an extreme level. As for the music program, it was the honorable duty of DJ Repete and myself to keep the beats right. What I loved the most was later in the night, around 5:30am. The time when the out-of-town tourists and the club trendy had tired left the dancefloor, the music we played got a bit more daring, a lot deeper and all existing dancers on the dancefloor were more alert and sensitive to new sounds. It was the feeling of this timeframe that I tried to capture through the track "Late Night." In those days of my transition from Detroit to New York and not exactly aware of my permanent living situation, I was a bit reluctant to move all of my studio and equipment to New York at one time. So, from each weekly trip back to Detroit to fulfill my duties at Underground Resistance, I began to take one piece of equipment at a time. My ability to create the more complex tracks was gradual and slow. Nevertheless, within the weekdays I would have the enormous urges to compose music so, I would try to record with what I had at the time. Which was only a Roland 16 track mixer, Yamaha DX100 keyboard, Yamaha Sequencer, Roland TR-909 drum machine, no monitor return speakers (I mixed through headphones) and one of those new gadgets, a portable DAT recorder that I bought down on Canal Street in SOHO. The day I purchased the DAT recorder was a productive one, I remember recording about 15 tracks within a few hours, "Late Night" among other Waveform Transmission Vol. 1 tracks were created on this evening. Unsatisfied with the beginning of the only mix of "Late Night", I can remember deciding to fade in the level from silence for an introduction, thus discovering a technical trait that I was use on numerous tracks in my recording career. Tresor Records, Berlin later released this track on Waveform Transmission Vol. 1 a few months later with a later sublicense to Pow Wow Records in the US. The Pow Wow Records remixes included a few DJ Pierre mixes as well as a more aggressive remix by myself. BASIC HUMAN DESIGN: meaning the most basic form of human. (1 head w/brain, two arms and two legs). Can't remember the year but, it was at the beginning of the first wave of TechnoTrance. I was spending lots of time in Germany, Switzerland and France at the time. Guys like Cosmic Baby, Kid Paul, Sven Väth and others from Frankfurt were blazing the Techno scene with this new sound. With the exposure of huge events like Mayday, Love Parade, enormous parties in Switzerland, Austria, the influence of German Techno Trance was spreading throughout Europe. Though I love the overall aesthetics of Techno Trance and how it makes people feel, somehow the physical/visual results were unconvincing to me. Nevertheless, I was inspired because it was too powerful to ignore. I was inspired by a very popular Trance track that was released on F-Communication Records, Paris. I can't remember the name of the artist (forgive me). But, I loved the track. Somehow, the chords and key changes in the track hit a nerve and people went crazy when they heard it. Basic Human Design, which is actually an instrumental version of Spider Formation (AX-009 Axis Records/Mills) was my interpretation of this track. I wanted to imitate the progression of Techno Trance but, without the bubble gum baselines, cheesy piano stabs and samples. An organic relative of Trance. Only the kick drum and ride cymbal from a drum machine was used on this track, the other drum sounds were created from from keyboard oscillators and the claps were from my own sampled hand claps. The track is basic in design, practically no structured music except for a sequence that surfaces and drops out in the middle and string chords at the end. To expose the most common elements without compromising the power of the track was my objective. -Jeff Mills, 2002 --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
