A loving ode to CHILL OUT compilations from the early 2000’s…

English-born, Aussie-raised DJ and beatmonger Joe Miller serves up an expertly crafted expedition through ambient and folk via trippy psychedelia and classical minimalism. Joe’s productions have been released on legendary imprints such as All Day I Dream and Bedrock and supported by the likes of Sasha, Guy J and Nick Warren. We are thrilled to have an artist of his pedigree join the series.

Could you give us a brief snapshot of how you came to be a DJ and producer? My older brother played me trance when I was very young and I loved it, then he got DJ gear during Year 12 but was studying too much to use it, so I learned on it in the meantime. I didn’t get seriously into producing until I moved to Melbourne from Adelaide. There’s a sense here that it’s possible to make a career out of electronic music, since so many people have done that (including folks I was listening to in my teens, like Jamie Stevens or Anthony Pappa).

Can you describe your ethos as a DJ and perhaps some of your influences that have led up to this point? In terms of song selection, music that can evoke strong emotions and create a feeling of interconnectedness. In terms of technique, I love those mixes that are greater than the sum of their parts, with elements of multiple tracks combining to make something new. Sasha’s layering in Fundacion NYC, Joris Voorn’s micro-editing in Balance 014 and GU43, and parts of James Holden’s 6 Mix. There’s a lot left to explore in that approach.

You enjoyed a US jaunt in the US earlier this year, playing shows across the east coast. How did this come about, how were the shows and what is the underground scene like there at present? There’s another Joe Miller in Chicago who was going through a phase of coming home from a night out and looking up Joe Millers on Facebook. Soon after ADID had released my collaboration with Jamie, Joe found me online and told his friends at Bespoke Musik about my music, so they flew me over to play in Brooklyn in 2019. That was the first time I’d played overseas, so I’m enormously grateful to Joe for starting that off. He’s a lovely, understated visual artist and I’m delighted to have a couple of his paintings in my studio.

Playing at Do Not Sit in Miami is a rush, as the crowd there appreciates low-tempo melodic stuff and doesn’t just want a series of peaks. The club’s regular DJs are unusually good too. New York has a welcoming crew and I got to hear Lauren Ritter and Jacob Groening play, as well as hanging out with my Burning Man chaperone from last year (Christian Voldstad) and current world-favourite house producer (Powel).

Then the part of Chicago where I stayed (Pilsen) had a wonderful Central American feel – at one point 89% of people in the neighbourhood were of Mexican descent. And obviously the city’s got its house and disco heritage, which makes for intelligent crowds. I was staying with Michael (mosey) from Rituals and he’s a bright-eyed optimist… we did one party at a bar in town (with Chicago Joe painting live while I played), then an all-night rooftop gig for Michael’s friend Seth Rompelman.

I’m not sure there’s a cohesive underground scene in the US – or anywhere – since the decline of radio means there are many fractured scenes running in parallel. But there are certainly enough people who like house music with melody and delicacy (I’m refusing to use Beatport’s genre tags here) that North American promoters can run events around that sound and occasionally make a profit.

How did you decide to approach your Lazydaze mix? Was there a concept behind it? It’s a big tracklist! I was thinking of the ambient compilations that came out in the early 2000s, which were designed to soundtrack transcendent moments at afterparties. So I started making a follow-up to those mixes, then the shortlist grew and took me in a folkier direction, with some psychedelia and classical minimalism in there too. I hope it’s cohesive… you want it to feel unified without filing down the eccentricities that make those disparate tracks special in the first place.

Are there any particularly special tracks or moments in there for you? The Dean Blunt track (‘LUSH’) is something I’ve been listening to a lot this year; I love its drama and soaring elegance. Leah Senior’s music has also been getting played in our house lately and her recent song ‘Critic’ felt like the best fit for this mix. I’ve always gravitated to folk music and my girlfriend’s an exceptional singer-songwriter, so she’s introduced me to some great local music including Leah and her band.

It’s a relaxed Sunday afternoon at home. Which album are you reaching for? Simeon ten Holt – Canto Ostinato.

You’re hosting a dinner party and can invite any three people, alive or dead. Who are you choosing and why? You know when you’re reading a book by someone with a powerful set of world-filters – like Jane Austen, who’d be at a party and instantly pick up on the most minute group dynamics, as if she had a heads-up display for shades of politeness and social manoeuvring – or the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, who’d look at a tree and have a mystical orgasm on the spot just by thinking about its geometric proportions? I’m fascinated by people like that, whose worldviews are so compelling that you come away from reading them and the world can look physically different for a day afterwards. These ways of seeing the world don’t have to be contradictory in a logical sense, but once you’re locked into one of them, the others feel less compelling.

Anyway, I like imagining conversations between people with powerful, incongruous schemas and wondering whether they’d connect or have a massive argument. So I’d go with 17th century wandering Japanese poet Bashō, Virginia Woolf (expert recorder of what consciousness feels like and cantankerous diarist), and surrealist comedian Tim Robinson from ‘I Think You Should Leave.’ Plus a translator and a Zoom recorder.

You can check out the full tracklist for Joe’s mix over on SoundCloud.