7/10

On his latest studio album 'Back To Our Regularly Scheduled Programming', LA producer and session player D Mills handles the writing, production, mixing, mastering and virtually every instrument himself, with horns on 'Let's Get Down' providing the only major outside contribution. It's an aesthetic that gives the record the feel of a complete artistic ecosystem above anything else.

But his background has always been unusually broad. Raised around hip-hop, R&B, jazz and rock, he first took up piano because he wanted the freedom to compose whatever he could hear in his head. From there, blues and jazz introduced improvisation, while bass and guitar followed later, eventually turning him into the kind of multi-instrumentalist capable of moving easily between studio work and live performance.

But 'Back To Our Regularly Scheduled Programming' doesn't come from an artist discovering how to produce alone for the first time. It comes from someone who has spent years learning how different parts of a band function and how those parts speak to one another, giving this release a deliberately self-contained feeling throughout.

Instead of separating songwriting from arrangement or performance from production, he folds everything into one continuous process. It gives the album a clear understanding that groove, feel and spontaneity matter just as much as technical precision. And that balance is one of the most interesting things about D Mills as an artist and what he puts forward across this LP.

As the fourth full-length release in a catalogue that already includes 'The Recital', 'Agape' and 'Prism', the album feels like the work of someone increasingly comfortable bringing every part of his musical identity into the same room.

In all, this is a record about what happens when one artist has enough range, confidence and technical ability to shape every stage of the process himself, and still make the finished work feel alive.