Dan Bell

[SlavikSvensk]

On the contrary, my life is immersed and infused with music and I spend a great deal of time learning all types of techniques and methods.

Minimalism is something that was about purity of note, texture, and harmonic complexity within apparently simple arrangement.
The 12 tone system for example, was very influencial on the minimalists.
With each of the 12 tones in the chromatic scale being given equal emphasis in a piece.
This changed the way the music was made, from being about what is being played, to how it is being played and the texture and timbre, and shifitng time signatures in sublte, almost invisible ways.
Like with glass for example, he asked much from his performers, not so much the notes, but the purity they were extracted from the violin for example.
Constant pressure and smooth bowing for mazimum purity of note.
Part was similar, his early works are notoriously difficult to play, not for their tonal complexity, but for the texture he required his violinists and cellists to get from their instruments. IT required supreme mastery of the instrument, and certain non conventional techniques that ,as they were used from a minimalistic ethic, gave an illusion of simplicity.
These are just small areas of what minimalism was about.

For me, it seems that Hood was influenced by minimalism, but didn`t quite get it, wether he lacked the technical knowledge or skill to reproduce it, or just didn`t fully understand the ethic. The tones he used lacked any real textural or harmonic depth. The structure was minimal, but remained too rigid, and although polyrythmic, lacked fluidity. I think part of the lack of textural depth may be purely down to the limitations of what he had available to him as well, equipment-wise.
Probably as he himself was trying something new, so it didn`t fully succeed, but for me, what he did has little merit in minimal-ISM.

I`m a full on music nerd, I think about these things, possibly too much, but it`s one of the reasons I have starting writing classical pieces, to more fully understand the beautiful maths behind music.

plenty of classical minimalism is about small vocabularies of relatively "unaltered" tones, e.g. john cage's "string quartet in four parts," (which is really worth checking out, if you don't already know it), or shifting patterns of short repeated tones, like "in c" or "music for 18 musicians." that's exactly what rob hood was doing, albeit in a far more superficial way than said composers. but hey...all techno is superficial compared to the giants of contemporary classical. by the bar set by classical minimalism, virtually all "minimal" electronic music is "kiddie minimalism." but nothing wrong with that...just the nature of the beast.