DJ Spooky
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DJ Spooky

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When he answers the phone at 9.15am on a Sunday morning for me, he sounds remarkably perky given what he’s been up to the last few days. “I was near the North Pole and the Arctic Circle. I just got off a flight to New York and tomorrow I’m off to Australia!” he says. Christ. I’d almost forgotten the dude’s recently featured in National Geographic for his work as a filmmaker, and I ask him to tell me more. “It’s a project I’m doing with Sierra Club and National Geographic. The idea was to go to the Arctic Circle to and collect impressions. It’s incredible. I was in an article one time and I’ve now been to the Arctic Circle twice, near Sweden, Norway, Canada, Ukon Territory, and now near the top of Alaska. The sun didn’t set and we were in one of the most remote parts of North America, it’s very beautiful.”

This strong sense of global awareness pervades much of Miller’s work – a significant reason why many find his work particularly compelling due to its explorative and thoughtful nature. When asked about the nature of the arts in contributing to popular discourses about culture and politics, he’s particularly enthusiastic. “I always like to say that music isn’t really music – it’s information,” he explains. “It’s really important for people to realise that we’re under massive amounts of pressure from the environment, there’s more refugees in the world than at the end of World War II. I’ve also visited a place called Nauru that the Australians have turned into a detention centre, and so on. There’s a lot to be said for awareness of politics and culture. The same can be said of America – it’s really important to be engaged, and the arts have a really important role to play in that.”

This makes sense to me – hip hop, one of the genres that Miller is particularly notorious for playing around I, has an extensive history of being politically outspoken. “Oh, absolutely,” he agrees. “You can’t say that life as we know it would be the same without hip hop. It’s played a big role in most of the big social movements in the late 20th century, it’s an incredibly powerful. On the other spectrum, it’s really consumer-oriented. I’m just trying to add some different information to the mix. It’s a strange moment… I’m between albums right now, working on a lot of projects about environmentalism, social justice, climate change… it might not be as trendy as other stuff I could be doing! It’s a balancing act.”

Having dual degrees in French literature and philosophy plays some role in understanding Miller’s perpetually-eclectic array of projects on the go – the educated and thoughtful approach to whatever it is he’s working on is the product of a curious mind, it seems. “I went to Bowdin, it’s a tiny school – one degree was in philosophy and the other in French literature,” he says. “It was always about ideas and tools for thinking about more… not just execution of policy, because I was planning on being a diplomat after I finished, but DJing was more fun. I’m kind of at this life crossroads because I never really planned on doing music, until it took over. Most people who are DJs, that’s all they wanna be, it’s at the core of their being. For me, it’s never one thing – I write books, I do art, I’m interested in environment and social justice issues. I’ve always had to tell people, it’s not just about music. You’d be stunned, people want something trendy or have their lifestyle, their haircut and clothing – for them it’s just a thing. I try as much as possible to make it something that gives people more than that, which are ideas.”

He keeps in touch with academia as much as he does the world of music. No stranger to combining the two disciplines as a music and arts writer, he’s keen to discuss his next book coming out shortly, an academic exploration of digital culture. “Everything is going towards video, and YouTube, Vimeo, and other things. It’s a very visual culture, it’s gonna get deeper and weirder, and this is just the beginning. My next book is being published through MIT and is called Imaginary App… I asked a whole bunch of artists to come up with ideas for apps that don’t exist yet. It was a fun project because I got the chance to get people really thinking about the role of apps and creativity in play… kind of deep because people really struggled to imagine what an app couldn’t  do… to make a long story short the only rule for the book was that the app couldn’t exist already, and I got a whole bunch of artists to come up with schematics, blueprints, designs.”

Miller will be in Australia this week, first presenting at the Australasian Computer Music Association then playing his unique brand of twisted electronic and instrumental beats at Howler. He’s looking forward to the return. “Australia has always and will always have such a dynamic situation – it’s so remote for most of the western world,” he muses. “London and New York, for example, must seem like satellites in outer space. But a lot of Australians move here and I work with a lot of Australians and I find that they always know what’s going on, the distance means they really keep track of things and they’re so willing to try new things, which I think is one of the main strengths of your electronic music and hip hop scenes.”

BY MIKI MCLAY

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