Even after this false start (a clean) Mills is instantly affable, happy to chat away as he would with his mates down the pub, answering questions with an evident passion for music that’s clearly in his genes. “I grew up listing to James Brown, soul and Motown stuff. My parents are both musical and they play in bands and my brother plays guitar. We would be playing in bands, that was my main starting point then I got into DJing and collecting funk.” From there it was a logical progression into experimenting with the remixes and mashups that he has become renowned for.
“I was playing drums in a band with my brother. We started to buy four and eight track tape recorders and then eventually we bought Pro-Tools. At that point I had started to collect funk records so I thought I’d give it a bash throwing a few records together chucking a few samples on top of each other. It’s kind of mad how it all started, from not really knowing what I was doing, to be honest with you, it was really just not having a clue about production techniques but just having a go. The first track I put together was Tricka Technology and that went on to be the title track for the [2004] album with Krafty Kuts.”
From this early take on the James Brown classic Talkin Loud, Mills moved on to other greats of times past, no name too big, from Queen’s Another One Bites The Dust to the immensely popular (and unofficial) proto-dubstep reinvention of The Beatles’ Strawberry Fields. “Everyone loved that one, I think it was because of the wobbly baseline”. But could there be a danger of alienating some people when going anywhere near these most-loved tracks?
“I try my hardest not to ruin the records. I try to do something with a classic record which gives it a different spin without completely losing the vibe of the original,” he explains. “You’ve got to make sure you don’t take the soul of it”.
There is more to his arsenal than mash-ups though, the producer has started his own label, Jam City, and is keen to get back in the studio to record some of his own material. “I’ve got a few bits and bobs in the pipeline. I’ve got Nick Thayer staying with me at the moment; he’s a big friend of mine from Melbourne and we’re working on a couple of bits at my house ’cause he’s over touring. It’s a never ending battle doing bootlegs. I did find myself constantly putting out bootlegs and not enough original music”. He famously got around this problem back in 2003. Being a fan of old school hip hop and block party beats, he wanted to remix the classic Kurtis Blow track The Breaks so instead of ripping some dodgy samples and acapellas he and Krafty Kuts went directly to the source. “We actually went to New York,” says Mills continuing the story, “and recorded all the vocals in the studio. We totally hooked up with Kurtis – it was amazing. We went through the whole track, re-writing all the lyrics to the verses together and we became good friends. After that we did a few gigs together and he ended up coming down to my house and recording some more tracks. I have some unfinished tracks that I started with Kurtis that I’ve never quite got around to finishing yet. He’s totally cool and a really good guy, a bit of a legend, and it was a honour working with him. Definitely the way to go is to work with these people rather than sample them.”
He is also renowned for his turntable skills, having previously had a mini-mix for UK Radio 1 DJ Annie Mac voted the year’s best by listeners, but if you see him gesticulating widely at the decks it might not be scratching and cutting he is performing going by his experience the last time he was on the shores at the Belvoir Amphitheatre in Perth (an outdoor venue out in the middle of the lush Swan Valley wineries). “One of the first gigs I did in Australia was at Breakfest,” he recounts “I remember it being so hot and there were creepy crawlies literally crawling on the mixer, they were walking down the arms of the 1210s and onto the record and spinning round on the turntables. We were on the stage just jumping around because there were insects everywhere.” Perhaps that’s where he got the idea for one of his most recent remixes, the 1986 b-boy anthem by Whistle called Buggin. Time for another shower Adam?
BY ANDREW NELSON
