Is this minimal ? .. is it bad doctor ?

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Prophän
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Is this minimal ? .. is it bad doctor ?

Post by Prophän »

Hey guys, I see some people here, and in the techno community in general, talking shit about minimal techno, so just for the sake of clarification, when you say minimal techno, I assume that you talk about ITCHY Whoretits?, boris brejcha etc.. that kind of stuff, but what about some artists like developer, regis, surgeon, sleeparchive etc.. those sound as minimal as it can be in my book. but maybe they don't fit into the "minimal techno" label, maybe some one can enlighten me.

And here's an example track to illustrate what kind of minimal I'm talking about (the "good" one).
youtu.be/UZ3-8iHZbn0

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Re: Is this minimal ? .. is it bad doctor ?

Post by Prophän »

Funny how the name of that canadian guy who owns the . label got removed automatically :lol:

EDIT: even the label name can't be displayed :lol: :lol: :lol:

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Re: Is this minimal ? .. is it bad doctor ?

Post by RWise »

What i consider shit minimal =
youtu.be/0ipHSwJl2GU

What i consider actual minimal (the good stuff) =
youtu.be/Ll9ip_RjyxU
youtu.be/mf7F4C7bS4I


But even so, i think the term minimal is so general in techno and more subjective. What i could consider a minimal track, the other person could think its banging warehouse...
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Re: Is this minimal ? .. is it bad doctor ?

Post by [wesellboxes] »

RWise wrote:What i consider shit minimal =
Like almost every sub-genre that implodes and becomes a parody of itself there is always a peak. I was fortunate enough to visit DC10 twice when it was raw, filthy and gloriously druggy. I always thought the guardia civil would have killed that scene off rather than rampant commercialism but money conquers over everything I guess.

This is an interesting listen and Rob touches on what makes a good groove a few times: https://soundcloud.com/ra-exchange/ra-exchange-375

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Re: Is this minimal ? .. is it bad doctor ?

Post by Chizmata »

from the "good" links id consider benales pure techno, dj slip minimal (quite technoid though) and truncate techno with a touch of minimal.

to me pure minimal would be this:

youtu.be/GKn7c7ZuwXw

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Re: Is this minimal ? .. is it bad doctor ?

Post by Prophän »

Great I see, so maybe my definition of minimal wasn't quite right, I meant techno that use a lot minimalist elements like blips and blops (birmingham sound ?), like that truncate track for instance.

This track is a perfect illustration of what i'm talking about :
youtu.be/K77NZo_A-qw
I guess this is not minimal at all for most of you , right ?

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Re: Is this minimal ? .. is it bad doctor ?

Post by Barfunkel »

In what universe do such definitions matter? It's not like you're gonna clear the floor after an hour of 100% minimal techno, when the next track is only 87% minimal. It's about the natural flow of the set, you can play all kinds of stuff if you're a good DJ, especially in long sets.
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Re: Is this minimal ? .. is it bad doctor ?

Post by Prophän »

Barfunkel wrote:In what universe do such definitions matter? It's not like you're gonna clear the floor after an hour of 100% minimal techno, when the next track is only 87% minimal. It's about the natural flow of the set, you can play all kinds of stuff if you're a good DJ, especially in long sets.
It doesn't matter, but as I said in the OP , it's for the sake of clarification as I want to put a name on the brand that I prefer, also in a real life conversation there is no such thing as youtube links so it definitely helps.
Also this shouldn't be taken as a definition but as a pointer/helper, I agree that music should not be strictly labeled but let's be extreme and imagine that all electronic music genres are simply labelled EDM, I guess it wouldn't really work. :D

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Re: Is this minimal ? .. is it bad doctor ?

Post by RWise »

Chizmata wrote:from the "good" links id consider benales pure techno, dj slip minimal (quite technoid though) and truncate techno with a touch of minimal.

to me pure minimal would be this:

youtu.be/GKn7c7ZuwXw
Id class that more as actual minimal/minimal-tech... Not minimal 'techno'.


Thats the type of stuff youll see Captain Ketamine playing, which i do really like.
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Re: Is this minimal ? .. is it bad doctor ?

Post by RWise »

Prophän wrote:Great I see, so maybe my definition of minimal wasn't quite right, I meant techno that use a lot minimalist elements like blips and blops (birmingham sound ?), like that truncate track for instance.

This track is a perfect illustration of what i'm talking about :
youtu.be/K77NZo_A-qw
I guess this is not minimal at all for most of you , right ?

Id class that track under the minimal, hypnotic tooly stuff... So yeah.

If you think about it, anything can be classed as 'minimal' if it actually has minimal elements in the track. Like the sleeparchive track. Very stripped back.
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Re: Is this minimal ? .. is it bad doctor ?

Post by Amøbe »

I always thought minimal referred to the bad Captain Ketamine copies of the early 2000s? (I always thought that and microhouse was the same?) Minimal techno is the stripped back raw sounds starting with Robert Hood and Plastikman (Plastikman is maybe not so raw, but it had few elements and was loopy and trippy and oh god what happened to ITCHY?!) if you ask me.

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Re: Is this minimal ? .. is it bad doctor ?

Post by 1nfinitezer0 »

dancing about architecture...
we're not post-genres yet, but one persons definition rarely is another's. there's a level of similarity within communities of usage that facilitates discussion, but there's no one right answer. or if there is, it will be decided in some history book, not by those in the thick of it.
although then i think of alvin toffler, but anyways.

even buttport has changed their labels of minimal as the sound has changed (homogenized) from where it started. there's basically two songs in the charts of that genre...

there were some genuinely interesting innovations and directions that happened in the early noughts with the minimal explosion. then, as they do, these sound design elements quickly dispersed and mutated travelling through the other genres.

i would wager that were it not for microhouse, the complextro and intensely edited glitch / EDM styles would not exist. even though if I mentioned that to Akufen he might scowl at me ^_^

if anything OP, your definition of minimal corresponds more closely to the original usage by Hood.

personally I have moved towards a tag (web 2.0) style labelling of music since they're a fusion of many influences and styles change quickly. often a label's sound is more clearly discernible than a genre.

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Re: Is this minimal ? .. is it bad doctor ?

Post by meeb »

To me "minimal" is an adjective, like "dark", "frantic", etc. But I keep hearing it being referred to as an actual genre, which is weird to me.
Shouldn't we then also then have subgenres for "frantic techno", "sad techno", "tepid techno" (guess that's tech-house?), "slightly sinister, yet euphoric techno", etc, etc?

I don't see how there could be a clear dividing line between "minimal techno" and "non-minimal techno". Techno is a pretty sparse form of music to begin with, so we're judging on a scale here, surely...

Wether something is minimal or not comes down to your own personal frame of reference and how you measure "minimalness". Do you measure it by number of elements? Number of distinct sounds? Number of notes? Density of notes? The level of variation/repetition? How loud and "banging" it sounds? Etc...
I've heard people say stuff like "if it has a melody, it ain't minimal", for example.

[shrugs]

Basically, what I'm saying is: "is this minimal or not?" seems like a bit of a pointless question to me.
You're not gonna get any kind of consensus.


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Re: Is this minimal ? .. is it bad doctor ?

Post by meeb »

But yeah... when I think "minimal techno", Mika Vainio's name always pops up:

youtu.be/JS0d06MW3sc

About as minimal as you could possibly go, next to just looping a kick drum :D

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Re: Is this minimal ? .. is it bad doctor ?

Post by Prophän »

I was referring to minimal as a genre, I simply wanted to know if the tracks I posted could be labelled as minimal. it may seem pointless to you but it helps my understanding.

That track has a very interesting modulation btw ! Would like to learn what technique he used, maybe playing with delay time ?

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Post by msl »

I adore minimal music and aesthetics in most all its forms, but the genre "minimal" went up its own hole somewhere in the mid 2000's never to return. You couldn't get away from that fucking shit.


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Re: Is this minimal ? .. is it bad doctor ?

Post by meeb »

Ah, so "minimal" is an actual genre then?

That's the part I find weird. So who decided who got to be included in this genre then?
If you're a hipster in Berlin making sparse beats you're "minimal", but if you're non-hipster from somewhere else making equally (or more) sparse stuff, you're not "minimal"?

Goes back to what I said before... what's the actual criteria than? If I live in Berlin and wear sunglasses at night, I'm "minimal"?
I dunno. I don't understand.

It all sounds so very... arbitrary and stupid.

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Post by intrusav »

More Mike Parker? Hahaha!
I think minimal techno as a genre just took over where microhouse came from. The 2 are interchangeable in my book although minimal was ultimately less interesting ..

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Re: Is this minimal ? .. is it bad doctor ?

Post by Amøbe »

meeb wrote:But yeah... when I think "minimal techno", Mika Vainio's name always pops up:

youtu.be/JS0d06MW3sc

About as minimal as you could possibly go, next to just looping a kick drum :D

I miss Mika :(


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