Jeff Mills: “To hear something that’s real is more interesting”

From the right angle, Jeff Mills looks as if he’s been transported back to 1995.

The pioneering DJ is in constant motion as he plays to a packed crowd late at Tokyo’s Liquidroom. It’s the 30th anniversary of his celebrated Jeff Mills: Live At The Liquid Room, Tokyo mix CD, and tonight’s stage resembles the one he worked with while recording it originally. His gear is situated on top of cinder blocks, a pair of reel-to-reel players behind him. A two-liter bottle of Coca-Cola perches nearby.

There are moments when the realities of today cut through the time-traveling vibe, like when revelers hold up their smartphones or when one’s suddenly reminded that this Liquidroom isn’t the same one nestled on the seventh floor of a building in the scuzzy neighborhood of Kabukicho, but rather a club opened in 2004 in the far more sanitized Ebisu. Yet reality falls away watching the 62-year-old artist recreate that ‘95 energy.

A few days later, sitting at a cafe with a clear view of Tokyo Tower, Mills is reminiscing about all the memories that show, on November 16, stirred up. “All the music I was playing was from that era, I hadn’t played a lot of it since then, especially on the reel-to-reels,” he says. “All that music was made for that night 30 years ago, and it had been put away.”

For anyone who’s ever been interested in DJing or club music, Mill’s original mix is legendary. Recorded over two nights in October 1995 and released physically the following May, it’s regarded as one of the greatest DJ sets ever, powered by Mills’ physicality and improvisation, with even small mistakes adding to its overall force. Writing in a 10.0 review for Pitchfork in 2024, journalist Gabriel Szatan praised it as “ a mix of such molten intensity that it warped the idea of what DJing could be.”

Mills himself, though, didn’t realize the impact Live At The Liquid Room had for years. “I knew it sold a lot when it first came out, something like 20,000 units. But at the time I was running my own record label, I was busy with other releases and touring,” he says. Coming across Szatan’s Pitchfork review alerted Mills to the fact many held the mix in high regard. “I didn’t know that because we released it, then I toured Europe and you kind of move on to the next project.”

He’s making sure to celebrate the groundbreaking techno performance as it turns 30. The November stop at modern-day Liquidroom is one of several international dates centered around the mix, having already taken it to London and Osaka before Tokyo, followed by Hong Kong. On Dec. 5 he traveled to Paris, with more dates to be announced in 2026.

Mills thinks the renowned interest in the set stems from the rawness of his performance back then. In the context of contemporary times where technology makes the art of DJing feel effortless, Live At The Liquid Room captures something more demanding, with the mistakes adding to the experience.

“In this era of computers and synch buttons and Final Scratch, to hear something that’s real, even with the mistakes and the chipping from the dust on the records, is more interesting,” he says. “I think that’s part of the reason this has all happened.”

Mills had already performed in Japan several times before that legend-making 1995 show, and the crowds he encountered offered a unique energy compared to those he would encounter elsewhere. Japanese fans “study the music and the DJ” so they knew the history of the person they were listening to, he says. One of those early sets happened at Liquidroom shortly after its opening in July of 1994.

“It was…a room. It kind of felt like an office where all the walls were knocked down,” Mills remembers of the original windowless Shinjuku space, adding with a laugh that since the spot was seven stories up, there was a bit of “bounce” to its floors.

The space and the always-energetic crowds within left an impression on Mills. Early in 1995 Takkyu Ishino, a boundary-pushing Japanese DJ and member of popular dance-pop outfit Denki Groove, approached Mills about contributing to his Mix-Up series of CDs made with Sony Music Entertainment in an effort to capitalize on the then-booming dance scene.

The first two installments were studio mixes, but Mills suggested that a live mix would be even better. Over the next six months, Mills and Sony’s side planned out everything, from the setup to the design to what the album artwork would look like. Mills remembers the company being receptive to all of his ideas in an effort to further grow techno in the Japanese market, including agreeing to film the entire set too.

While working out logistics from the other side of the world, Mills made the music.

“I made a whole album…more than that even, up to 15 tracks.” He mastered all of them — up until the night before he flew out to Tokyo — on open reel, requiring him to fax Sony to ask if they could prepare two reel-to-reels as part of the production so he could play the masters in real time.

Among these new tracks were ones that became staples of Mills’ sets in the decades after, including “The Bells” and “i9.” Yet the lasting impact of Live At The Liquid Room comes from the kinetic energy powering it. The unorthodox DJ setup coupled with the experiment of playing originals alongside existing cuts from other artists resulted in a set where Mills moves constantly, always tinkering with a part of his gear or tossing records onto the floor as he preps something else, as the ground offered more space than the table around him.

“I basically had a library of music with me, and when I’d duck down to get something, I’d cut myself off from the audience, which would allow me to have some privacy to go through the records and pull things out,” he remembers. “I had a kind of escape.”

It’s the rougher moments (and outright mistakes) alongside the tactile touches of analog hiss or the shouts of the crowd that give the mix its punch, capturing the intensity of Mills’ set and the overall enthusiasm from punters during the emergence of techno.

While the recording retained this rawness, the scope of Live At The Liquid Room’s ambitions required all involved to play it safe in other ways. Mills says they actually recorded over two nights in October 1995, giving themselves a back-up set in case things didn’t work out. From there, he took the best parts and prepped them for CD release.

Not all of the original aims came through, though. The surround-sound experience ended up being nixed by Sony, with Mills just creating the mix in stereo (with crowd sounds still intact). The label also opted to only use a bit of footage to promote “i9,” with hours more pushed aside. Luckily, Mills’s brother held on to the footage in storage and pulled it out to create a new documentary for the mix’s 30th anniversary. That film is not out yet, but is airing before Mills performs on the current tour.

Upon its release, Mills remembers Live At The Liquid Room receiving “fair” reviews. “But back then you had this notion that if your mix wasn’t perfect — [if it had] no mistakes, almost like a computer did it — it wasn’t advanced. This mix was not that.” He came from a different background, one shaped by radio and hip-hop, and remembers that efforts to say, scratch records or transform songs in any way were met with disinterest.”

“[They] want it to be perfect. [They] want it to be superficial. Basically, [they] wanted it to not be human.”

The embrace of the rawer sound of Live At The Liquid Room today makes Mills thrilled. He notes that it speaks to the question of whether new technology and DJ tools are helping this art, or “doing too much for us.”

“Maybe leaving room and space for us to problem solve ourselves and be more involved in the process is what we want,” he says, “Not just hit a button, smoke a cigarette and dance around.”

Mills’ November set in Liquidroom championed the humanity at the heart of DJing, with the sold-out club going wherever he took them, bumps in the road and all. It wasn’t just a celebration of a couple specific nights, but of an ethos.

“I’m happy that people want to hear the craftsmanship that goes into playing music and the artistry of DJing. Of using your natural body clock to make all these things fit together seamlessly so you can party for hours at a time,” Mills says. “I’m happy…yeah, I’m very happy.”

Jeff Mills's 'Live At The Liquid Room' 30th anniversary reissue is out now via Axis Records on CD and cassette.