Is Minimalism Passe?

?

Hearing the new George Michael song, Freeek, yeah, I'd say so. ;-) More is more.

You're right, there is a real tendency towards bells and bagpipes and choirs and glockenspiels and recorders and full prog orchestras in electronic music right now, a famous protagonist being of course Bjork, who likes to keep up with fashion.

It's just a wave, one trend followed by its opposite, that's just how music is. You can even - if you're superficial - see it in UK fashion right now: no more urban minimalist with lots of pockets, but lots of 'eclectic layering'and vintage shit. Minimalism will return in a few years and in the meantime I'm enjoying artists trying to out- whimsy/exoticise each other with who can reclaim the most untouchable instrument, yes, myself included (what do you mean, they have a balophon too??) I think it's nice! Fun to play and mostly fun to listen to.

Is that semen dripping from Stockhausen's gong ?

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, gongs do it for me. Little clangy Thai ones, huge boomy orchestra ones...I'm easy ;)

I take it you're not a fan?

hey, i'm easy too. It's just that i find little satisfaction in Karlheinz' wanking (and i hate orange sweaters). but i think being easy is the point here. ya know, i find it all interesting nuff even when Sonic Youth wank with their guitars or hammer a piano, but i would tend to listen with more regularity to their later pop/rock oriented records ... know what i mean ?

I know exactly what you mean, but who mentioned Stockhousen anyway? Neither me, nor Curtis. I thought this thread was about the increase of ornamentation and ostentation in music rather than musicians getting into the avant-garde stuff - which usually makes musicians more minimal rather than less. But I guess the leap to Stockhausen isn't so huge.

Which pieces of Stockhausen's do you dislike so much?

And are you one of those people that went to Sonic Youth's Goodbye 20th Century shows and sat there shouting 'play Teenage Riot' during their Cage piece?

i did not go to the goodbye 20th century gig 'cause i couldn't, but a friend of mine went and told me about these fucks (it actually ruined the concert for 'im). I would certainly not shout ' play 100 % !' or 'smell the grunge between my toes' when sonic youth came around here with a more serious project.

i do not dislike any piece in particular of Stockhausen. I tend to dislike music that qualifies itself as art or being better because having higher aspirations. I find it hard to listen to on record and that's why i like to see all the experimental/ minimal/ electronic/ musique concrete kind of thing within a live context. Only when it's a full sensory kind of thing i can be fully submerged in it.

But the above is exactly what my problem is towards this kind of music. The subjectiveness can be its strength, but i can't help but wonder what the point is to all these cerebral experiences. Because i like music that doesn't leave me indifferent, wether it totally rocks or rocks me to a tender sleep. But if i yawn it usually is a bad sign. Anyone remembers that 'rome' disc? But i can also listen to Rioyi Ikeda and never be bored ...

As for minimal being passe ? i don't think so, there will always be ways to turn some kind of music into a more minmal approach ...

It probably is, but I'd rather pretend that it isn't. It gives me something to listen to between retro phases (which recur more readily when thngs become passe). Besides, if it *is* passe, it will soon enter a retro phase and then I can say I was not a faddist and hung in there when the going got tough. Nothing is new under the sun, but things sometimes change costume for the season. -jeff

I thought this thread was about the increase of ornamentation and ostentation in music rather than musicians getting into the avant-garde stuff

I should have made it clear that I was asking about minimalist styles in popular music, not classical minimalism per se, but I wanted to leave it open for broader discussion, so hey thread, be about whatever you wish.

What prompted me to ask was, most immediately, Andy K's description of the new M.R.I. album and my hearing the new Rinocerese album last night. But it's a trend I have felt was in the air for a few years, as far back as the resurgence of house over minimal techno and drum n' bass. As for rock bands, I'm hearing some open up their sound more, but I don't detect the same broad trend as in electronic music.

Curtis, leaving aside the various different definitions of minimalism, and assuming there is less of it around than there used to be, as you say, do you think this kitchen sink stuff is a good or bad thing? Do you find it gratuitous or eclectic and exciting? Or just today's version of prog? I mean, how do you feel about it? since you asked and all.

Stockhausen and his engineer spent weeks listening to and documenting all (?) the gong + ring-modulator possibilities. Then S. wrote music to utilise this newly-discovered mini-"languange" or range. This became Mikrophonie I (Mikrophonie II used r.m. + choir, so I suppose the possibilities weren't as exaustively tested before that piece was "realised"). These two r.m. pieces were issued on one lp on DG with a gong on the cover.

I enjoy both pieces, but I found that knowing what process went into the gong piece helped me appreciate it in a new way.

I have enjoyed other S. pieces that incidentally include gongs (since general percussion appears to be one of his pet interests). His approach in most of the pieces I'm thinking of over the years has been diligent and really quite carefully non-masturbatory I think, though I guess comparing the original tapes he made documenting all the gong variations might reveal S. enjoying it indulgently, and this might also be so for the co-called intuitive music of "Music of the Seven Days" where performers were encouraged to indulge various feelings in playing their instruments.

S. is more of a "maximal-ist" though. The all-the-variations or language project approach is more typical, I reckon. Presentations of some of his electronic works were apparently _very_ loud. Gruppen and Carre and Trans for 2,3 or 4 orchestras must have been impressively loud too. I know Phillip Glass has been accused of being too loud too, but S. has never seemed minimalist in any sort of obvious repetetive way like Glass, Reich etc.

Older people often seem to go for bright colours, which I assumed is their eyesight fading slightly in its perception, which perhaps explains that orange cardigan, although it suits his place in 20th century evolution perfectly.

I like it minimal. My instinct is to recoil from excess. I am not happy when I hear that somebody like M.R.I. is opening up their sound. And I only like house when it's stripped down like techno. But I realize that the cultural cycle is inevitable, so I adopt an attitude like Jeff's upthread. I would still like to hear views that embrace the current trend and help put it in context.

It's all indulgence and when you choose to accept one artists attempts it is only because the mood takes you... you still really love pop songs and chorus's and 3 minutes of musical redemption.

Minimalism is when you are bored of music and make no mistake

I had all that when I listened to Pole and Scorn. After a while, it may as well be muzak in Asda... come to think of it I heard Missy Elliott last time I was in Asda

These sorts of things can never be charted perfectly though, as there are simultaneous minimalist and maximalist trends across music all the time. MRI's new album is apparently less minimal than its first, but it's still occurring within a movement * towards* minimalism (at least compared to the broader context of house) that is still waxing in popularity. Likewise, current pop is apparently maximalist, but one of its biggest and potentially most trend-setting hits this year was Kylie's "Can't Get You Out Of My Head", which is painstakingly minimal for a pop song.

I prefer neither per se - the interesting part of the process is watching how the tendency towards minimalism and/or maximalism expresses itself within a particular style or timeperiod. These sorts of things are like ripples in a water basin: a particular trend will stretch out, hit a wall, double back and make intriguing new clashes and counter-patterns. In 2- step (to use an example close to my heart) you get both a strip- down impulse and a more-more-more impulse co-existing constantly, often in the same song when these ripples in effect "break over" eachother. Both impulses tend to "twist" or subvert the sound of the music, and that's where it becomes really interesting: when you can see music that has quite clearly been shaped by multiple passages of both contradictory impulses, and you can break down these passages historically, but soundwise it's a hopelessly entangled hybrid.

And that's why minimalist electronic artists going maximalist is interesting: not because maximalism is *better*, but because the kitchen-sink sound in these records will inevitably be shaped by the artist's previously spartan approach, and that in itself throws up interesting juxtapositions that total devotion to one aesthetic disallows. You can't abolish the context here.

But Pop is ALL ABOUT abolishing the context.

but stockhausen's context is so bonkers it's a waste to lose it

Were we talking about pop?

Yeah, stockhausen.

I'm more interested in Britney's 'context' than her actual recs.

I'm getting both a strip-down impulse and a more-more-more impulse.

Curt that's the best misappropriation of something I've said EVAH!!!

You give us so much to work with, Tim. You and Brit.

Beginning sometime soon after this thread, it seems like popular electronic music (for lack of a better term) has receded into starker terrain. Richard Chartier, Hafler Trio, onkyo, Erstwhile recs, Brooklyn noise, Kompakt - is minimalism back?

is kompakt minimal?

is brooklyn noise anything like miami bass?

Is Brooklyn Noise anything like Brooklyn Academy of Noise?

is?

I think some people who were creating minimal art a couple years ago are now going down the road of being minimal in a more complex way, or adding other elements to the minimalism.

There's a love of minimal web design that's been floating around lately. Maybe it's reductionism. My brain is fried, maybe I'll throw out some concrete examples later.

brooklyn noise?

Popular minimalism: "Drop It Like It's Hot"?

"Whisper in Your Ear"

In terms of "electronic" music, minimalism was peaking late '90s and early '00s; in the techno scene, despite the persistence of a minimalist rhetoric (see Areal's tagline, "tech-electronic minimalism"), maximalism is actually defining the form. (This of course assumes that by "minimalism" we mean small sounds, lots of empty space, etc.... The classical minimalists, of course, were "minimal" in terms of melodic development but still managed to create massive monolithic constructions; hugeness was never a problem for Reich.)

This is all about minimalism in arrangements; why don't we talk about compositional minimalism? Even outside of electronic music, the notion of how much is enough to make a song is severely reduced: a lot of rap hooks, for instance, wouldn't pass muster as pop verses (although some are great, obviously).

B-but a hook is by definition supposed to be simple and catchy and not like a verse at all!

Yeah but there's hooks and there's hooks. I can't put it any better than that...

Minimalism was probably passe by, what, early eighties? Earlier?

Though, yeah, with techno it was a different aesthetic ... sorry. Don't mean to say all minimalist techno was passe.

I think an area where minimalism (my observation, not something musicians are declaring, really) is "back" is electronic improvisation, which is why I brought up Erstwhile and onkyo, and even "Brooklyn noise" above (Black Dice, Excepter, Psych-O-Path records) - it sounds to me like a reigning in of sounds (if not activity). If not "minimalist", then I can go with "reductionist".