I’ve got a killer music video to premiere for you today. It’s for “Spoken,” from Missions’ fantastic new album Subcreature. The Josh Mills project is known for its dark and nuanced synth cuts. “Spoken,” with its pulsating groove and hypnotically vocoded vocals, is one of the best on the record.
This music video finds LA-based Mills’ entrancing song aligned with an edited version of Steve Barron’s underrated 1984 film Electric Dreams, which stars Lenny Von Dohlen (who would eventually be on Twin Peaks) and Virginia Madsen, and involves a love triangle with a computer. Giorgio Moroder and Jeff Lynne scored the original.
In the film, the computer falls in love with Madsen — the same woman Von Dohlen falls for — after hearing her play her cello next door. But for the “Spoken” music video, the footage is recut to seem as if the computer falls in love with its owner and gets jealous. It’s a change that fits the sonic palette and mood that Mills conjures.
“It’s a small twist,” Mills, who likes the film’s cinematography, tells Vehlinggo. “I just felt a match between the film and the music vibe-wise and decided to explore it.”
You can purchase the album digitally and on vinyl and cassette via Holodeck Records.
More about Missions
Subcreature is the first full-length Missions album. Mills — born and raised in Texas before relocating to LA in 2017 — spent the bulk of his adult life developing his craft within the densely connected synth community of Austin, Texas, alongside bands like S U R V I V E and BOAN.
Mills was brought up in a large family of music enthusiasts with a vast appreciation for the dance music and pop culture of the 1980s and 1990s. Industrial, new wave, punk and hip-hop became dominant forces of his formative years. In college he had his own radio show.
With that cornucopia of influence at play, it wasn’t long before Mills began playing in various bands. He was in acts ranging from disco-punk to shoegaze, honing his skills with an infusion of electronics that eventually led him to adopt the solo pseudonym “Missions.”
Since his move to LA, Mills has collaborated with a few members of the Holodeck family with great results: the Emmy Award-winning Stranger Things composers Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein, and Parisian synth-pop maestro Lou Rebecca, who just released a new album entitled Restless.
(Editor’s Note: The above is adapted from Mills’ official bio.)
