Jeff Mills, "Live at the Liquid Room"

Without exaggeration, I believe that  Gabriel Szatan's retrospective review of Jeff Mills' legendary "Live at the Liquid Room" mix is one of the best articles about techno ever written.   He provides invaluable history on the conceptualization and recording of the album, all of which was new to me.  It's so important to get these details written down before such priceless anecdotes from first hand observers are lost forever.  He also hits upon many of the big questions regarding techno's refusal to evolve and its current identity crisis.  In short, when your music is the future, there's a sense that you don't need to evolve, rather, you can play the long game and wait for the surroundings to evolve to you.  However, when you can literally beam hundreds of years of music history to a handheld device in an instant, then technology isn't cool and futuristic anymore.  In fact it's the opposite -- overfamiliarity has rendered it bland and ordinary.  Techno is turning into the Detroit equivalent of Haight-Ashbury.  Everyone who wasn't there at the time is tired of hearing about the promise and potential behind the music.  Those who can't give up their tie-dye from decades ago are sad old hippies who won't recognize that the world has evolved since their heyday.   In addition, in the 21st century, modern pop producers have been scavenging techno for ideas and seamlessly integrating them into today's music.  When the beats and sounds have already become mainstream, then being a techno purist and dreaming of a post-GM cybernetic Detroit starts feeling a bit quaint and outdated. 

The techno vanguard seem to recognize this stasis, and understand that they are legends stuck in the past, and nobody knows the way forward.  It's cool that Carl Craig can do whatever he wants (he's earned it) and can return to his jazz roots or collaborate with orchestras, but on the other hand, none of it feels as fresh or daring as it did twenty or even ten years ago.  Speaking of Carl Craig, a recent interview in Musicradar touches on many of the same themes as Szatan's review.  His experience is invaluable and it's great that he's still creative and very active, but that's the impression you'd get when reading any one of a million interviews with a Pete Townshend or David Gilmour in the 90's in Q or Rolling Stone.  

Back to Mills, I have long been in awe of "Live At the Liquid Room", my bewildered, breathless reaction to the album set me on a mission to see him play live, which through various circumstances, didn't happen for another fifteen years.   At the time, Mills' technical wizardry almost defied belief.  In the days before digital DJ'ing, how could someone play so aggressively, insistently, and at such breakneck speed?  Perhaps the drama is lessened when one can imagine AI bots reproducing such a mix with regularity.   But which resources do you use to train an algorithm when there's only one man alive who could pull it off?