sherburne drops the ball

and please nobody say "minimal is a feeling"

alternately, if i get no answers i am going to make this into the ENEMIES OF TRUE HOUSE D00DZ thread and just cut and paste other people's worst posts into it.

like:

Sessions - Mixed by Josh Wink
Found this in the mail today. Sort of Minimal Bobbins for Dummies but really enjoyable. And I really like how the second cd goes into Millsian Bobbins for the last 20-30 minutes or so.

-- Omar (sporenbur...) (webmail), May 13th, 2006 10:57 AM. (Omar)

BAD OMAR! NO BISCUIT!

However, I liked the column, and the bits about this music holding a lot of currency right now I think are related to minimalism in that I think the notion of organizing large amounts of data into a few big sub-groups, and using/talking about/composing w/those as opposed to micro-managing (ha!) is very "now" to me, and one of the things I associate with minimalism. And again - even that is a feeling, not something I necessarily expect to find in a sociology journal or in a study.

The second question is harder, because it gets into the more complicated question of how genres are defined and who defines them. I suspect a large part of the reason that some artists are associated with minimalism and others aren't is that the labels which most people associate with minimal techno/house are such powerhouses that for most people (and critics) the question of minimalism is one which relates less to any particular artist's aesthetic choice and more to whether or not an artist "seems" to fit in the lineage of those particular labels (even as those labels themselves are less and less minimal.)

It's certainly interesting to see how many people are jumping on the techno bandwagon under the minimal banner. Interestingly there is a lot of jealousy, particularly from the progressive house kids, and backlash from the banging loop techno fans.

Minimal is dead. Long live minimal?

But..but, why? (I glady take that Enemy of True House crown though, thank you very much.)

it's a bit useless isn't it? i always found house to be minimal to begin with (Acid Trax, those early Pointdexter tracks) so it's almost like saying minimal-minimal or housey house. Though it's weird that it has become such a buzzword when it used to be the sort of stuff (say Hawtin circa Concept) for veterans whose ears were so...erm...housefied that they could get excited by a the slightest shift in detail.

http://www.macguff.com/?j=showjob&id=61

ugh

How is any of this different from the rise (and fall) of any other type of music (fad or otherwise)?

It's a worthy aim because:

1.)
The experience of dancing to minimal music was very refreshing for a period because of the way it focused the mind on micro details of the music and because it felt very different and more raw/underground than the previous prevailing maximalism (filterhouse, euphoric prog, trance, industrial d&b, schranz (arguably)). Super-minimal stuff like Sleeparchive also brought back that "caught up in a machine" vibe from early techno, but in a way that was more relevant today.

2.)
Sounds good on drugs.

3.)
It allowed for more rhythmic innovation in house music by stripping back the melodic elements to those little hiccups and forcing producers to create interest in the way they program their beats.

4.)
As a response to culture minimal is appropriate. Minimal is like an iPod - looks simple on the outside but lots of really complex bits go into making it. The whole metallic edge to traditional techno feels dated, but aesthetically Minimal is like smooth shiny curvy plastic.

How and why we pick what's minimal and what's not?

There isn't any 'why' anymore, probably. As James Holden said in a recent interview, these days it mostly consists of what ableton presets the producer is using (e.g. Minilogue).

Those europeans and their fancy mustards.

Seriously though, why dont you write and post some tunes that reflect this music over on house is a feeling. I have been wanting to hear more of it for about 2 years now but just dont run across it.

By the way I loved Lost on Arrival but then I didnt mind all of the Naked catalog either.

Over in the B0rder C0mmunity thread I mention this zerhackte live set by N. F4ke which left me wondering wtf - while having fun with Ablet0n 5 I discover he runs stuff into "beat repeat"-type effects.

So what is with this minimal electronic music, I hear it was all about updating dub rhythms for the 21st century and the space between the notes and yadda yadda? Or is is loopy, nerdy Euro techno cockroaches-in-the-plumbing uptempo IDM since what, ten years now. And now to read le Sherburne thinkpiece.

almost want to stay.

hmm, the K2 website's promo for Hug would make a nice login name:

Thanks Mike (I was going to photoshop one of these bookcovers but thought it to obvious. ;) Okay so it should be Introducing Zee Minimal House with cool psychedelic cut-up cartoons (that would be a nice little book actually.)

Can I still be an Enemy of True House though? :)

WHATCHA GONNA DO

WHATCHA GONNA DO WHEN WE COME FOR YOU

This is OTM. I think it's increasingly skewed to only see this stuff in relation to US house when in fact minimal is increasingly seen as the new direction in techno not house, albeit techno whose direction has been partially shaped by house influences and affectations (Do you recognise this point Vahid? YOU made it on an old microhouse thread...).

And it's when we look at in comparison to techno - or, at least, the techno that was popular in Europe in the late nineties and into the early 00s - that "minimal" seems particularly inappropriate b/c obv this stuff is actually more maximal - more melodic, more detailed, more stuffed with different types of sounds, more dynamic (in the non-judgmental sense of having different contrasting sections, counterposing loud 'n' soft etc.).

I can only assume that it's become more popular with techno heads as part of a reaction against the preceding banging-ness. Which partly explains the genre term perhaps: it's only "minimal" insofar as it is less banging, mostly.

Perhaps unsurprisingly the stuff which does fit the genre description perfectly - all that stripped down minimally percussive stuff* which doesn't go anywhere sounds like something halfway between Luciano (in stripped down mode) and Magda, only with all the fun and melodies and production nous sucked out - is mostly kinda boring! This stuff seems to becoming more populous too, and I suspect will ultimately be a far bigger threat to this scene's vitality than Minilogue style progginess, which feels more like "this season's trick" than a longterm development.

* By "minimally percussive" I don't mean Guido Schneider-style nu-tribalism hippy ventures, which is great of course, but those tracks which basically sound like old minimal techno drum loops slowed down and dozed with prozac.

As for the whole Freaks/Switch/Classic issue, I think we basically exhausted this in that other thread Vahid, but if you can be more specific about what questions you're left with?

I hope you're right!

Ha! Yes, this about sums it up really.

I think a lot of first/second-wave minimal had to do with the artists' mastery of their machines — long arcs of knob-twisting and a real talent for listening to the way that waveforms evolve and collide. Most of today's minimal is far more based on editing and composition, utilizing sounds that may complement each other and gel nicely, but without ever really attaining the heady, psych-acoustic mindfuck (a la Ryoji Ikeda or no-input-mixing-board shit) that early machine minimalism attained.

And yes, as I mentioned, the original wave of house/techno was by nature minimalist. And Swedish loopism is also inherently minimalist. I'm interested in why the "minimal" tag has somehow been peeled off of its historical precedents and actual formal qualities in favor of becoming a free-floating signifier around which its boosters and busters are both rallying with equal aplomb.

I get the feeling that this difference is mainly down to production techniques. Certainly 'minimal' is less heavy on sampling - loops especially. Maybe someone who has had more contact with the producers themselves can shed some light. Phil?

Now I'm not going to rag on Pokerflat again, just using it as an example of how things which were I guess "tech-house" became easily known as minimal.

I'm not sure I can totally agree with Tim about minimal being a new direction solely in techno, I still think we're in some weird place where the boundary between house and techno being a blurred line is sort of key to the success of "minimal", and key to it being such a unifier.

I still think the main reason "minimal" is used and abused as a genre name is that house or techno does not suffice, whatever diaspora is into this stuff identifies itself by the use of the word "minimal", it's come to a point where this is how you say you like current dance music. (Sorry Vahid that will probably drive you nuts)

As to how and why it was a worthy aim, I just think, remember 2003 (, how shit the majority of mainstream house music was, I think my top tune that year was Chk Chk Chk! Disgraceful. Obviously lots of good stuff was released in 03 but much of it didn't filter through till 2004. To be more specific though I'd say the following.....

-Because minimal involved changing the focus of house/techno onto a whole slew of new labels/producers/djs and has managed to break the 10-15 year reign of some aging DJs (which WAS ridiculous no matter how much I tried to scoff at the articles in 2002 deriding this)

-Because at a time when dance music was supposedly "dead" in Europe, minimal (along with electrohouse for the proles, tho soon/now it's minimal for the "proles") has made it cool and chic and European, and basically kept it alive, love it or hate it this is true. I don't mean that everyone that likes it is a hipster or anything, lest we revive that old stabbing match, but I dunno, I value people thinking dance music (or any genre) is something weird and alien and cool.

-I keep feeling like evoking post punk here but I know nothing about it, but I wish SR liked minimal so he could make some appropriate analogies. Anyway what I mean to say here is that surely after all the "dance is dead" stuff (which may not have been prevalent in the US, Vahid? It was really in your face here) there was a need to start it all again, go back to basics, hence so much Chicago revival etc?

I guess there's an argument to be had about the extent to which minimal can be described as "back to basics", but it's worth noting that we're trying to talk about why this stuff got popular from say, 3 years ago, up to now.

I think now we're so far past the tentative steps to dance rebirth stage and really back to a period of real confidence, there are idols and labels at the top, and newcomers, and tons of new household names. It's boomtime at the moment, so tricky to use today's stuff to talk about the emergence of the sound into the mainstream.

No I'd agree that really it's mostly tech-house with the caveat that only some of it actually sounds like "tech-house" in the traditional narrow sense. And obviously some of this stuff sounds very housey. And in other threads I've defended the notion that tempo is probably the single most reliable way to distinguish between house and techno these days, defended the continued use of house as a descriptor term for this music. But I think thinking of it as just "house" tends to obscure the very reasons why this music has become such successful "unifier" dance music.

Good point about Perlon and M_Nus, that stuff managed to slip my mind while I was thinking about this. I think I group them more with microhouse in my mind, which did feel a lot more sample-heavy.

I guess what I was getting at with my comment was more about the lack of conventional sampling - loops from records etc. I know loop techno guys that literally just layer and filter sampled loops until they stumble on a combination that feels right. M_nus and Perlon use sampling in a more thoughtful and self-referential way, and certainly mangle stuff a lot more. It ends up feeling more designed to me again, but perhaps I'm projecting.

Look at the DC10 phenomenon, it quite druggy and lively, and perceived by the mainstream to be a minimal thing. Following on from that, artists PR wanting to make old house DJs (and techno to a lesser degree) appear like they're part of the new wave take on the minimal tag.

I wasnt that into techno till the bandwagon came along. I am more excited about the stuff being produced in the last couple of years by a range of different artists, than the five years before that. Its also got me listening to some older stuff. Right know I'm enjoying Mika Vainio - Metri [säkho] which is really minimal.

I think the fact that minimal is used as a noun, not an adjective is key to the linguistic debate. If it's 'minimal', not 'minimal house' or 'minimal techno', then however maximal it gets in dance music terms, it still is pretty minimal compared to song-based pop, rock or non-minimalist classical or Lordi or what have you.

As an outward-facing rebranding (not House, not Techno)of a genre it works OK. As a tag to distinguish it within dance music, it's a bit rubbish, innit?

How do you pronounce it in German, anyway? Should we all be saying miniMAL

another aside: i am listening to a sebo k remix of john dahlback right now (for the third time in a row) and it is indeed minimal in the style of "rancho relaxo", but it also heavily reminds me of LIL LOUIS and it swings in a very trad house way. i hope to hear it out in the montréal sunshine.

I completely agree with this point. I think in saying just minimal, without following it with anything, it allows the term to drift from it's original meaning, and thus come to where it is now. It seems to have lost the specificness and thus allowed for so much other less minimal stuff to go under it.

I really liked the article. I think popularity has brought a lot of the change for what is "minimal" too. When I think of pure minimal techno, I think Concept by plastikman/thomas brinkmann, or Panasonic come to mind, which by no means are accessible to dance music fans. I think a part of it is with becoming more popular, those will likely start slowly adding more to cater to a more accesisble and dancable sound.

btw, loop-techno is much closer to the early minimal techno, which was also strictly based on repetitive loops, than to some current techno, which is called "minimal".

isn't all techno/house pretty minimal by definition? lots of loops, repetition, usually some drone somewhere, buildups by increasing texture.

you can even make analogies to the classical world:

drone-ey minimalism:
build a relationship between a kick drum and the drynamics of a la monte young drone/texture and you've got something that resembles *really* minimal techno. both in terms of production and harmonic movement.

your holy minimalism/simplicity:
very simple, well thought out ideas, repetition of one simple but very effective idea. usually builds to something then dies away again. process is kind of important here.

reichian minimalism
this is where repetition becomes the main focal point, or rather, slightly altering repetitions.

pop minimalism
uses any of the above techniques, but sticks it into more of a pop arrangement. the 'process' is less important and sections can jump around without minimal changes, lots more contrast, although the sections and textures themselves are very minimalist.

to me, the minimal tag should be applied to musics where there are no mistakes, no dirtyness. theres a certain purity about the sounds, everything fits into its place quite perfectly.

this matches the aesthetics of the i-pod and what people generally visualise when they think of something as being minimal as well as allowing lots of musics that employ minimalist techniques/ideas.

skimming back, bah, i think i've missed the point of the thread, could someone provide me with a track of reference to back up this point from mr. sherbourne

"what's currently considered "minimal" has almost nothing to do with either classic (house/techno) minimalism nor any other properly minimalist aesthetics"

This is so true and often not noticed. To me the best minimal techno/minimal music draws attention to the qualities of the instruments themselves, esp. important to electronic music where coupled with a good sound system the sounds can become so enveloping in and of themselves. Gear shops should demo stuff with minimal techno not godawful trance (why oh why is it always THAT?)

xp Mr. Dog

I went to guitar center the other day and the monitor room had a delicate glitch house track playing through a set of high end monitors. Really strange thing to hear in a GC in texas

Re Minimal Aim's: There are no aim's in art. there are just archtypes and minimal is Appollo throwing down on some jack house. You can't escape it, it is always there. It is just the way our minds work. It is one pole or the other...

Maximal is Bacchus.