Detroit spinner

When techno first appeared amid the urban wasteland of mid-1980s Detroit, its futuristic sound palette was inspired by the whirring and clanking of the Motor City’s defunct assembly lines. Early techno was darker and more hypnotic than its close cousin house, but you could still dance to it. There was still soul in the machine. The music brought people together on dance floors in abandoned warehouses, offering hope amid decline. By the end of the decade, thanks to the crossover hits ‘Good Life’ and ‘Big Fun’, techno had taken root in the UK. Europe and the world would follow.

Jeff Mills belongs to the second wave of Detroit techno: the guys who took themselves too seriously and forgot that it was meant to be fun. As part of the Underground Resistance collective, he jealously guarded the ‘Detroit sound’, stripping the music back to its harshest, most industrial elements. A solo career followed, with records called things like AX-009ab and 4 Art/UFO. Mills completed his migration into high-culture pretension by moving to France, where last month he was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. His residency at the Barbican, From Here to There, was a fitting way to celebrate the achievement.

Life to Death and Back mostly consists of a contemporary dance film — rarely a phrase to inspire confidence — in which three dancers in slinky black outfits perform among the exhibits in the Egyptian wing of the Louvre. Pyramids and clouds flash portentously across the screen while Mills plays a live electronic ‘score’ on turntables and laptop at the back of the auditorium: all looped bleeps and chaotic, layered percussion that never settles into a regular beat. If it sounded like it was being made up on the spot, that’s probably because it was.