Define Minimal

[The_Laughing_Man]

The less educated like to bang on about Robert hood inventing minimal blah blah blah, but modern minimal owes more to people like Pan Sonic ans Sahko Recordings
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mika_Vainio
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sähkö_Recordings
"Techno" music that traces it`s roots to Musique Concrete and Industrial, and art music, rather than Detroits funk and disco roots.

There is a very good short doc by Bjork about modern minimalism that has a lot of relevance to modern minimal techno and the pursuit of purity and texture.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpbGGb6ZzWg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dz_7V7F6RrM

It also has a very rare interview with my fave (and I would say greatest composer of the 20th century) composer Arvo Part.

[MARK ANXIOUS]

The less educated like to bang on about Robert hood inventing minimal blah blah blah, but modern minimal owes more to people like Pan Sonic ans Sahko Recordings
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mika_Vainio
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sähkö_Recordings
"Techno" music that traces it`s roots to Musique Concrete and Industrial, and art music, rather than Detroits funk and disco roots.

There is a very good short doc by Bjork about modern minimalism that has a lot of relevance to modern minimal techno and the pursuit of purity and texture.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpbGGb6ZzWg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dz_7V7F6RrM

It also has a very rare interview with my fave (and I would say greatest composer of the 20th century) composer Arvo Part.

i actually totally agree. i got all the early pan sonic and sahko tracks and this was really developing way before hood. it was hood that 'made' the term commercial though. that's the first time we ever really heard an album described as 'minimal' in the press to my knowledge.

anyway, the definition of minimal, to me is the original idea of it. you take such small sounds and really develop them, but not obviously and in a kinda random way. modern day minimal is too obvious. that's why to me, much of it is a different genre entirely. not that i dont like it, i'm a music person after all, but i'm just saying it's not the true definition of minimal. funny what commercialism can do to a sound eh?!

[SlavikSvensk]

i actually totally agree. i got all the early pan sonic and sahko tracks and this was really developing way before hood. it was hood that 'made' the term commercial though. that's the first time we ever really heard an album described as 'minimal' in the press to my knowledge.

but it's a bit apples and oranges innit? robert hood was part of a "minimal techno" sound that stripped the embellishments and extra matter off of the dominant hard and detroit sounds of the time. this has certainly played a role in the birth and development of today's minimal, largely through people like richie hawtin, who have bridged the two things. but i think that today's minimal is not so much a continuation of the path those fellas walked down, but a different path that takes in some of what they did alongside a pretty diverse set of influences.

i'm a bit skeptical of how important something like musique concrete has been to minimal, as i don't hear much of pierre schaeffer and other tape-music pioneers there. but i do think LM hit the nail on the head with sähkö, panasonic (got to be OG about it). i always felt the sähkö influence on glitch labels like spectral, which is an intermediary i guess. i'd also add some of the minimal currents in house music over the years to that pot.