Define Minimal

[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.