forgotten hype from the hated 'mnml' period

Gabriel Ananda, "Doppelwhipper"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OP2eCHYMEuw

Argy, "Love Dose" (Luciano Remix)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqLbRDrIT80

Kabale und Liebe, "Mumbling Yeah"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABhfbmLa3z4

Serafin, "Starship Discotheque"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0Mjo1k6vKI

nsi., "Clara Ghavami Extended"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2hs6qZI5GQ

Luciano, "Drunken Ballet"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhSFUNcqsNM

to clarify, I've no idea whether any of these tracks are currently forgotten and obviously 'mnml' is a very vague, nebulous genre tag so please feel free to post any microhouse, minimal house/techno, whatever tracks from the 00s that you enjoy itt

The MFA, "The Difference it Makes" (Superpitcher Remix)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gh9ugpyHjBw

Russ Gabriel, "Sat Vremena"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62g7NnHlu44

Matt John, "The Rising Scope"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sssfbxHyf8g

Audio Werner, "Onandaon"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VMvarpiouk

Wighnomy Brothers, "Bobb"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOlNuNh-dPY

Was it hated? If I remember well, ILM was all-in on this stuff.

Guido Schneider & Andre Galluzzi, "Albertino"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egpAs4NldSQ

xp

perhaps not; definitely contentious though

Grimes Adhesif, "Fearless Fun"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tELG2VZaX8

Mountain People, "Mountain 003"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4p9BLHsDDbk

genuinely one of my fav tunes from this period

if the center label says 'wordandsound.net' then it goes in this thread

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKzXjDa9fYM

Some of these are taking me back, haha. I think my favourite Mountain People was the Kerri Chandler-influenced one but that one is good also. Doppelwhipper was always a lot of fun also, used to really enjoy playing that when DJing.

Will add some more a little later.

xpost Word and Sound seemed such a great distributor and they were all really lovely people also.

superpitcher mfa remix def not forgotten by me. but no idea what any of these other songs are.

Why not while a way a few hours hitting the play button?

yeah I've been reluctant to post lots of Kompakt stuff because it's notoriously very well loved on ilm (not to discourage anyone else ofc, please post anything you like) but I'm curious if that MFA remix is still played out by present day djs? like, is it considered a 'classic' of the dance music canon the same way something like, idk, "New Day" by Round Two was in the 00s?

I think a lot of this stuff didn't really die or has come back, like given the huge amount of time that has passed. Similarly electroclash. I think it's sort of that sense, didn't really go away entirely but may also have come back in terms of DJs playing it. I can't be sure of that for every tune ever made but I assume it's true based on generally and regularly hearing various ones.

this thread forced me to go find my favorite gabriel ananda from the era and i'm happy to report it still tugs at my heart!

Ihre Persönliche Glücksmelodie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLb-3NqqsPk

Yeah this one is amazing also.

This was the period when I got into dance music and I have a lot of affection for the genre, never really died to me. Some faves:

Lawrence- Along the Wire (Superpitcher Remix)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnkANFsuo1I

Dominik Eulberg- Der Buchdrucker
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbor8bbZfg4

Cobblestone Jazz- W
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_wZsL6ZUMU

Jurgen Paape- Take This
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NHPDTyag3o

Alex Under- Las bicicletas son para el verano
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NHPDTyag3o

haha yeah i played the superpitcher along the wire remix in my most recent set. i’m pretty pickled in ilm though

oops, that last one is a remix by Oliver Hacke, which i also like, but I meant this one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIoHXOYdKMI

Honestly the Eulberg and Cobblestone Jazz tracks above are absolutely transcendent, 4-6am bangers. I love them with no reservations

still rock "take this" and "take that" all the time. true stompers that inspired amateurish rip-offs by me when i first got my dr. groove + microkorg.

I've recently been coking back to that 2001-2006 era of electro and minimal recently. Especially stuff that's related to the whole Radioactive Man / Transparent Sound stuff

it's prob past time ilm had a thread like this, b/c i do think there is a resurgent fascination with minimal going on. thinking of like kalahari oyster cult, the loidis record from last year, eden burns, ooz collective, are all conversant with aspects of minimal

priori also a big one

but in the current era of genre agnosticism it's usually mixed in with elements of dub techno, prog, trance, breaks, etc

not to say that those things didn't mingle together back then, but i feel like the plink-plonkiness was more prominent

The mnml thing could be argued to he very specific and a bit of a shorter time, cos a lot of stuff on this thread is just house and techno much of which is from Germany. This was a problem with the discussions at the time, lol.

I've recently been coking back to that 2001-2006 era

Is this autocorrect or have you really set some time aside?

What's weird is trying to remember feels hard here, I think because if we let this thread run and dated every track suggested we'd prob end up with a pretty long span of years? Which sort of adds to the sense of nobody ever/still can quite agree what this was or is. Or why it was grouped together. Unless you take a very, very specific m_nus and friends view.

Chronological boundaries always win out long term in the consciousness because tuesdays are tuesdays

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJD0WKVazFQ

T-Polar - Flattered (2004)

Indie sleaze not sleaze

Some elements feel dated for sure, but a lot of these tracks still sound great to me. And even the ones that don't sound so great still have that exciting feel of discovery (as in the excitement of the artists uncovering something fresh).

xp

Fumiya Tanaka has a few sets floating about online where he plays this stuff alongside speed garage (albeit the more minimal end) and it actually makes more sense than you think - there's a funkiness that comes through differently

I was at a 50th at the weekend and some of this stuff got played to big reactions, this was a crowd that spent a lot of time in Ibiza in the mid-00s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaQXQdh3698

obviously

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FO566BKY2Jc

this got played quite early and had people actively getting up to dance

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgYpQUUpqGM

this was a floorfiller

2000 And One! wow

some of my own favourites:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbVLdQOHQDU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2isunBZA7A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUcKxJIyD_M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=In0UjwacSDw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBXrVxJo_Z4

and a few more:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oqHTiuxQpI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otqx6qGHhPU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3PVu6hRfFs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32NDzP6toPs

amazing how so many of these owe huge amounts to "The Sky Was Pink"

the superpitcher mfa remix is prog

anja schneider - "rancho relaxo"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSTJ2D61hMs

tofu productions - "the warmth"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6svKLVBiQU

this sven vath mixmag disc from 2006 is THE BOMB

https://www.discogs.com/release/765406-Sven-V%C3%A4th-Sexy-Techno-At-Cocoon

now we're getting into some stuff i had truly forgotten about, 2000 and one haha

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_K2PzZN0YU

tropical melons!

I still love Tropical Melons, it's a pleasure to mix in and out of as well

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWgXVbI5ZRw

mathew jonson made some emo epics

amazing how so many of these owe huge amounts to "The Sky Was Pink"

definitely

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jTp984mySY

Onur Özer - Red Cabaret

the huge detuned leads in this made an impression

Marionette! All time, so simple, so effective, just freakin that arpeggiator

Loved Tropical Melons!!

Incredible choice, Karl. I had an hour on a train tonight and thought quite hard about this thread and that's probably the most quintessentially minimal record I love, tho the word still feels wrong as he throws the kitchen sink into it.

On reflection I think a lot of my favourite stuff from this era is on the way into minimal, the more technoey stuff which isn't minimal, and on the way out, the house records.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZH66Sd1aX4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqcdNQ2dHlE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkWg1xOQwTI

God, this thread is to me what classic rock radio is to boomers in 90s. I'm a little stunned to not just remember (and know/own) so many of these but to remember how in the loop I was during this time. I started listening to new dance music in 2005 and probably never focused on new music so much as I did in the late 00s.

I also appreciate that other people still hold a candle for Mountain People 003. Met with an old friend earlier this past summer and we reminisced about it.

I remember hearing about this one on one of the the minimal house bobbins threads, as it was then called. Think it was a Tim F recommendation:

Jacek Sienkiewicz - Good Night
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeCEuo9OJqk

Got this one from Philip Sherburne's pitchfork column, I think.
Cosmic Sandwich (Dominik Eulberg Remix)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3Cbbn4GJSQ

I am def team "m_nus sucks." As the most boring but highest profile - and most hyped and branded - of mnml, they deserve the lion's share of the backlash. I think this holds a lot for Marc Houle. But damn if this track (Items & Things) is not 🔥

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ9OFt8cySc

In my earlier post I meant the Onur Ozer btw. Still sounds amazing.

John Tejada Sweat On The Walls a big one and also Chorgs.

This one is more the exit towards deep house but still so good:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYvbbsK1re8

"Starship Discotheque," "Coming Up," "Albertino," so many of these: yes! I still listen to old Ricardo and Raresh/a:rpia:r mixes all the time.

RAL Series - Cae
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LlZtMUEoc8

Sten - Part Three
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcGw6-YIQ8g

Leigh Dickson - Praise (Baby Ford's Heavenly Circuit Remix)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9OFEhijVAU

ah this thread takes me back, and like many people here, a lot of it never went away for me. Marionette <3

thinking about this one today:

Heartthrob - Baby Kate (Sascha Funke Rmx)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJqUV4l8W6s

earlier i listened to Ricardo at Awakenings 2006, which is simply an insane set, so good

meant earlier this year, but hey

Yeah there are so many of producers now who sound like mid 00s minimal with varying levels of acknowledgment - Call Super being perhaps the most high profile and obvious example. I was listening to a Leon Vynehall set for Beats In Space and he dropped the Holden remix of “Safari” and it felt very current (separately, I dropped this same tune at about 2am on NYD when I controlled the music in our tent area at a festival two years ago and everyone was like “omg what IS this”

I did feel that a lot of the backlash against minimal was (implicitly) premised on the fact that as a scene it felt like (as well as often sounded like) “intelligent trance”: very little emphasis on cratedigging, understanding the history, paying your dues, “the culture”; and a lot of emphasis on “wow that sounds cool”.

Scenes that are insufficiently obsequious and deferential to history are always those most at risk of being pronounced uncool

m_nus had some great records in amongst the gruff, including the great series of Theorem 12s including this from 1998, if maybe too early for the premise of the thread

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4L6sUuqK8s

Theorem - Embed (1998)

I did feel that a lot of the backlash against minimal was (implicitly) premised on the fact that as a scene it felt like (as well as often sounded like) “intelligent trance”: very little emphasis on cratedigging, understanding the history, paying your dues, “the culture”; and a lot of emphasis on “wow that sounds cool”.

I guess some of it fits this description but I think there was a lot of stuff that was sort of skeletal house music, like taking the Herbert stuff further into a colder, less melodic place. Like the Onur Ozer above is house music to me, just very different.

That said, so many people used the word to describe any house or techno from Europe over a long period of time, and like a lot of dance music, it was only after the fact or as it became less interesting that it was easy to pin down, ie the more boring m_nus stuff. I know people liked that stuff but I never met anyone who did, besides an occasional record, I guess like Saer's earlier example here.

I'm not saying it wasn't popular just that it didn't really represent what was going on unless you wanted to say this is shit.

Oh yeah totally, stylistically a lot of it was very stripped back and anti-populist - I guess I’m gesturing to something more conceptual. You could always tell what was driving a mnml hater less by what they called out than what they carved out of their broadsides - which carve-outs varied but nearly always included Villalobos and Perlon (together and severally).

Some of that reflected a stylistic affiliation (Perlon were pretty loyal to the warmth of deep house) but I suspect much more of it was a rejection of seeming upstarts - which Onur Ozer would certainly be, nevermind that his sound (and Vakant’s sound generally) was closer to Perlon than it was to Kompakt or Get Physical or what have you.

Get Physical is interesting as you can chart such an arc from its first released onward, I first found them by hearing Chelonis R Jones on the Ivan Smagghe How To Kill The DJ, and all those early releases were sort of Italo-sampling house music, but they definitely were a big part of minimal or music which got called that becoming popular. And the Body Language mix is sort of the apex of that rise I guess. It was then a sort of natural shift for them to move (back) towards house.

Not many other labels that you could use to understand such a long period of time.

Thing is, individually most of these tracks sound great and I still occasionally do nostalgia sets of this era but in the context of whole sets and scene, I never liked the way that the underground techno scene changed in those days. Talking about continental Europe here at least, the heartland of this stuff. You ended up with this very sanitized/tasteful/gentrified middle brow audience that was pretty far from the admittedly silly/cheesy/maximalist 90s techno parties that felt much more inclusive and open to people from all social strata.

At the time, both the prog house and tech house guys basically adopted the same sound, so you got these endless sets where everything was just one big grey blob of soft kicks and clipped hihats where a tiny glimpse of a melody was the peaktime highlight. Producers also churned out so many low effort landfill tracks consisting of a single loop + some FX + some pads fading in and out.

By 2001-2003 "minimal" did completely kill off what was left of super-maximalist trance and schranz/hard techno (Chris Liebing, Mauro Picotto etc), which were clearly limping along on their last legs so it's all understandable, but it wasn't the most exciting time in clubland. Going to hardstyle nights instead (the parallel working class scene at the time) was also not much fun, lots of energy but musically it was fucking dire and the vibes were really aggro/shitty. Looking back, I had most fun at the more mainstream commercial house/electro nights. But that's just my experience, I'm sure others felt different at the time.

m_nus had some great records in amongst the gruff, including the great series of Theorem 12s including this from 1998, if maybe too early for the premise of the thread

Oops, forgot to say post-2003 (or so) minus. Their earliest releases are a lot better, most especially the all around excellent Theorem and Theorem-collab stuff.

Always a fan of this one (theorem and swayzak - day from hell)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aN8S35s7YDA

I think some part of attitudes towards minimal involved people adjusting to the acceleration of music distribution. Minimal largely coincided with the boom of digital DJing, mp3 blogs, beatport, and the increased accessibility of making stuff just with a DAW (and the novelty of making stuff that sounds like it was made on abelton). The glut of how much was coming out really amplified the more formulaic qualities of it over time, and people definitely latched onto that point. I definitely got burnt out by 2009 or so, but I suspect that had I been born ten years earlier, I wouldn’t have made such a big deal of what minimal is and isn’t.

I think for me, the exact turning point was the moment I saw a car with a

MNMLTCNO

Very true about distribution. Also it was sort of the a big Ableton era.

I see Siegbran's point also about this kind of representing a sort of gentrification for want of a better word. I often find it sort of funny the way today a lot of the discourse around dance music is fairly clichéd academic jargon and yet those people are so blithely unaware of how that represents its own takeover of a past scene.

When I first would go to clubs in 2001-2003 it was a lot less fragmented and you'd meet people from different socio-economic backgrounds. Maybe I only got the last few years of those days. Don't think that's true today, at least not in London.

After the whole "dance music is dead" meltdown in the magazines/broadsheets, the return seemed highly driven by the internet. I'm sure it didn't leave everybody behind but it definitely changed a lot.

I think there was a lot of stuff that was sort of skeletal house music

i'm far more into house (mostly "classic," occasionally modern) now than i was then, and i find the stuff i loved then that holds up for me certainly fits this description. add in the stuff that nods to electro and ebm and it's all there!

Just want to say this has been a great thread. I wasn't "there" for this era so I'm only familiar with maybe 15% or 20% of these tracks, and I mostly know those because of Fabric mixes and such, so it's been educational. Let's keep it going!

MICROHOUSE

the cousins dahlback probably fit in this thread somewhere.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1JMtLK_ZzQ

They certainly do.

that's a good one.

i've always been partial to this ep and the tune "fon"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIylL1xharI

I love this one of John’s, tho it’s pretty much straight up “electro house”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUoiRdUbkMM

whoa and I just remembered “snabeln”, glorious mnml sidechain action

MICROHOUSE

― brimstead, Friday, November 21, 2025 12:16 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

One of the more pedantic hills I’m willing to die on is that microhouse, minimal house, and “minimal” are different styles. Could even make a case that minimal and mnml are different.

To me, there’s a kind of sanctity to microhouse, as the more innovative and sonically interesting style (ca 2000-2004, including Farben, force inc, perlon, playhouse, akufen, san francisco laptop producers, etc) which is the product of experimenting with digital sound design in a post-hardware pre-abelton moment. When people moved past that clicks-and-cutsy style, whatever wasn’t electro house or hard techno or whatever became minimal house and techno. Then people started just saying “minimal” (ca 2007-8), which is when it became something else, a bigger, less-defined catch all.

Anyways, the point is: MICROHOUSE

yeah well said. now I feel like listening to hypercity.

The way I see it, Microhouse, mnml techno, minimal-era prog house etc were different scenes in different places all simultaneously embracing the same new software-enabled sound, that made a clear break with the 303/909/Juno/JP hardware era.

“minimal-era prog house”

yeahhhh loved this stuff, James Holden Balance mix for all time

yeah agree with ed's post. i mean again, the timescales between some of the eras here are p big.

I would agree with Ed’s post but because of the sort of genre blurring that ended up happening, I am a little unsure as to what is what

To pick up Ronan’s point above re Get Physical, in the period from 2002 to 2004 it actually felt like most people were moving away from a very pointillist microhouse sound (think of the shift from Immer to Fabric 13, or from Famous When Dead 1 to Famous When Dead 3, not to mention from
Vocalcity to The Present Lover or from Rhythmogenesis to All That Glitters), before there was a strong reversion in 2005.

In that sense ‘Alcachofa’ could be described as both ‘late’ - a belated addition to the class of Rest, Vocalcity, Textstar etc. - and ‘early’, an harbinger of a whole new class of pointillist producers such as Guido Schneider, Loco Dice, Trentemoller, Dominik Eulberg, Gabriel Ananda, Minilogue and so on.

Those pointillisms were not identical but rather rhymed: the big shift from microhouse to minimal was that, with the former, you could generally get the entire gist of a track from a four bar loop snippet (reflecting that it literally grew out of very minimalist deep house, tech-house and minimal techno), whereas what a lot of the more successful “minimal” took from the crossover of electro-house, Kompakt etc in the interim was a certain explicit narrative ambition: tracks with sections, movements, progressively accumulating detail, massive breakdowns etc. Ironically, it could be unabashedly maximalist.

earlier i listened to Ricardo at Awakenings 2006, which is simply an insane set, so good

Absolutely! Also one of the earliest appearances of "Fizheuer Zieheuer," I think?

A few more favorites:

Todd Sines - Thick Satin (Donk Boys Rmx)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TX7Oy7rxgj8

Dinky - Da 20's
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkBd5lnVUl8

Agaric - C'est What?
(Apparently not on YouTube in full, but it is on Bandcamp: https://raummusik.bandcamp.com/album/goose-step-cest-what)

With some of the theorising out of the way, some other favourites not yet mentioned, mostly from the mid-00s peak era:

Beese & Schmitz - Meander:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUr4C4Nq9O0

Donnacha Costello - The Plan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccdp0ZjZPP0

Commercial Breakup - My Garden (Sascha Funke Remix)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64gd6AvDKyc

Mikael Weill - Silmarions (Claude von Stroke Bavarian Ferrari Mix)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xinqTA95LlM

Osborne - Graphite
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmZVrS2kjt4

Matt John - Golden Wedding
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3GSq5q30iM

Envoy - Move On (Alex Smoke Dub)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FYBmCmLJXQ

Jesse Somfay - Lying In A Bed of Mist
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dixwAuA3YLA

Simon Baker - The Fly (My My Remix)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_S72Hmhc64

DJ Hell - Follow You (Dominik Eulberg Remix)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ma1kayqTlhM

Herlihy & Torrance - So That’s What Happens

SCSI-9 - Morskaya

Metope - Libertango

Daniel Taylor - M.O.R.D. (Loco Dice Remix)

Forgot about the limit on post links but I’m sure you can find the last few

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-rSIcqN9yo

Italoboyz - Chinese (Elvis T Made In China Remix)

2009 probably a bit late but dry and silly at the same time is what was asked

mannnn this thread is taking me back. i played the hell out of this one:

Markus Guentner - So Well (ft. Acid Maria)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Zvq5v3kXOQ

also loved this one, featured on M.A.N.D.Y's body language mix, i'm a total sucker for a chopped-up vocal

Marlow ft. Delhia - Quiet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNohX7tervg

this revive had me go and check out what Perlon has been up to lately, discovered this incredible Maayan Nidam album:

https://www.discogs.com/release/26372564-The-Waves

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCBv5HnA0dc

just so beautiful, the percussion that comes in midway through always gives me a feeling of a storm at sea or the little clinking noises from moored boats. again, the word minimal just a dumb tag for stuff as cinematic as this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utlzwkave1o

associate this with the luciano as they were adjacent on body language. still sounds amazing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAKH82Iiz2M

played this at a weird, tiny house party in bucharest with villalobos present. like about twenty people. the decks were so low i had to kneel and my knees were in agony tho still played for an hour or so. at the end of the night my friend went to shake the holy hand of villalobos, and i was talking to someone else. when i looked back about ten mins later my friend was mouthing 'help', because villalobos was completely zoned out, yet still shaking his hand and not letting go, staring far away at nothing. listening back now, this track feels a very appropriate soundtrack for that scene.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLgGXyZvkIQ

lovely wintry sounds. i loved this drift into deep house maybe most of all tho this track still feels very german to me, like made for watergate or whatever.

also we have to have some mobilee here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSTJ2D61hMs

I have a lot of time for that Chaton/Agnes record, but it is when the general takes off the uniform and puts on a suit and says I am Mister Zhivkov now