Jeff Mills’ “THIS IS TECHNO” Billboards in Detroit Hint at Genre’s Culture War

“Techno” has taken on a different meaning among younger dance music fans. Jeff Mills’ Axis Records seems to be speaking on this with billboards around Detroit.

Those flocking to the Motor City for the 2025 edition of Movement Detroit will arrive to find billboards pairing the words “THIS IS TECHNO” with a variety of Avant-Garde images courtesy of Jeff Mills‘ Axis Records.

Each design features the text superimposed over two square images side by side that each smack of the sci-fi-reminiscent themes that influenced early Detroit techno. But if you read between the lines of this love letter to the genre, you find commentary on recent trends that have polarized its community.

In social media posts, Mills has written that that the project “works by comparing and connecting two images,” and that “the combination designs a third creation in our minds” that can be connected to how techno sounds. In a press statement, however, he wrote that its purpose is to “sharpen our sense to detect what is techno and what is not.”

The series, which started out as social media posts on Mills’ accounts, arrives at a time when the definition of techno can vary widely depending on who happens to be uttering the word. Longtime fans of artists like Carl Craig, Luke Slater, and Mills himself tend to reject the hard dance-influenced style popularized on TikTok by artists like Nico Moreno and Sara Landry.

Few artists, if any, have contributed more to the intellectual dialogue around techno than Jeff Mills. A Detroit native, he had a successful DJ career under the moniker “the Wizard” on WDRQ before helping found Underground Resistance, a collective largely responsible for the genre’s legacy as protest music.

Jeff Mills and Axis Records’ THIS IS TECHNO billboards can be found at the following locations:

1. Woodward Ave. s/o w and Canfield St. W/S/F/N

2. Jefferson Ave E/O Orleans St. S/S/F/ NE

3. Woodward Ave S/O Burroughs St. W/A/F/NW

4. Gratiot Ave. and Jay NE/S?F/S.

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