Daniel Miller

Daniel Otto Joachim Miller (born 14 February 1951) is an English record producer and founder of Mute Records.

Biography Miller is the son of two Austrian-Jewish refugees from Nazism, Martin Miller and Hannah Norbert-Miller, born into a family of actors.

Miller studied film and television at the Guildford School of Art (now University for the Creative Arts) from 1969–1972, where he became interested in synthesizer music. By the end of the 1960s, he became frustrated with rock music's lack of experimentation and became interested in the sound of German bands like Can, Faust, Neu! and Kraftwerk. Miller worked as a DJ in Switzerland before returning to England at the height of punk, which he enjoyed due to the energy and do-it-yourself attitude of the music. He later became interested in the electronic music scene, with bands such as Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire, which inspired Miller to create his own music. Using money from film editing and working long hours, he gathered enough money to buy a cheap miniKORG 700S synthesizer and a TEAC four-track reel-to-reel tape recorder Because he had included his address on Normal's "Warm Leatherette" single cover, other acts had wanted a small-scale deal with Miller's Mute Records. The turning point for Mute came when Miller listened to a tape by an artist called Fad Gadget and liked what he heard. An album titled 'Music for Parties' was released in 1980 and consisted of classic rock 'n' roll songs, like 'Memphis, Tennessee' and 'Just Like Eddie', done in an upbeat synthpop style. The Silicon Teens gave an insight into Miller's idea of an all-synthesiser teenage pop group.

Duet Emmo

Duet Emmo was a one-off collaboration between Daniel Miller, Graham Lewis and Bruce Gilbert spawning an album and single, both titled 'Or So it Seems' in 1983. Lewis and Gilbert were both members of Wire until 1979 when the band split up. All three had been friends for a long time. They had all been using Blackwing Studios, and had shared the same engineer, Eric Radcliffe. An initial project had been suggested in 1980 but the success of Depeche Mode and Yazoo had kept Miller busy until the end of 1982. Lewis and Gilbert had both been releasing their own material under the name Dome. Duet Emmo was an anagram of Mute and Dome.

Sunroof

With fellow Depeche Mode music producer Gareth Jones, Daniel Miller has released a few remixes under the name Sunroof. Starting with a remix of "Oh Yeah" for the 1997 Can remix album Sacrilege, there has also surfaced remixes for Neu!, Kreidler, Pizzicato Five, Goldfrapp, Faust, MGMT, Charles Wilp, Ellis Island Sound, Future Bible Heroes and To Rococo Rot.

The Sunroof debut album, Electronic Music Improvisations Vol. 1, was released in May 2021. Vol. 2 followed in 2023, and Vol. 3 in 2024.

Mute: A Visual Document

In 2017, Miller co-authored Mute: A Visual Document (Thames & Hudson) with Terry Burrows. An illustrated hardback book that detailed the history of Mute Records, it was named Book of the Year by both Rough Trade and Electronic Sound magazine.