The MINIMAL backlash

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hi

The Hacker harasses 'quite boring' minimal DJs
02/02/2006

Electro-tech uber-producer Michel ‘The Hacker’ Amato branded minimal techno ‘the new electroclash’ this week and suggested that, like electroclash several years ago, the much-hyped genre could soon be struggling.

‘There are some good records out there of course, but now everybody is into it and what I find particularly surprising is that you’re finding hard techno DJs who are doing minimal stuff now as well as people from the commercial house scene,’ said Michel.

‘It just shows that minimal is a new fashion thing, that people think it’s cool to do be involved. It’s exactly the same as what happened with electroclash, three or four years ago; everybody was suddenly into electro from one day to the next. It’s the new thing, it’s everywhere, but then next year it will be something else that’s in fashion. We just have to wait and see which artists will remain.’

The French producer remains one of the highest profile artists to have emerged and prospered from electroclash, though confessed he loathes minimal so much he often hassles DJs, bombarding them with cheeky record requests.

‘I always go to the DJ booth, especially when I’m drunk, If I’m sober, or normal I don’t ask, but when I drunk I always ask the DJ to play different records if I don’t like what I’m hearing,’ Michel chuckled.

‘I remember being in a club with Vitalic a few years ago and we were totally drunk and there was some DJ, I can’t remember who, playing this very serious, intellectual minimal style and we thought it was very boring so we approached him and said ‘please play something interesting, play Daft Punk or Giorgio Moroder, whatever, play something funky’. I have to say the day after I felt a little guilty and thought I shouldn’t have done that but during the moment, it was very funny. Not for the DJ, but it was for us,’ he laughed.

‘I have to say I was in Berlin a few weeks ago and this music is everywhere, at every party everybody is playing the same thing and it’s quite boring; very boring,’ he continued, ‘Three hours of plip-plop, plip-plop is too much. I guess it must have something to do with the drugs. Minimal is very druggy music.’

The Hacker’s Traces EP (featuring remixes by Oxia, Dexter and a Black Strobe remix of Flesh & Bones) is out shortly on PIAS.

The Hacker’s Traces EP (featuring remixes by Oxia, Dexter and a Black Strobe remix of Flesh & Bones) is out shortly on PIAS.

Not having a dead eighties horse to flog back to life rather desperately would make him more credible. Sorry but I don't think we'll be having that second electrosomething revival any time soon ! See you in 2020 for senior DJ novelty tours in janky suburban clubs.

Actually I now remember meeting Michel ages ago in that environment exactly.

OTM

here is my WBRU story: Now's the time on ILX where we admit thinking TMBG were awesome in junior high

xpost : you missed the acid/rave revival ? It WAS completely uncalled for I agree.

‘Three hours of plip-plop, plip-plop is too much. I guess it must have something to do with the drugs. Minimal is very druggy music.’

Now I love it again! Faceless techno/it all sounds the same/you could only like this music on drugs = must be great!

i feel more comfortable in full clubs rather than empty clubs.

i mean, who would YOU rather have jump on the minimal house bandwagon - tribal america or planet mu? skam or subliminal?

or, to put it another way ... "jacques lu cont remixing COLDPLAY? GAH! SOUNDS LIKE DRECK!! i wish he'd work with someone credible, like sigur ros or tortoise ..."

Better for Jacques Lu Cont HIMSELF to start making minimal epics (oh wait! He does! sorta)

my favourite plip-plop records of the last year or so

sven brede - brave
swat squad - escoria
argy - love dose

now they say, "oh all those no-breakdowns, its for people on drugs'

i heard a rumour they used to say the same about paul whiteman in 1921

im not sure anyone does;)

That no-one-cares-about-me-anymore pill is a tough one to swallow.....

i mean, who would YOU rather have jump on the minimal house bandwagon - tribal america or planet mu? skam or subliminal?

Believe me, I'd be first first first in line to see say, Bad Boy Bill do a minimal set, but these guys (bailey, liebing, mistress, et.al.) are a pretty different group. Those 'prole-house' guys (subliminal etc) have ideas, and bring their own fresh material to the table, while those inbetweeners are pretty much just technicians who put out incremental tweakings of the formula once it's codified. Their material can sometimes be decent filler for the mix though, but once they're onto something, get ready for a glut of really average stuff.

Also I don't now who skam or planet mu are.

Actually if his own productions weren't so increasingly furrow-browed I'd say that Trentemoller would be a potential minimal Mylo - or at least a minimal Freeform Five?

Dominik Eulberg = the minimal Tiefschwarz.
Ricardo Villalobos = the minimal Black Strobe

Search out the track 'Rykketid' which is the B-Side of the Physical Fraction EP on Audiomatique Recordings which has a quality 'old-school techno' riff, and a super-cheesy breakdown with an extremly rushy build up.

there has definitely been a massive leap onto the minimal bandwagon all over. i get a few demo cds handed to me every week. last year they were all (bad) electrohouse and now they all seem to be (bad) minimal. the interesting thing is that it's the same kids who have now gone minimal. i just hope it doesn't go the way of what happened to techno back in the day when every producer seemed to jump on the jeff mills banging loop techno tip. that was pretty much the nail in the coffin of that type of techno as far as creativity went.

(you do mean bad as in good, right???) haha.

a) i find the hackers music deeply derivative, and neither interesting nor funky, so for me hiswitty comments apply to himself

b) i dont find minimal house/techno boring yet. i might do, then i will agree with the hacker. but i love it still, and the last weekend at watergate, with a eulberg, alex under and triple r (surely the uber generic minimal line up, potentially) was unbelievably fun.

I remember once when I was really drunk I kicked a wall on the way home - no-one saw, although I felt guilty for possibly waking someone up, but still, at the time, it was an incredible high.

Furthermore the whole idea of "minimal" is so gigantically open to different interpretations, MANDY sets are totally different to Richie Hawtin ones and yet everyone calls it minimal.

I can definitely see the huge swing towards minimal, people at work now ask for minimal just as much if not more than "electrohouse", but the fact is it doesn't worry me or bother me.

The whole "plip plop" thing is also way way smaller a part of minimal than is made out by detractors, at least as far as I can see, I sometimes wonder who actually plays that stuff, cos no club I've ever played at would go for it, I'm talking the super dry minimal stuff, I guess Richie Hawtin or someone gets away with it.

There is alot of "minimal" which is just leaner, smarter, melodic house or techno.

That no-one-cares-about-me-anymore pill is a tough one to swallow.....

Absolutely OTM.

Who will be the minimal Mylo

Probably Mylo! He'll release a second album ripping off everyone with goofy aplomb.

minimal is when not too much is going on at any given moment, hehe

I don't mean that all non Perlon music sucks, just that the ethic at work in "minimal" is a very worthy one. Though mostly I reckon when people mock minimal they mean the super dry stuff.

i mean, if people want to mock dry minimal stuff i suggest there's much more possibilities to mock idm.... i like both idm and minimal, and i had soooooo many people laughing at me cuz i listen to this shapeless weird brain-and-ears-twisting stuff, that's what i mean ::)

("dense" and "complex" not being automatic positive qualities obv, I'm just noting the divorce between the discourse and the reality)

Don't know if anyone else feels the same but to me there are alot of electrohouse tracks now that aren't quite minimal but are still very dark and tracky. I sort of include the Border Community type stuff in this too. I dunno, it doesn't necessarily feel like house.

When was the last big electro (pop) house anthem? "Zdarlight" I guess but so many of the crossover hits are actually kind of deeper anthems now. I mean compared to say 2004 last year was seriously devoid of that kind of poppy electrohouse. Not a bad thing necessarily in my opinion, it just seems weird that the scene has gone even more underground just when it appeared to be about to go overground again.

As much as I love Blackstrobe I am finding it hard to see how they're going to re-enter things as they stand at the moment, they seem to have done a Vitalic a little bit, maybe they just didn't have the material.

James Holden is another example where "minimal" sounds almost right, but there's certainly a ridiculous surfeit of stuff going on in the tracks.

I agree with the notion that everything seems more aligned with techno than it was. Actually I think we've both been saying this for a while, it's the Mathew Jonson Effect innit.

I think there can be some surprising back-and-forths and reversals though, look at the way that the Metro Area influence just drifts around the scene from one place to another - just as it disappears entirely from Get Physical releases, "Cosmic Sandwich" blows up. So Black Strobe might find themselves suddenly central again with a minimal amount of adjustment (ha ha i said minimal).

I guess to be fair alot of this "techno" is still kind of at a house tempo, I mean it just seems there is real attention to detail and measured releases of the madness/hard aspects of techno, and there probably are still alot of records being played that are house.

Can we all just assume we mean awful 90s loop shit when we say techno.

as for mylo, he has lost his hearing so won't be making much of anything for a while.

i think its a problem that the attention to detail has shifted from the djs to the producers - id rather have psychedelic effects created on the fly by, say, putting backwards vocals on top of slowed-down picotto tools* than hear the same tricks from the same records every weekend (but then i guess canned ket-ness is better than djs playing endless tribal loops as is)

* see any Ostgut set from around 2002 for reference

i think (and hope) his deafness is temporary.

Though now that I think of it that's partly cos it's not very good anyhow. I guess I mean I couldn't bring myself to listen to it.

I'm sure there's some good bandwagon jumping, though some of it is definitely annoying, like say Beyer/Liebing playing electrohouse, no thanks guys, or those awful attempts by US house guys to go electrohouse, changing their production name to JOHN COMPUTER or MR CASH REGISTER MACHINE

I don't really think of Detroit techno as techno?
I don't really think of Detroit techno as techno?
I don't really think of Detroit techno as techno?
I don't really think of Detroit techno as techno?

!

HI DERE:)

psylocibin - delicate substance, on, wait for it...DELERIUM! of all labels

mind you, electrowelt soopertrack is TRANCE, and i wont listen to anyone who says otherwise

anyway, i read an article in the daily mirror which suggested that these are all moot points, as the post-rave diaspora are reuniting for simon reynolds birthday

When has Hawtin ever been labelled "house"?

what kind of a crazy world is it when people want to distance themselves from jeff mills!

there is minimal, and then there is also minimal. there are two types of dj, but the records they play are often on the same label, pokerflat and such

x post

im listening to more Swat Squad at the moment, i think this is the best plip-plop music yet

ha hahaha, esp. when he drinks too much vodka, as was the case in moscow

Tech house, in my more paranoid moments, always seemed like a way of tricking house fans into liking/playing techno. Or vice versa. I'm not sure which. IOW, what Tracer said vs "it's techno, but it's kinda mellow and you won't hear a 303".

I dunno, I think I've closed the door on me liking "plip plop" minimal forever, I love the melodic stuff, though I think the midpoint between the two is when things really start to suck.

About "tech-house", I just mean most people just say "electrohouse" when they mean the new stuff, and when someone asks me for tech-house they want Layo and Bushwacka or Josh Wink or something, like isn't tech-house in the old sense just for DJs who find house too gay and poppy and techno too purist and militant? Just smacks of middlebrow, though of course I'm only working on a definition of tech-house from my time, 2001 or thereabouts to the present, so maybe I'm prejudiced in that regard.

The deep, heavy bassline. The return of acid (deep house at the time hated it). Marching snares. And textured synth lines that techno had forgotten.

Also, it's hard to remember how bad most techno was in the late 90s - the aggressive over-fast looped stuff was really bad. Tech house slowed it down, added structure, and moved the focus from pointlessly aggressive cut-up DJing (for every Dave Clarke, there were 1000 bad eggs). As for Naked Music or Om style house - even your dad thought it was boring.

this also reads a lot like a description of current get physical tunes.

I sympathise with Ronan's position w/r/t tech-house - although the irony is that a lot of what we both like most in current "minimal" stuff is basically tech-house (only done good). I do like some "proper" tech-house though, especially the really dubwise stuff like Jeff Bennett (who's done stuff for Pokerflat, yeah). I don't really go for the stuff which sounds like techno loops slowed down and softened up, with no development or build from the beginning of the track to the end - not that I demand musicality or artistry as such, but I don't think I've ever really been into "dj tools" in any dance music sub-genre (with harder faster techno you'll occasionally get sets which are so well done you forget you're listening to dj tools, but the emphasis here is on "forget". This might well also be possible with tech-house dj tools sets, but I haven't come across any great examples).

Layo & Bushwacka circa their first album were actually really great, although I'd argue they were more breakbeat than tech-house really. In fact they were sort of marked out by the unusual extent to which the better tracks took unexpected twists and turns.

x-post - yeah Get Physical is basically tech-house with an electro-synth tinge, but again, as per the use of dub in e.g. Bennett, this simple addition really prevents the music from seeming like an overly straightforward techno/house middle ground.

Is stuff like Andrew Weatherall's Live at the Social Tech-House, in the older definition? I

Past Lessons Future Theories (2000)

1. Healer [House Mix] - Bushwacka!
2. Jesus Loves 2000 - Eric Davenport, Hipp-E
3. Riddem Control - Hipp-E
4. Compound - Slam
5. Fever - Valentino Kanzyani
6. Sound Called House
7. Can U Feel Tha Funk - Freelance Science
8. Voices of Africa - Umek
9. Tribe Cut - Samuel L. Session
10. Dirge [Slam Mix] - Death in Vegas
11. How's Your Evening So Far?` - Lil' Louis, Josh Wink
12. Stand - Stacey Pullen
13. Look Ans See [DJ Zank Mix] - DJ Rush
14. Moment - Mark Broom
15. 1999 - Gaetano Parisio
16. Positive Education - Slam
17. Jaguar [Mad Mike String Mix]

Whereas this is their latest "Nightdrive" (1995):

1. Carl Craig Darkness
2. Luciano “Octogonal”
3. Slam “Genex”
4. Alex Smoke “Don't See The Point”
5. Dominik Eulberg “Rotbauchunken” (ROBAG WRUHME´S - Bombina Bumm Remix)
6. Nathan Fake “Dinamo” (Dominik Eulberg – Dinamo Remix)
7. Slam feat. Tyrone Palmer “This World” (Wighnomy Brothers and Robag Wruhme Remix) – A capella
8. Luci “Mullet Is In Da House”
9. Luci “Mullet Is In Da House”
10. Marc Houle “Demor”
11. Slam “Kill The Pain” (Marc Houle Vocal Mix)
12. Slam “Kill The Pain” a cappella
13. Guido Schneider and Andre Galuzzi
14. Dub Kult “On and On”
15. Perc “Splashy” (Original Mix)
16. Marc O’Tool “Gear 1”
17. Mathias Schaffhäuser “Coincidance” (Trentemoller Remix)
18. John Spring “Strange” (John Springs 2005 Revision)
19. Lee Van Dowski & Tsack “Asem”
20. Black Strobe “Nazi Trance Fuck Off!” (remixed by James Holden)

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

that's the real stuff, May 6, 2003
Reviewer: pierrotunited (Paris, FRANCE) - See all my reviews
Brillant mix! If you like powerful house (Tech house) this mix is for you! Before I bought the cd ,I just checked the track listing and wow! what a selection! Afro deep, O.C.B., Ladytron, Marco Bailey,Sven Vath(Marco Carola Remix). No silly sampled trumpets like sounds,No chicks singing: "dance to the beat baby" or "salsa style house" cd! Just plain pulsating house with hard working Stuart Mc Millan & Orde Meikle on the decks. These guys have been doing this for more than 12 years and you can tell!....

Was this review helpful to you? (Report this)

I mean in the sense that the pop/trance/80s infusion seems to be the really big jolt that gave life to the monster?

"somewhere along the line tracks became songs again. "

This is most key I think - maybe the hesitation in calling stuff techno is that, detroit aside, techno hasn't been songful in a long long time. Whereas with the current german/minimal/whatveer sound even the instrumental tracks are much more structured, melodic, progressive in the sense of internal progression, starting at one point and moving to another. Again, no automatic value judgment should be implied (or applied) here.

i think that was possibly the most pretentious title for a mix cd ever. i thought it was so ridiculous at the time that we plastered glasgow with a poster that said 'Past Blunders Future Cock Ups'. i don't think slam have ever forgiven me.

New Electroclash is pretty harsh though. I've never given a shit about The Hacker anyways.

i think since they've changed the name from "soma compilation volume x" to "soma compilation 200x" they've gone really shitty.

in this case, i don't think it makes sense to posit any sort of continuity between tech-house and electro-house based on what slam are up to, it'd mean more if the same stable of core artists (common factor, envoy, percy x, silicone soul, funk'd'void) were making electrohouse tracks but slam as label-heads have really shifted their vision towards the continent

(or maybe they've just been swayed by ewan pearson's success and are letting his music dictate the direction of the label?)

i think they shift their vision to whatever the latest bandwagon is. but usually about two years late.

hole in one.

How many of the below are like Pearson? None for my money.

SOMA 160 Hystereo with Automatic & Silk Gonna Love You (12")
SOMA 161 Alex Smoke Chicca Wappa (12")
SOMA 162 Silicone Soul Les Nocturnes (12")
SOMA 162P Silicone Soul Les Nocturnes (12")
SOMA 163 Various Soma Classics Volume 1 (12")
SOMA 164 Slam Soma Dubs Vol. 3 (12")
SOMA 165 Alex Smoke Don't See The Point (12")
SOMA 166 Vector Lovers Computrfnk EP (12")
SOMA 166 CD PROMO Vector Lovers Computrfnk (Promo) (CD5")
SOMA 167 Silicone Soul Feeling Blue (12")
SOMA 167 CD PROMO Silicone Soul Feeling Blue (Promo) (CD5")
SOMA 167R Silicone Soul Feeling Blue (Remixes) (12")
SOMA 168 Slam Bright Lights Fading (12")
SOMA 168 CD PROMO Slam Bright Lights Fading (Promo) (CD5")
SOMA 169 Funk D'Void & Phil Kieran Lost In Belfast / Black Worm (12")
SOMA 170 Alex Smoke Brian's Lung (12")
SOMA 170 CD PROMO Alex Smoke Brian's Lung (Promo) (CD5")
SOMA 171 Vector Lovers Boulevard (12")
SOMA 171 CD PROMO Vector Lovers Boulevard (Promo) (CD5")
SOMA 172 Silicone Soul Soma Dubs Vol. 5 (12")
SOMA 173 Silicone Soul The Poisoner's Diary (12")
SOMA 173R Silicone Soul The Poisoner's Diary (Ewan Pearson Mixes) (12")
SOMA 174 Alex Smoke OK (12")
SOMA 175 Hystereo Validity Revision (12")
SOMA 176 Various Soma Dubs Vol. 4 (12")
SOMA 176 CD PROMO Various Soma Dubs Vol. 4 (CD5")
SOMA 177 Various Soma Classics Volume 2 (12")
SOMA 178 Slam / Dove Soma Classics Volume 3 (12")
SOMA 179 Silicone Soul Under A Werewolf Moon (12")
SOMA 180 Slam Kill The Pain (Marc Houle Remixes) (12")
SOMA 181 Hystereo Let's Do It (12")
SOMA 181 CD PROMO Hystereo Let's Do It (CD5")
SOMA 182 Vector Lovers Microtron (12")
SOMA 182 CD PROMO Vector Lovers Microtron (Promo) (CD5")
SOMA 183 Repeat Repeat Bounce Your Body To The Box (12")
SOMA 184 Alex Smoke Lost In Sound (12")
SOMA 185 Silicone Soul Inferno (12")
SOMA 185 CD PROMO Silicone Soul Inferno (Promo) (CD5")
SOMA 186 Slam Human (12")
SOMA 187 Repeat Repeat Blippy (12")
SOMA 188 Funk D'Void & Phil Kieran White Lice (12")
Soma 189 Vector Lovers Post Arctic Industries (12")

(the Lee Van Dowski mix of that White Lice tune is ok and Alex Smoke fair enough)

these are prob ok:

SOMA 176 Various Soma Dubs Vol. 4 (12")
SOMA 176 CD PROMO Various Soma Dubs Vol. 4 (CD5")
SOMA 177 Various Soma Classics Volume 2 (12")
SOMA 178 Slam / Dove Soma Classics Volume 3 (12"

tech-house does also mean a very specific group of english and american producers who made boring, anal stuff, but there are some good records from that period that i still play. they are not anthemic records by any means, but still very functional.

i love that the balance has tipped back towards songs, but i feel less creative as a dj because so many of the tracks i get nowadays, unless they are really minimal, arent generally built for long mixes, and certainly not for re-edits. that is where my oler records come in handy. i can use all of that tracky stuff as a bridge. you dont know how good "each and everyone (blinhouse)" sounds until you've mixed it in from some weird early playhouse or perlon percussion workout.

as for minimal and "backlash", hasnt this stuff been around forever now? dan bell, plastikman, rob hood, some of the model 500 stuff with maurizio, chain reaction, ifach/trelik... but also some mood II swing, the first YMC record (Last Stop EP), certain Svek releases, Convextion, Jeff Samuel, Aril Brikha... as much as the soundsets and processing has changed over the last couple of years, there are still plenty of twelves from 99 even that sound contemporary (and plenty that dont, of course).

i think that hyper-sub-genre-ification is really useful as a critical and discussional tool and i certainly believe that what has happened in the last few years is teriibly exciting (part of why i love this music so much is that its still possible to argue that whetever month you are in is one of the best ones for techno ever!) but i feel like taxonomical segregations have social effects, too. djs who only play new stuff from one single family of labels suck. people who wont come see each other play because of miniscule musical differences suck.

as far as i can tell, backlash in electronic music only starts happening after djs begin to try to cash in on the "new sound". since they have little knowledge of it, they cant offer a compelling performance. and those blinders do start to affect the sound, crowd etc. I started off buying moslty deep house but it started to bother me that the whole acid/jack element was being lost, but now that i have met a lot of other djs, i can understand why. i actually know house djs who play out regularly who HADN'T HEARD of TRAX or ACID until the SOUL JAZZ compilation was released.

this post meanders. its nice to post again though.

i always thought of that as sort of the OPPOSITE of minimal.. i.e. lush, swirly, crammed with sounds. but more than that, lacking the kind of self-consciousness that good miminal tracks always evoke.

anyway, i used to have dave angel up on my wall, like that - to me, it was the future!!!

my point is...
this record
http://www.discogs.com/release/2147
and this
http://www.discogs.com/release/432496
arent necessarily that far away conceptually, and look what genre the first is listed under ;-)

i just tell people i play house music because fuck it, most of my records are 120-130 and have basslines. if you say techno, people think you are going to empty their club playing a drumcode record as a warm-up to another one.

You'd be surprised (or maybe not) at the levels of fury invoked in some people by comparing THAT kind of minimal, to Perlon/Kompakt/nu-micro-k-house-techno-plip-plop minimal.

I should confess to starting this thread out of curiosity after some heavy roffling whilst browsing the purist-inclined discogs forums. I didn't know some people HATED this kind of stuff already (see also: 'electro(nu-prog)-house').

i actually know house djs who play out regularly who HADN'T HEARD of TRAX or ACID until the SOUL JAZZ compilation was released.

:(

those people clearly know not what they are saying.

baby ford / ifach records for perlon. chain reaction was total k-music. dan bell is the godfather and well, i'll leave rob hood out as i find most of his work really dull.

i think i understand it to the extent that the original detroit stuff was mostly black-made, had a social and even political value to the original creators, but i dont see how listening to superpitcher is somehow a betrayal of principles. i cant just be a race thing. anyways, i thought it was all about good tracks. if everyone in detroit was worried about not being underground or political for listening to prince or abc then where would techno be?

i generally dont get all of the people who feel they have to "represent" at all times.

that being said, if any of these guys want to send me mint copies of everything on ifach, eevolute, accelerate and 7th city, I promise I will sell all of my perlon and kompakt.

it sad about rob hood, but maybe stirmonster is right. tranquilizer was good though!

i still like the minimal nation 2x12 on m-plant but internal empire has not dated as well.

when I was buying a lot of what I thought of as "minimal techno" about 5 years ago, it was basically represented by the Clicks And Cuts compilations - Brinkmann, Voigt, Pan Sonic, Delay, Farben, Raster-Noton, Basic Channel et al. Not stuff that was really geared towards a dance floor for the most part, although I love it. I don't really keep up with this stuff but I guess I'm impressed that it took five years for a backlash.

i can explain. cuz i have been a 'victim' of this fury.

people who a furious about things like this are those who are generally dissapointed that "the world is not the same as it used to be, the water is not that wet as it used to be, etc." so, those who got stuck in the (comparatively) early stage of the scene and are not willing to accept and come to like anything new.

this is the real reason.

the reason that they claim is real is kinda vague, like "THAT stuff was rich and inspired, and THIS new stuff is made "like in 5 minutes per track just to earn a quick buck cuz it's popular at the moment""
no evidence on both points, though.

how do they know how many minutes is spent on each and every track - i have no idea. nor have i read any decent, mathematically proved explanation of this 'fury'. when they ran out of arguments they just told me, well, who are you to argue with us? and i thought, indeed. ha ha.

juno calls trapez minimal/tech-house. it also called faimont's gazebo progressive house. i'm not sure about all this;)

THE minimal BACKLASH

http://decks.de is the best, they call everything techno and then within that they give it a few descriptions or just one description, so it's like "minimal, electro", or just "minimal". Works pretty well.

http://www.elevationproductions.net/downloads/02_nathan_coles-phab_phridays_20051202.mp3

It's quite good.

ooops. false alarm!

Like does he mean everything from Pokerflat to Perlon to Get Physical, etc etc?

the current definition on german music boards is: if it goes "plip-plop", its minimal. everyones read the Hacker piece, and it seems to be the great unifier, for better or worse.

it's pretty confusing.

and jimnaseum is right - as in, i heard tons of things i'd never ever heard before. and will probably never hear again. i'm astounded by how MANY records, many quite good, if a bit undifferentiated, are coming out right now, w/ an industry supposedly in decline.

Incidentally I really liked that article, it has more or less been the final straw that has clinched my decision to append a Berlin trip to this year's schedule along with the annual Barcelona visit.

Whatever happened to your month in techno columns about 2005 one-off?

And everyone - what are the most interesting labels at the moment?

i never know anything i hear at the moment, and its actually quite a great feeling, everything merges into one, it just seems like 'everything' is good. its one of the things i love best about great dj sets, often the best sets ive seen have been where i don't know anyhing, and couldn't really tell you anything about it afterwards

this is what i felt when i went to watergate in berlin.

Ouch. So OTM it hurts!

what i dont get is that its like "K house" etc etc, but from what i knw *warning extreme ignorance follows* ket kinda spaces you out, slows you down or something. i get how that works with hawtin doing mathew jonson tunes tha tgo on for 3 hours, but whats the link between ketamine and eulberg clattering/disjointed horse-falling etc etc? where does the wig out "ooh it sounds so weird that i can ditch IDM and start to like this cos its experimental" thing mesh with doing ketamine?

isnt this actually a good thing about a scene?

i like that loads of people go just to have fun, and don't care about who underground resistance are, and what they mean. they're part of things to me, and i think they're great for atmosphere and for making things fun.

dont you love, about the best nights, where all kinds of strange people crop up through the night, that you meet?

So if there are some backlashers and I missed them somewhere, point them out and ignore my post!

Quite "funny" I guess ;-)

Haha. I caught Trentemøller on Saturday: he was cheesy as fuck, playing riffs such as 'Seven Nation Army', 'Smoke on the Water' and 'White Lines/Cavern' on a keyboard while his "perfomance partner' DJ T.O.M. mixed loops from his records behind him. Really diverse crowd came down to catch him, and they all lapped it up. I have to admit I wasn't feeling it as much as most, but he kept me entertained.

There are some videos of the night on a Brighton website, here:

http://www.brightonfusion.co.uk/?cmd=articles_body.php&id=tm0306

If anyone's interested we have a Kompakt allnighter down in Brighton this Saturday featuring DJ Koze DJing and The Modernist playing an all new live set. Should be a really good night.

The second mix from The Hacker is a predictably electro-based affair that nonetheless manages to throw up a selection of welcome surprises, with Grenoble's digital botherer raiding his crates and pulling out the likes of Sleep Archive, Model 500 and Ellen Allien. Evidently having spent some time getting intimate with the more minimal end of his collection, as Sleep Archive's 'Elephant Island' and Mount Sims 'Restless' prove, whilst for those who prefer things more chrome-plated The Hackers own 'Flesh & Bone' and hardboiled blast of Model 500's 'Techno Music' will keep you grinning. Tracklisting; 1. Notstandskomitee - Uhrwerkwelt (Tape Version) 2. Miss Yetti - Could I Kill You 3. Liasons Dangereuses - Los Ninos Del Parque 4. Sleeparchive - Elephant Island 5. Revolving Eyes - Space Model 6. Ellen Allen - Brain Is Lost 7. The Emperor Machine - Bloody Hell 8. Model 500 - Techno Music 9. Luke Eargoggle - A2 10. Perspects - Strap 11. The Hacker - Flesh&Bone 12. Front 242 - No Shuffle 13. Kiko & Gino'S - Odyssey 14. Gto - Pure (Battle Of The Bass Mix) 15. The Hacker - Link 1 16. Mount Sims - Restless

Though to be fair, that is only two tracks.

leave with no money :D

I feel ripped off, I never saw Magda once! :(

This video should blast away that silly British list, it is everything dance music is about in 1.30.

http://www.readthemanifesto.com/images/grapes-print.jpg

That is seriously one of the funniest phrases I've read in a while, though.

that looks crap.

a) the cowbell is the greatest history in the history of music
b) there's no technology in the world that can compete with someone banging a pipe in the right way
c) especially if it has a big WOOMP WOOMP noise underneath it

Of course, it could have had some 303 squelching over the top, but that's a bit like the stick for the moon, really.

There's no enthusiasm in the world that can compete with proofreading.

i like this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldkBYCszlU8