Light from the Outside World will allow fans to experience Mills’ music like never before. The 90-minute arrangement will see Mills weave his signature deck and drum machine magic alongside the 60-piece Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. Conducted by long-time Mills collaborator Christophe Mangou, the piece is a joint work with film composer Thomas Roussel, interlacing classical, jazz and pulsing electronic music (which includes many of the classical cuts from Mills’ highly celebrated back-catalogue, such as The Bells and Sonic Destroyer).
“It’s a concept – it’s a theory about reality,” he notes carefully when describing the show. Mills is speaking to me from Paris, where he currently has an ongoing artistic residency at Le Louvre. “It addresses the idea that the time and space that we feel that ‘we’re in’ isn’t necessarily what we perceive it to be. Maybe it’s an extension of some sort of reflection of a time from somewhere else. The lives that we think we’re living – maybe that’s not the case. Overall, it’s the idea that there’s something much, much larger and much greater. There’s something much more than what we can imagine. It’s referencing the idea that our time is limited – that it’s sensitive.
“Our reality is something that is tangible, but it’s something that’s subject to change beyond our control. Light from the Outside World is a compilation of tracks that relay a certain type of sentiment. I chose these compositions from my catalogue because to me they symbolise certain points in my life where things had changed.”
Light from the Outside World was first performed in 2012 with the Orchestre National d’Île-de-France at the Salle Pleyel in Paris, and has since been performed at Casa da Música in Porto and OdeGand Festival in Belgium. However, it’s not the only time that Mills has fused together electronic music and classical. In 2005 he became the first DJ to collaborate with a symphonic orchestra when he performed a piece titled Blue Potential with the Montpellier National Orchestra at the ancient Roman aqueduct bridge Le Pont du Gard in southern France. In 2013, he presented a new piece called Where Light Ends with l’Orchestre symphonique de Bretagne in St Brieuc and Rennes. In fact, each and every time that Mills has collaborated with a symphonic orchestra, the performances have always sold out. This occurrence shows no signs of stopping, with all of the tickets to his show with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra being snapped up well in advance.
“The decision to mix these genres together, electronic and classical, and to this level, I think it’s really long-past due,” he notes. “It should have been happening much sooner than now, especially considering how close that they are – in the type of emotion that they can convey. With electronic music, if you take away the clubbing/nightlife aspect of it and you take the away the seemingly-main objective of making people dance and you just look at it as art form, it’s easy to see that it’s really not that different from beautiful classical music. Lots of string arrangements are often considered for the same reasons. Percussion is used for the very same reasons. It’s always had this very close connection, I feel – especially in Detroit. We always tried to have this very similar structure. For classical music, I think it’s very important to see if it had the ability to be current – that it could speak to younger people. I think that’s something that Light from the Outside World really conveys.”
While long overdue, Mills also believes that within the fusion of these genres, paying respect to both was imperative. “I wrote the original compositions and played a very big role in the way that they were translated for the orchestra,” he details. “Some modifications to the songs had to be made, but it was very important for me that while it is an orchestra performance, it had to retain as much of the character of electronic music as possible. There needed to be compromises but I didn’t think there should be a reduction of the systems that both of these genres use.
“For the performance, I contribute the electronic music component; the sounds that the orchestras aren’t able to create with their instruments. A lot of the tracks that have a certain type of tempo that I support with electronic machines.”
No stranger to Australian shores, Mills’ has toured many times to perform his highly-regarded DJ sets, last returning in June 2013. His 2014 visit will feature three DJ sets around the country and his Melbourne-exclusive collaboration with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. “If we’re lucky, people will leave thinking that what they just witnessed was not electronic music or classical – but that they heard something different,” he notes of how he hopes audiences will receive the performance of Light from the Outside World. “Something in-between. Something that is difficult to describe. Something that they have enjoyed.
“Some people may ask the question, ‘What exactly is it going to be?’ We’re in the 21st century; we shouldn’t be seeing things simply like where we came from or what we’re used to. I think this performance is something that showcases how we progress through music. Different parts of the music industry get together for the sake of creating something new. There aren’t many people out there that have the opportunity to collaborate like this, so these shows are special. It really represents how time has passed, and maybe where we’re heading. Maybe in the future we’ll be able to look at things like this and they’ll be much more easily accepted and you won’t have to ask the question of exactly what it is, but you can just go and enjoy it.”
BY TYSON WRAY
