Minimal - Need some recommendations

Zascar

I'm starting to like the whole minimal thing that's really got big recently... Tunes like Gabriel Ananda - Doppelwhipper which is really nce, but I want to find some more... Can anyone recommend some good tunes or minimal producers & artists?

jimi_t

Oxia - Domino
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8znV1u54VHM

Adam Proll - Hummel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkOZL-Rae8A

Extrawelt - Soopertrack
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtL1JVDuTYw

Elektrochemie - Mucky Star
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iodSc3BvI3A

Nathan Fake - The Sky was Pink (James Holden Remix)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-MXz98LFHA

Sven Vath, Villalobos and Richie Hawtin are the big names in the game (i.e. The Cocoon Label).
Luciano and Anthony Rother are also worth a look.

KevIRL

Anything on the M-nus label.

Hawtin, Marc Houle, Magda, Luciano etc.

check out livesets.com they have a minimal sets sectionthats v good. Also check out www.mnml.com

A great mix CD is 'Shes a dancing machine'

jimi_t

KevIRL wrote:

Anything on the M-nus label.

Hawtin, Marc Houle, Magda, Luciano etc.

check out livesets.com they have a minimal sets sectionthats v good. Also check out www.mnml.com

A great mix CD is 'Shes a dancing machine'

www.mnml.nl

jonny68

Terrible terrible music, if i didn't like it before i despise it now after being in Ibiza,about 40 people in Space (majority were in another room) monged out of it just nodding their heads to music that goes absolutely nowhere,worse than cheesy hardcore and that;s saying dsomething:eek:

jimi_t

jonny68 wrote:

Terrible terrible music, if i didn't like it before i despise it now after being in Ibiza,about 40 people in Space (majority were in another room) monged out of it just nodding their heads to music that goes absolutely nowhere,worse than cheesy hardcore and that;s saying dsomething:eek:

A lot of it is unadulterated tripe, but the good (crossover) stuff is some of the freshest stuff coming out these days. The main problem as I see it is 'minimal' being used as a catch-all term - but I'm sure at least one person will argue that the links I posted aren't "minimal" for one reason or another i.e.

Booka Shade - Trespass
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dh9F-xr5e7U

Claude VonStroke - Who's Afraid of Detroit
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nQUvjKhogI

jonny68

Sorry man both those tracks are awful, boring as fu*k, the only people setting i could think of where music ,like that would be appropriate would be in some dingy flat where everyone is monged out of it on ketamine...minimal = worst music ever.:eek:

Zascar

Cheers lads. Actually I already have quite a few of them! Oxia, Nathan Fake, Booka Shade, all nice tunes. Cheers for the others I'll have a listen.

Johnny, kinda surprised at your strong dislike to this. I thought you had a very wide taste in electronic music. It's a personal thing of course, I'm sure there is a lot of stuff that you listen to I would think is pure muck. However, I think it's kind of hard to judge tracks like these on their own. I never liked minimal until i was at a party and a mate of mine who is a savage DJ played like an 8 hour set, and the last few hours progressed to minimal and it was fantastic. Since then I've really been getting into it.

I have downloaded some of the Richie Hawtin stuff but some of it is just to much (or too little really) - kinda bare and uneventful, but others are great when you get into it.

Keep the recommendations coming lads, and any tips on live sets that would be a good intro for a newbie as well.

jonny68

Zascar im one of the most musically diverse people you'll ever meet especially when it comes to dance music which is my first love but this minimal is just downright plain boring, it's souless music that doesn't go anywhere, reminds me of some deep house from a few years back, funky house on the other hand is uplifting and gets the crowd going..as i said everyone to their own but i personally think it's terrible, ive yet to hear a minimal track that i like!!!!!

311

Juan atkins is a lot better than this stuff.

Riesen_Meal

jonny68 wrote:

Sorry man both those tracks are awful, boring as fu*k, the only people setting i could think of where music ,like that would be appropriate would be in some dingy flat where everyone is monged out of it on ketamine...minimal = worst music ever.:eek:

Thats your own opinion Jonny, I love techno in most forms, hard, detroit and minimal, I still love house music aswell, dont get to listen to much nowadays though....

Minimal still beats the arse of cheesy electro-house (in my humble opinion!)



Back on topic :

heres a track takin the piss out of minimal itself!

and its minimal :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XY9-Ei3PJQ0

Marc Houle - Techno Vocals

Anima

I'm starting to like it more and more as well. James Holden is really growing on me. He's just great. I don't get why they call it minimal techno though, is that not that horribly boring pretentious ****e that Richie Hawtin plays? It sounds more like minimal house or something.

jonny68

Fieldog wrote:

Thats your own opinion Jonny, I love techno in most forms, hard, detroit and minimal, I still love house music aswell, dont get to listen to much nowadays though....

Minimal still beats the arse of cheesy electro-house (in my humble opinion!)



Back on topic :

heres a track takin the piss out of minimal itself!

and its minimal :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XY9-Ei3PJQ0

Marc Houle - Techno Vocals

Not all electro house is cheesy, i like some electro house but funky house is my favourite.

Zascar

johnny68 wrote:

Sorry man both those tracks are awful, boring as fu*k, the only people setting i could think of where music ,like that would be appropriate would be in some dingy flat where everyone is monged out of it on ketamine...minimal = worst music ever.

I have to say I Love the first one - Booka Shade, Tresspass (Not so keen on the other one though)
Do you like any of Booka Shade's other stuff?
In White Rooms: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czfPlOXsXYo
Manderine Girl: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8jQact_Gyg
Both very deep dark and well, some would say boring, but if placed correcly in a set, I really like it.

jonny68 wrote:

Zascar im one of the most musically diverse people you'll ever meet especially when it comes to dance music which is my first love but this minimal is just downright plain boring, it's souless music that doesn't go anywhere, reminds me of some deep house from a few years back, funky house on the other hand is uplifting and gets the crowd going..as i said everyone to their own but i personally think it's terrible, ive yet to hear a minimal track that i like!!!!!

I would definitely not be anywhere near as diverse as most people in my music tastes. I still do and will always love my funky house. When the whole electro movement started at first I hated it but now it' most of what I play. Shame on me but I don't mind some of the cheesystuff too much - Most of the time I loved the tune when I first hear it, only for it to become overplayed and commercial later on. (Perfect example: Mason Exceeder).

When it comes to anything remotely near Trance, Hard House, Hi NRG etc I'd rather listen to a room full of crying babies...

Riesen_Meal

jonny68 wrote:

Not all electro house is cheesy, i like some electro house but funky house is my favourite.

I disagree, but then again im a ketamine-horsing minimal techno head.....

???

:rolleyes:


Funky house? Fair enough Jonny, we'll agree to disagree....

Whatever floats your boat, my worst experiences of funky house is the White Horse early house and strangely enough the crowd are usually fat ugly blondey hairdressers, trannies and gays with mullets all being off their tits on bad yokes!

But that would be me generalising a crowd for what type of music they listened to....

I went to Hed Kandi a while ago, not even free tickets stopped me boltin out the door!!!!

311

Imo ,you'd want to be fairly pretentious to listen to that music all night.

run_Forrest_run

Personally I love listening to James Holden (At the Controls) thru the headphones when working but I wouldn't really enjoy it on a night out. Without sounding like some elite pretentious goon I think music like Holden is quite personal and is ideal for listening on your own, give me more up tempo techno or trance beats when out with friends.

But I also love listening to the likes of Brian Eno (ambient works), Stars of the Lid, Windy & Carl on the headphones also...but never in a group or at a party.

That's my tuppence worth anyway!

Riesen_Meal

Thats the problem with half of the djs in Dublin, they dont play what they want most of the time and just go with whatever is "safe" to play on the night (ive done it myself)

Personally, ill try and blend all different types of dance music into a set, be it breaks, house or techno usually.....

dubmick

jonny68 wrote:

Terrible terrible music, if i didn't like it before i despise it now after being in Ibiza,about 40 people in Space (majority were in another room) monged out of it just nodding their heads to music that goes absolutely nowhere,worse than cheesy hardcore and that;s saying dsomething:eek:

Agree 100% with the above. Torture music.

jonny68

Fieldog wrote:

I disagree, but then again im a ketamine-horsing minimal techno head.....

???

:rolleyes:


Funky house? Fair enough Jonny, we'll agree to disagree....

Whatever floats your boat, my worst experiences of funky house is the White Horse early house and strangely enough the crowd are usually fat ugly blondey hairdressers, trannies and gays with mullets all being off their tits on bad yokes!

But that would be me generalising a crowd for what type of music they listened to....

I went to Hed Kandi a while ago, not even free tickets stopped me boltin out the door!!!!

Ive not been to the white horse and judging from what ive heard it's hardly what you would call funky house what they play there more like hard house, and Hed Kandi is more cheese than anything, a once good organisation have sold out like the Ministry Of Sound.

My point is that minimal is so bad you would probably have to be monged out of it on K or something to bear it,all this so called "intelligent dance music" gets on my tits, i mean who the fu*k came up with this nonsense "intelligent" the worst generalization of all time:eek:

fits

jonny68 wrote:

Ive not been to the white horse and judging from what ive heard it's hardly what you would call funky house what they play there more like hard house,

nope tis pretty funky alright...

KevIRL

Hey hey everyone, each to their own. Lets not turn this into yet another dance board where people slag off different genre's.

No one is gonna like each style, but no need for getting anyway personal about others likes or dislikes. I dont like deleting posts or any of that crap, this is a pretty loose enough board, please please dont let me have to start

Might I suggest that if you have a strong dislike about a particular genre of dance music, just stay out of the thread discussing it and leaves fans of that genre to discuss in peace.

cheesemaker

KevIRL wrote:

Hey hey everyone, each to their own. Lets not turn this into yet another dance board where people slag off different genre's.

bit late for that

juno1

Zascar wrote:

I have downloaded some of the Richie Hawtin stuff but some of it is just to much (or too little really) - kinda bare and uneventful, but others are great when you get into it.

Keep the recommendations coming lads, and any tips on live sets that would be a good intro for a newbie as well.

If you like Hawtin, try False (aka Matthew Dear), 'River Camping' on Minus is ace.

A bit busy that... stripping things down further are Deep Chord - any of their 'Coldest Season' 12"s will do, try part 2 'Empyrean' as an intro. From the same camp, Rod Modell's 12"s on Echocord, try 'Sacred Geometry'.

The Field's 'Thought vs Action' on the 'Things Keep Falling Down' EP (Kompakt) is pure minimal repetition once you skip the intro. Nice end of the night/sunrise tune.

Have you checked Sleeparchive yet? I'd recommed 'Infrared Glow' or 'Hospital Tracks' on his own label. Like car tyres on wet tarmac with a broken car stereo spitting out the odd belch.

And for the ultimate Minimal fix: Check out anything by Omar S on Chicago's FXHE label. (he also records as Oasis).

KevIRL

Interesting piece in The Guardian over the weekend on minimal with some good recommendations at the end

Space exploration


Techno music has been pared down to create the super-trendy 'minimal' sound sweeping out of Berlin. Alex Macpherson meets the DJs spreading the new dance gospel

Friday September 28, 2007
The Guardian


One of the best places in Berlin to watch the sun rise is from inside the massive Watergate club, on the banks of the River Spree, in the trendy Kreuzberg district. The side facing the river towards the east is glass-plated floor-to-ceiling; between 5am and 7am, the room is gradually transformed from a dark, heaving mass of European bodies syncopating themselves to a house beat into a gloriously sunlit morning-after.
Berlin has been the spiritual home of dynamic, forward-thinking dance music for much of the past decade, house and techno in particular; it is a hub where artistic talents converge and nascent genres emerge to spread across Europe. The combination of a famously liberal attitude towards partying and a startlingly low cost of living has made the city a magnet for art scenes of all descriptions, a hedonistic centre of creativity where clubs open on a Friday night and often don't close until well into the following week, and where three-day parties are par for the course. It is home to some of Europe's most famous clubs (Watergate; the dungeon-like, labyrinthine Tresor; Berghain, a gothic building which looms up from an industrial landscape) and achingly hip dance labels (Get Physical, Bpitch Control, Cadenza).




The sound that has been filling those clubs and distributed on those labels, and which has exploded across the continent, is broadly known as minimal. Over the past five or so years, it's grown from an arcane subdivision of techno into an ubiquitous buzzword on the dance scene. Even two years ago, minimal techno was still the preserve of the so-hip-it-hurts sunglasses-at-night set. Its trendiness was endearingly encapsulated in the ubercoolische.com website, a charming soap opera written about the adventures of minimal figureheads Ricardo Villalobos, Magda and Richie Hawtin. In 2006, minimal finally crossed over, though, when Gabriel Ananda's 10-minute percussive epic Doppelwhipper exploded across Ibiza.
"For a few months, anything on any minimal German label sold," says Simon Rigg, manager at London record shop Phonica and longtime supporter of the sound. Now, even the unlikely figure of will.i.am of Black Eyed Peas has somehow cottoned on: his forthcoming album samples minimal's biggest 2005 hit, M.A.N.D.Y., and Booka Shade's Body Language - though he is still some way behind Kylie Minogue, whose 2003 No 1 Slow was essentially a minimal track with an added pop vocal.

Characterised by simple, spare beats and subtle sonic details, minimal can baffle novices: how can music with seemingly so little to it manage to work dancefloors into a state of frenzy, let alone cross over to casual dance fans? But there is a rich emotional pull to the best minimal records: furthermore, by stripping all extraneous sound from a track, all the subtle details - shifts in tempo, melodic phrases, textural effects - are magnified a hundredfold. It is equally cerebral and physical: on the dancefloor, you can lose yourself in thinking about how the dots join up with each other even as your body moves automatically to the beat.

Craig Richards, techno house pioneer and resident of London superclub Fabric, has been a minimal enthusiast since first hearing Basic Channel records in the 1990s. "At first, people were irritated by simplicity, frightened to be absorbed by a sound so simple in the same way that people in art galleries are threatened by minimal abstract paintings," he says. "Only now are people willing to be engaged by very little." Rigg, meanwhile, has an alternative explanation for its rise in popularity: "A lot of people have suggested it's all linked to the popularity of [the drug] ketamine, which means that you can listen to 17-minute minimal epics for hours."

Another factor in the surge of popularity is how minimal has evolved - or rather, what the term "minimal" has come to mean. It has always covered a multitude of styles: the gap between the m_nus label's austere, menacing minimal techno and the lush microhouse and pop-friendly hooks favoured by Michael Mayer's Kompakt label is vast. Now, "minimal" is an umbrella term covering a massive swathe of house and techno - much to the annoyance of dance connoisseurs, whose second favourite activity after dancing to techno is semantic hair-splitting, and who cannot bear to see the label "minimal" stuck on music they think does not merit it. In fact, the resilience of the name is a testament to its popularity, despite its increasing meaninglessness as a term; it is also in large part the result of the scene's sense of community, wherein even a label releasing chunky, maximalist techno (such as Areal) is tagged minimal purely because its artists associate with true minimal artists.

Two of 2007's key albums find two leading lights of the sound pursuing very different paths. Mathew Jonson is the classically trained Canadian founder of the Wagon Repair label; his Cobblestone Jazz project is an unlikely fusion of techno with jazz. For five years, it has been a live project based on improvisation and interaction with Danuel Tate and Tyger Dhula, the other musicians who comprise Cobblestone Jazz; the album, 23 Seconds, is a gorgeous, loose-limbed, trippy affair that retains the easy spontaneity at the heart of the project.

Ricardo Villalobos, meanwhile, is a Chilean exile in Berlin (his family fled Pinochet's regime when he was three) whose name is spoken in minimal circles with a kind of hushed reverence: his reputation as an auteur has been cemented by a string of seminal releases including last year's Fizheuer Zieheuer, a 37-minute epic based on a Hungarian wedding song. His own new release is ostensibly a mix compilation, the 36th in the Fabric series, but it's comprised entirely of Villalobos' own new tracks. To all intents and purposes it is his third album; uncomfortable with his own reputation, though, Villalobos has opted to release it in this way so as to avoid excessive hype. It is a revelation: Villalobos spends the first quarter gently easing the listener into his mind, skeletal rhythms weaving in between each other without ever impinging themselves too heavily; slowly but surely, though, he begins to pull out his tricks and the madness begins to set in.

The 12-minute centrepiece, Andruic & Japan, is a riot of thunderous tribal drums and what appears to be a lone female voice (in actual fact the voices of Villalobos and a friend fed through a machine) that begins conversationally, and ends up in an insane rant about chicken giblets. Dark, unsettling, and possibly enough to induce psychosis on the dancefloor, the album finally breaks into the light with the gloriously sunny Primer Encuentro Latino-Americano, based on a traditional Chilean folk song.

Villalobos and Jonson are good friends, but their attitudes to their art could not be more different. Villalobos is, to put it bluntly, a renowned party freak: in most pictures he is dishevelled, wild-haired and wild-eyed. I interview him a week before his girlfriend gives birth to their first child; when asked how his lifestyle will be affected, he sighs deeply before replying, "I guess I will have to go home after the first afterparty instead of the fifth."

He rhapsodises about partying endlessly - "I try not to miss a single opportunity for happiness" - and casts his hedonistic lifestyle as a political act: "We are living in one of the most unjust situations in human rights in the history of all humanity. It is a bad energy which is taking control of the world, like cancer. It's important to find the little light in between all this blackness, to find your space and fight for your right to party, to build up a worldwide net of people who want to have a good time and to forget reality for a while. I try to deliver the music to make the quality of escape better."

Jonson, on the other hand, is more introspective. He talks at length about how the process of production is an attempt to recreate the music in his head: "If I go into a museum or art gallery, I'll hear music in my head - not a song, but a non-stop progression in real time. Often I hear something in my head which is far better than anything I could conceptualise or write ... I'm hoping as I get older I'll be better able to capture that." Until recently he based himself in Vancouver rather than Berlin for artistic reasons: "In a city which doesn't have a club scene, I find that more creative - because there's less to do, all the musicians are hanging out with each other and making music. And I don't really take inspiration from clubs - nature inspires me. Art, architecture, the weather inspires me. And girls."

What both agree on, however, is that at the heart of minimal techno is a yearning for liberation. Returning to the theme of location, it is no coincidence that postcommunist Berlin has become the scene's hub, or that Villalobos pinpoints Romania as the country most likely to produce the next generation of techno leaders. Hedonistic freedom will always hold special significance for those who have known the absolute lack of any freedom: Villalobos himself, an exile from Pinochet's regime in Chile, identifies with that idea, while Ellen Allien, the founder of the Bpitch Control label, pinpoints the moment when the Berlin Wall came down as the key to her work. In minimal techno, what is not in the music can be as important as what is there: the gaps in between the beats and the melodies provide the spaces in which the dancers can find liberation, to free their minds by losing them. Villalobos smiles, and says merely: "That freedom is what I want to give to everyone."

Minimal classics - six to hear

Luciano: La Limonada De Pepe Bombilla (Mental Groove, 2002)

Early insanity from a minimal pioneer involving a sweaty tangle of beats, miniature digital explosions, a druggy drawl and some very menacing laughter.

Âme: Rej (Defected, 2005)

A masterpiece of sonic pointillism: a constellation of dramatic plucked strings rise imperiously from a bed of echoing, spreading synths to form patterns in your head.

Gabriel Ananda: Ihre Persönliche Glücksmelodie (Karmarouge, 2005)

Dubbed the "most melodic man in minimal", Ananda's first crossover hit is decadently tuneful, from the dreamy synths to the buzzing, anthemic acid bass that crashes the party and the gorgeous counterpoint melody of the final stages.

Booka Shade: In White Rooms (Get Physical, 2006)

Built seemingly out of little more than air currents and wordless vocal snippets, this immaculately crafted, texturally sumptuous piece builds up to a dreamy rush of a climax.

Audion: Mouth To Mouth (Spectral Sound, 2006)

The sound of this track's frankly petrifying wobbly chainsaw noise looming out of speakers was ubiquitous last year. Music for bouncing off the walls to at 5am.

Estroe: Driven (Connaisseur Supérieur, 2007)

A keening siren song anchored by thick, rich bass, this is a rapturous flight of fancy. Estroe, the Dutch woman responsible for it, is a nurse by profession.

Zascar

Fantastic Article, thanks Kev

penexpers

For minimal I would recommend

Audion, Sleeparchive, Mathew Jonson, anything on the Sahko label, Plasticman/Richie Hawtin.

Most of the minimal stuff coming out these days isn't great.

Scubadevils

I know nothing about the current minimal stuff but defo worth having the first two Richie Hawtin / Plastikman releases...

http://www.discogs.com/release/2256

http://www.discogs.com/release/666

I can see why people would dislike the style alright, it takes some getting used to (a big fat joint can help introduce these styles!)

I hate the term Intelligent Dance Music but the music under that term is amazing....check out the Higher Intelligence Agency or Beaumont Hannant to start with...

http://www.discogs.com/artist/Higher+Intelligence+Agency%2C+The

http://www.discogs.com/artist/Beaumont+Hannant

cornbb

The only minimal stuff I'd have istened to to date would be the likes of Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works I & II and some stuff by The Orb. Is this in any way comparable to the stuff mentioned here? Sorry, don't have a chance to listen to it now...

Scubadevils

I'd be surprised if anyone into the likes of Aphex Twin or The Orb didnt like some IDM. A really good example is the following tune from Beaumont Hannant. The CD is long deleted and not available anywhere so can I post the track here? Mods remove if needs be!

In the wrong thread really as it is anything but minimal but seeing as IDM was brought up.

Basically, if you like this, its worth hunting down lots more.

http://www.mediafire.com/?3d3gyynv0pn

cornbb

Oh IDM rules, most of the stuff I'd call minimal would fall within the IDM bracket too. But I'd definitely be up for hearing more and different minimal stuff.

Ishkur's guide has some great examples of minimal electronic music buried in there in case anyone is interested.

lizzyitis

Booka Shade in White Rooms isn't minimal at all it is electro-house or am I picking up that post wrong?

Anyway recommendations for Minimal I would say:

Claude Von Stroke - Who's Afraid Of Detroit

Anja Schneider & Sebo K - Rancho Relaxo

Spoonful Of Lovin' - Martini Bros

Poker Flat have some really good artists such as Trentemoller, Martini Bros & Steve Bug.

Try this cd, its good and a good introduction to minimal if you are lookign to get into it.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Poker-Flat-Vol-5-Bets-Bluffs/dp/B000JKA0PG/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/026-7669035-2916433?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1192095435&sr=8-1


I personally like some tunes but not a major lover of the genre!