Jeff Mills Releases Pt. 2 of 'Live at Knockdown Center' DJ Mix on Apple Music in Spatial Audio

Three decades after Jeff Mills set out to preserve the full atmosphere of a dancefloor, the final installment of his Knockdown Center recording arrives today on Apple Music in Spatial Audio. Jeff Mills Live at Knockdown Center, Mar 14, 2026, Pt. 2 completes the two-part document of his New York performance on the Live at Liquid Room 30th Anniversary Tour, following the release of Pt. 1 on September 25.

The second installment features selections from Robert Hood, Marcel Dettmann, Steve Bicknell, Ø [Phase] and Rødhåd, Bandulu and more. Together, the two parts capture Mills’ approach to techno alongside the voices, movement and collective response of the dancefloor. The Knockdown Center set is the sole performance from the tour selected for release in Spatial Audio.

For Mills, the recording fulfills an idea that was ahead of the technology available to him. His landmark Live at the Liquid Room, recorded in Tokyo in 1995 and released the following year, was conceived as more than a document of the music coming through his mixer. Mills placed six to eight microphones around the venue to capture the room and its audience, but limitations around the final format led Mills to reduce the recording to stereo.

Widely regarded as one of the most influential DJ mixes ever recorded, Live at the Liquid Room became a defining document of Mills’ uncompromising, high-velocity approach to techno. After decades of being available primarily on CD and cassette, it received its first official digital release in 2025, exclusively on Apple Music.

At Knockdown Center, Apple Music and Mills returned to that original ambition with the tools to realize it. Fourteen microphones were positioned throughout the venue’s 20,000-square-foot main hall, capturing the audience and room ambiance around the direct stereo feed from Mills’ DJ mixer. The resulting Spatial Audio mix retains the physical perspective of the performance, with Mills at the front and the crowd responding around the listener, rather than artificially distributing the music across the Atmos channels.

“I was trying to do this 30 years ago,” Mills told MusicTech. “This is what we were planning for.”

The audience is central to that vision. Throughout the performance, Mills deliberately used the music to draw reactions from the dancefloor, preserving those exchanges as part of the recording itself. “It’s a live recording. It’s not just music. It’s the ambiance of the room. The people. The wild animals are a part of it,” he told MusicTech.

With both installments now available, Live at Knockdown Center brings Mills’ decades-long pursuit of immersive recording into the present, preserving the relationship between the DJ, the room and the people who give a performance its character.

PT. 2 TRACKLIST

Ø [Phase], Rødhåd – 190319

Jamie Bissmire – First Sighting (Original)

ID – ID1 (from Jeff Mills Live at Knockdown Center, Mar 14, 2026, Pt. 2)

Marcel Dettmann – State of Art

ID – ID2 / ID3 (from Jeff Mills Live at Knockdown Center, Mar 14, 2026, Pt. 2)

Marcel Dettmann – Meramo

Steve Bicknell – The Primitive Streak

ID – ID4 (from Jeff Mills Live at Knockdown Center, Mar 14, 2026, Pt. 2)

Robert Hood – Nothing Stops Detroit

Hash – Pin

ID – ID5 (from Jeff Mills Live at Knockdown Center, Mar 14, 2026, Pt. 2)

Bandulu – Long Count

ID – ID6 (from Jeff Mills Live at Knockdown Center, Mar 14, 2026, Pt. 2)

ID – ID7 (from Jeff Mills Live at Knockdown Center, Mar 14, 2026, Pt. 2)

Darko Esser – Lost in Translation

DJ Skull – The Graveyard Orchestra (Original Mix)