Play | Cosplay | Touch | Paint | Read | Buy

Music by Jeff Milligan

Play Ms Pac-Mondrian in a new window

Jeff Milligan was invited to score the music for the level celebrating the birth of electronic dance music culture in Toronto. An early producer for Richie Hawtin's Plus 8 label under the moniker Algorithm, his first full length album Composure came out on the Force Lab label of the highly regarded German Mille Plateaux family. Jeff was the first DJ to spin on three decks in Canada (he now rocks 4 too) and one of the first local purveyors of the minimal techno he first heard on alternative radio programming in the 80s from Detroit, Chicago, and Toronto. Originally based in Toronto, his years of dedication to the formal rigour of the beat has launched an international career of dj appearances and label releases.

Jeff's widely acclaimed technical mastery on the mixer is an absolute delight to dance to and a wonder to behold. If he's not changing records, his hands are a constant blur, twiddling and pushing knobs and sliders to warp the tracks into a unique feast of beats. He has the rare ability to take two or three or four tracks you know and seamlessly mix them into something unrecognizably funky that keeps the dancers bumpin' and the trainspotters chin-strokin'. We are ecstatic that he accepted our invitation to produce the soundtrack for Toronto Techno, and true to form, Jeff has provided a minimal masterpiece to take you straight to the top in the t-dot.

Get thee straight to his website to experience many more sounds and sights of Milligan!

view Toronto Techno map

The Toronto Techno level, created by Ms. Pac-Mondrian, reproduces a cartographically exact map of downtown Toronto in the style of Piet Mondrian, and marks the birth of the rave scene in Toronto along with other spots from Ms. Pac-Mondrian's party past.

The first and most important mark on the map memorialises 23 Hop, formerly located at 318 Richmond, the place where the first rave in Toronto occurred in 1991, and where Ms. Pac-Mondrian first heard techno in 1992 at a Sykosis party. Previously listening to alt-rock, after that first exposure she was hooked for life on the delirious mix of frenetic beats, dancing & psychedelics. 23 Hop long ago shut its doors forever to the underground when it became The Joker Nightclub, which catered to top 40, hip-hop and R&B.

In the Toronto Techno level, when you go in 23 Hop, you enter a warp zone and appear instantaneously out of the Comfort Zone, the longest running after-party sketchpad that is still open. More times than she'd care to admit, Ms. Pac-Mondrian found herself burnt-out there on a Sunday morning after a full night of dancing and multi-drug indulgence waiting impatiently for 11:00 when they'd start serving beer from the taps. Waking up after a weekend of carnivalesque ecstatic excess that left memory like a black hole, it sometimes felt to Ms. Pac-Mondrian like she really did step into 23 Hop and out of the Comfort Zone.

Another location marked out on the map is Play de Record, the longest running local DJ emporium that imports beats on wax from the US and Europe and sells the vinyl dance music that emerges from Toronto's studios.

The final place is The Temperance Society, a bar frequented by bike couriers that was also an outlet for greenery. Before it got shut down by the cops, if Ms. Pac-Mondrian wasn't at the Comfort Zone on a Sunday, she was waiting for TempSoc to open to get that soothing smoke.

And of course, the ghost house is Toronto Metro Police headquarters, the home of the people who did their best to shut parties down and prevent people from having a good time.

April 7, 2002
"Saw Algo at NASA last night, amazing as always. I can't get over how he can take such sparse music and manufacture such densely layered funk. Mmmmm, minimal. He mentioned touring Europe and staying in a hotel with furniture designed by Mies van der Roh. I said "so you sat on milk crates?" (har har, that's the closest thing I could think of that you could sit on that looks like his buildings). From there we chatted about Bauhaus, and some of the Russian Constructivists. Mix those together and you get the design principles of most techno cover art."

May 8, 2005
"Sent Jeff Milligan an email to see if he'll make the beats for the Toronto Techno level of Ms. Pac-Mondrian. He always split duties with Adam Marshall as my favourite local DJ (though now Algo is an ex-pat to Slovakia, where he can make a living at it), so I really hope he does the music. When he played at the Mockingbird right before Traxx way back when, it was one of the best sets I ever heard (the Traxx set from that night being the other). Jeff's mania for precision probably isn't too far from Mondrian's. Years ago I saw Jeff smash a record when something wasn't perfect on a mix, though I don't know if Mondrian ever threw a paintbrush. Given that we talked about Bauhaus and van der Roh, the heirs of de Stijl, back at NASA Dance Pub in the midst of all the 80's video game consoles (we're talking Vectrex, baby!) and retro-futurist design, it just fits perfectly."

May 10, 2005
"Just heard back from Jeff and he's doing it! Hooray! In another bizarre coincidence, he said he has been playing Ms. Pac-Man a lot lately when he needs a temporary break/refresher from music making. Like Burroughs would say, it's the magical universe at play again!"