Roulette, Airtime, and Axis Records present a Cinemix event: a projection of Fritz Lang’s 1927 dystopian film Metropolis accompanied by an original soundtrack composed and performed live by American producer Jeff Mills.
Fritz Lang’s 1927 dystopian masterpiece Metropolis envisions a futuristic megacity divided between an oppressed labor force below and a decadent elite above — an uneasy order that begins to fracture when a robot incites the workers to revolt.
Jeff Mills began reworking the film’s score in 2000, foregrounding its enduring themes of collective unity. He revisited the composition in 2010 with a deeper focus on character perspectives, and again in 2023 with a third release on Axis Records. This latest version, shaped and refined over time, turns toward the viewpoint of the machines, offering a layered interpretation attuned to the tensions of the present — a landmark film reanimated through Mills’ visionary sound.
In Mills’ own words:
“Almost 100 years ago, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis debuted in a time of exuberance, promise and ingenuity but also underlying whispers of discontent, fear mongering and disillusion. Though Metropolis is a fictional story that takes place around the year 2000, a time that those who watched it in 1927 could only dream about, there is a good amount of truth and unfortunately, reasons why there are still lessons to be learned from it.
More of an admonition, Metropolis continues to flash a cautious yellow to those who have and those who do not.
Remorsefully, it appears that the older the film becomes, the more it becomes relevant. And in the sharpened times will live in now, I can’t think of a better story to be reminded of”
– Jeff Mills
Jeff Mills has never wallowed in his DJ status and kept on multiplying outstanding performances, at the intersection between music, contemporary art, pop culture, design and science fiction, while running his own record label, Axis Records, from 1992 onwards. After conquering Detroit’s early Techno scene as The Wizard in the 80s, as a part of the Underground Resistance, he took up with his prime inspiration, Space and Science-Fiction. The 2000’s marked a turning point, when he started to merge his music with other arts. He decided to create a new soundtrack for Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” which brought him to many other cine-mix performances and movie soundtracks, including «Man From Tomorrow » he co-produced with a French filmmaker, Jacqueline Caux. Jeff Mills has shown numerous performances and exhibitions in artistic institutions such as the CCCB of Barcelona, the South Bank Center, the Barbican Center, the Cinémathèque Française, Pompidou Center, the Art Fair Monte Carlo.
In 2015, almost ten years after “The Exhibitionist“ a real-time film, multi-angled collection of his DJ sets, capturing the motions of his art with turntables, Jeff Mills launched “Exhibitionist 2“, in which he goes even deeper into real-time mix. Started in Tokyo, 2015, Jeff Mills created Spiral Deluxe, his first band since Underground Resistance, displaying an Electronic Jazz Fusion. In 2017, he took residence at the Barbican Center in London, where he presented “From Here to There”, a series of four innovative conceptual events marrying electronic music with symphonic sounds and other art forms. Jeff Mills was the first DJ to collaborate on, perform, and capture on DVD concerts with Classical orchestras. It all began in 2005 with“Blue Potential later called “Light from the Outside World”, still scheduled to perform all over the world. A second piece of the kind was presented in 2013, “Where Light Ends”, and a third, inspired by Holst’s “The Planets” premiered in 2015. Upcoming orchestral piece “Lost In Space”; will debut in France in April 2018. Jeff Mills was decorated in 2007 Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by French Government, and in 2017 to be Officier, in recognition of his contributions to the Arts.
