Daniel Miller (music producer)

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

Life

Miller grew up as the child of two actors on the artist suburban Hampstead Garden Suburb, where he attended the King Alfred School. During his school years, he played guitar and irritated his bandmates with the persistence to try his instrument elicit new sounds by embarking on with things on the guitar. Between 1968 and 1971 he studied at the Guildford School of Art in Surrey film and television. At this time he became interested in electronic music of Krautrock and especially the German band Can, Faust, Neu! and power plant. In the 1970s he worked as a disc jockey in Switzerland. He observed first from a distance, the punk scene in the UK and prophesied that the synthesizer would replace the guitar as the ultimate instrument of punk, since one can produce sounds with this instrument without any musical knowledge. In 1977 he returned to the peak of punk to London and entered at the television station ATV ( Associated Television ) is a Research Associate position as a film cutter at. Impressed by the do-it- yourself concept of some punk bands decided Miller to market self-composed electronic music in self-publishing. He founded the independent label Mute Records and worked in the shop of Rough Trade, the first also sold the recordings of mute.

With an inexpensive synthesizer type KORG 700S and a four-track recorder was added, Miller published on May 1, 1978 the name The Normal TVOD the single / Warm Leatherette (catalog number mute1 ). On the back of record covers his home address was printed. In the belief Mute Records is a record label specializing in Electro Punk sent many artists demo recordings to the address. At the same time, he released several singles and an album under the name Silicon Teens. The Silicon Teens stand for Miller's desire to cover versions of rock ' n ' roll oldies to orchestrate with synthesizers. During the recordings, he met with Eric Radcliffe a sound engineer and recording studio owner ( Blackwing Studios) know.

Miller took after the sighting of the submitted demo material first Fad Gadget under contract and mute published from 1979 singles and albums by him ( 1986 to 1992 under its real name is Frank Tovey ). A little later came Boyd Rice ( NON), DAF and the then unknown Depeche Mode, which Miller had heard in the opening act of a concert by Fad Gadget, added. Since then, Miller has worked for other bands as a music producer and produced all albums by Depeche Mode until 1988.

In addition to his work as a label boss and producer, he worked in the early years of Mute continue even as a musician. Together with the musicians Graham Lewis and Bruce Gilbert of Wire took Miller Duet Emmo 1983 Album Or so it Seems to. Graham and Lewis took the dome during a band break from Wire several albums with the mute on. Duet Emmo is an anagram of Mute and Dome.