Jeff Mills returns to jazz fusion with a new Spiral Deluxe album

Jeff Mills, the Detroit techno producer whose name is usually attached to stark, machine-driven dance records, put out something very different on March 14, 2025. The Love Pretender is the second full-length from Spiral Deluxe, his jazz fusion group, and it arrived through his own Axis label.

Spiral Deluxe pairs Mills with keyboardist Gerald Mitchell, a longtime collaborator out of the Underground Resistance orbit, alongside Yumiko Ohno on Moog synthesizer and bassist Kenji "Jino" Hino, son of the jazz trumpeter Terumasa Hino. There are no drum-machine patterns or warehouse kicks here. The group works as a quartet, building tracks from improvisation rather than programming, and the result sounds nothing like a typical Jeff Mills credit.

The album follows the group's 2018 debut, Voodoo Magic, after a gap of roughly seven years. According to the album's listing on Axis, the music was tracked in Tokyo studios and mixed at Studio Ferber in Paris under Mills' supervision. Several guests sit in, including the late French guitarist Sylvain Luc, who died in 2024, and the Japanese horn player TOKU.

The title carries a deliberate message about the present moment. "From AI to the fake personas that populate the dominant platforms, 'The Love Pretender' speaks to a process that is symbolic of the time we're living in," the group said in a statement quoted by Resident Advisor. The framing turns the record into a comment on how easily appearances now stand in for substance, set against music made the slow way, by four people playing in a room.

The album is out now on Axis in vinyl and digital formats.