Daniel Miller (music producer)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Daniel Miller (born February 14, 1951 in London ) is a British music producer and the founder of the independent label Mute Records .

Life

Daniel Miller's parents were the actor Martin Miller and the actress Hannah Norbert , who both fled to Great Britain after the annexation of Austria in 1938. He grew up in the artist suburb of Hampstead Garden and attended the King Alfred School there. Already during his school days he played the guitar and irritated his bandmates with the insistence that he wanted to get new sounds out of his instrument by hitting the guitar with things. Between 1968 and 1971 he studied film and television at the Guildford School of Art in Surrey . At that time he was interested in the electronic music of Krautrock and especially the German bands Can , Faust , Neu! and power plant . In the 1970s he worked as a disc jockey in Switzerland. He initially observed the punk scene in Great Britain from afar and prophesied that the synthesizer would replace the guitar as the ultimate punk instrument, as this instrument could produce sounds without any musical knowledge. In 1977 he returned to London at the height of punk and took up a position as assistant editor for the television station ATV (Associated Television) . Impressed by the do-it-yourself concept of some punk bands, Miller decided to self-publish electronic music he had composed himself. He founded the independent label Mute Records and worked in the store of Rough Trade , which initially also sold Mute's records.

Recorded with an inexpensive KORG 700S synthesizer and a four-track recorder, Miller released the single TVOD / Warm Leatherette (catalog number MUTE1) on May 1, 1978 under the name The Normal . His home address was printed on the back of the record cover. Believing that Mute Records was a music label specializing in Electropunk , numerous artists sent demo recordings to the address. At the same time he released several singles and an album under the name Silicon Teens . The Silicon Teens represent Miller's endeavors to orchestrate cover versions of rock 'n' roll oldies with synthesizers. During the recordings he met Eric Radcliffe, a sound engineer and music studio owner (Blackwing Studios).

After viewing the submitted demo material, Miller initially signed Fad Gadget and Mute released singles and albums from him from 1979 (from 1986 to 1992 under his real name Frank Tovey). A little later, Boyd Rice (NON), DAF and the then unknown Depeche Mode , which Miller had heard in the opening act of a concert by Fad Gadget, joined them. Since then, Miller has worked as a music producer for other bands and produced all of Depeche Mode's albums until 1988.

In addition to his work as head of the label and music producer, he continued to work as a musician himself in the early years of Mute. Together with the musicians Graham Lewis and Bruce Gilbert from Wire , Miller recorded the album Or so it Seems as Duet Emmo in 1983 . Graham and Lewis recorded several albums with Mute as Dome while Wire was on hiatus. Duet Emmo is an anagram of mute and dome.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Dave Thompson: Alternative Rock . Miller Freeman, San Francisco 2000, ISBN 0-87930-607-6 , pp. 796 .
personal data
SURNAME Miller, Daniel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British record producer and record label owner
DATE OF BIRTH February 14, 1951
PLACE OF BIRTH London