Why Minimal Techno is the best dance music ever:

I agree about the subconscious, it's just few clubs that play minimal in the US (and possibly UK/Australia, although I bet it is higher) seem to have the decent enough soundsystem to get you to enter this submersive zone.

Or we could all just take drugs.

Also the vocals/instruments thing is pretty tenuous. Some minimal techno does incorporate vocals & those sounds can lend themselves to a "trance" as much as anything. Unless you mean a 'rhythmic trance' but then *any* sound extraneous to the percussive could be called a 'wake up.'

-- one eye white, one eye black

Bingo! Yes indeed. You could really say the same thing about similar trance-inducing effects in any kind of music though. For example, the entrancing effects of the dull roar of fuzz is my main attraction to black metal, not really the songs per se.

FOR ME TO POOP ON !!!!!

I think this article from 1998 says it all. It my favourite article about dance music ever, by Paul Condon:

http://www.uncarved.org/phunk/meditation.html

There are other good essays on that site.

I once posted this article somewhere else and these clueless gear bores came back with 'first year sophomore philosophy' type comments. As a former university teacher of philosophy of mind myself, I found nothing amaateur or student-like about this article (unlike its would-be critics). May I venture out of my usual meek persona to say, if you have those kind of tendencies, spare us on this occasion? An article like this should really be read, appreciated, digested and applied.

Last night here in Seattle Superpitcher's last song was Johnny Cash's cover of Soundgarden's 'Black Hole Sun.' So brilliant and beautiful and drunken, he and Ada up there dancing onstage. As Lisa said after, 'At least he knows where he is.'

first time: areal showcase
second time: steve bug/villalobos

gareth he played in sheffield 2 weeks ago! maybe you should have come up.

actually, who i really want to see again is kevin saunderson!

"Repetition is the key - the same thing is heard again, but memory suggests it is also different at the same time. This ambiguity allows moment-by-moment apperception to appear, as the more analytical circuits of the brain are hearing something that simultaneously is and isn't the same thing. This means they're engaged, but don't get to run the show."

I for one welcome our Kölner Minimal Techno Överlord. Rub it in, will you.

What I find interesting is how people can manage to build a minimal set, then drop in a more 'macro' record to devastating effect then zoom back down to minimal again. It's fucking tricky to do without bringing the energy level down.

(at least on ilm) everyones so focused on listening which i think is the dead wrong approach for this kind of music. its aiming for the subconscious and you dont get there by sounding interesting

if minimal techno taught me anything, it was to listen harder to music, to focus more--not less. i was thinking about this today, actually (while staring out the window for hours on end at a slowly shifting landscape.) why do some people hear so much in minimal techno, and why do other people just think it all sounds like formless oonce-oonce-oonce? are some people more naturally predisposed than others to digging this music?

I think whenever I go out dancing I'm always half-consciously writing a blog post about the music in my head, noticing and cataloguing and thinking about everything I'm hearing while simultaneously totally immersing myself in it physically (I become a really tedious sonix nerd on ecstasy!).

So that tension in so much minimal techno - between the endless groove and all the minor deviations - actually just made more explicit a process which I was already going through with all the music that I danced to.

(also the way I dance kind of fits into this because my feet are always trying to follow exactly the complicated snare patterns, which is tiring and probably looks awful but is also immensely enjoyable)

(this is part of why I'm reluctant to endorse the idea which occasionally crops up around here that, when it comes to house or techno, brute physicality and ear-tickling complexity are somehow inversely related and at best can only achieve compromises with one another - the complexity is actually a huge part of the brute physicality for me!)

Personally, I'm not sure I buy the idea that it's the unconsciously perceived elements that are important, since surely we're talking about consciousness, and our conscious reltionship to music, and even if they were, why that would be any different in orchestral disco or happy hardcore than in minimal techno.

As someone interested in both repetetive dance music and "mysticism", I have to say I'm also very sceptical that any kind of activity such as meditation, dancing or whatever, let alone any particularly favoured musical subgenre, has any special relationship to "higher" states of consciousness.

Whereas with e.g. the Eulberg track, it's actually very self-consciously messy, it wants you to wonder whether maybe too much is going on and will the track be able to hold it together for the length of its (considerable) duration. Ronan mentioned DFA I think and that's a good reference point, it's structured exactly like "Beat Connection"!

"This is perhaps one reason why this music is dance music - you are so in the middle that your body joins with your mind. The best dance music is at once infectiously danceable and intellectually involved - in fact there's hardly any around like that but you know it when you hear it. Because it isn't self-consciously intellectual it is passionate, and because it's so intense it has to be crafted subtly to bring out the nuances of emotion. The central image of the Tao is the yin/yang. The intensity comes from a dynamic interplay of the ying and yang, dark and light. Dance music that is too yang tends to sound cheesy, whereas when it's too ying it just sounds too adolescently moody. The best stuff has this kind of interplay, where the effect is uplifting but intense - there's a kind of ambiguity in there that gives the music terrific dynamic power."

But the repetition is also for sheer pleasure, as this type of unblocked awareness enables a relaxed view of life without psychological striving and straining. For the truth in practice is different to what you might think in theory - living in the moment does not blank your mind but frees it up completely to function fully at all levels.

i.e. listening less, but hearing more (IMO). This is contrary to Geeta's take -- lowering my concentration level allows the music to swoop in and connect with me in a way that wouldn't be possible if I was trying to listen to every nuance of it. It's sort of like those 3D paintings where you're supposed to relax your eyes and try to focus beyond the painting in order for the spaceship to jump out of the canvas. If you work too hard at trying to see it then you won't see a thing.

And yes your mind is already your body, but the article is stating how this connection between the intellectual (mind) and physical (body) can be heightened/synergized when you are dancing in a club. This ties in with the ying/yang theory. I agree, there are tons of genius records that are totally unbalanced, but the effect, the impact the track makes when it coats your ears should be mostly the same: it stimulates your head as well as your body. I think all people feel at least *some* of this duality when they are enjoying a dj, whether they are analyzing the "intense aesthetic appreciation of the moment," or just going wild to a Tiesto set.

Mind In Rewind - I agree with your listening less idea but I think it can come full circle with Geeta's notion too. Part of what I love about House/Techno so much is the "clear-headed" effect, where the repetition comforts your mind to a base level where you don't have to think or concentrate so much because you know got the loop/kick drum/drone to anchor on to. But therin lies the sneakiness, as the article states:

Dance music was the discovery that you can have music that actually sounds interior, that sounds like it grows from within. The way (possibly the only way?) something can be interior itself and create that inside-ness in the listener is by drawing the listener in, by seduction, by repetition.

So it sort of draws you in, teases you, hints at its true nature. There undoubtedly will be hundreds of tracks engaging you positively and negatively, and once you make this step to move closer to or further away from the track, it's the start of the thinking/analysis process again.

Schoenberg's or Boulez's critics quite properly complained
that it was impossible by ordinary means of appreciation to
recognize the submerged order of serialization.
Serialization directly attacks all conscious means of
continuity. These critics missed the essential point that
serialism meant to defeat conscious powers of
appreciation. Here is a case of the intellect turning
against itself. Hence the composer and listener have to take
recourse to undifferentiated visualization
which can hold the complex serial structure of the possible
permutations in a single glance.

But if you want a high post count to give the impression that your thread is a success, you have to do at least half of the work yourself. That's my little trade secret I will pass on to you. Because we're the same, you and me. We got to look out for one another.

see also: some colorful photocopies of mao & campbell soup

From Dan Sutera's article on Joh Wren-Lewis:

"My first realization after the accident was that nature did not involve suffering at all, it was only the human mind that was out of step with natural consciousness," explained John. "Human consciousness is unaware of the unconditional love of the universe!" John is now aware of that love but says that he spends only about 50% of his day in eternity consciousness, since concentration of any kind causes the eternal, or the 'Dazzling Dark,' to temporarily recede. He is working towards perpetual eternity consciousness, and though some gurus have claimed to have reached it, he doubts if it is possible. John experiences two types of regressions into normal consciousness: the first he calls a 'slip-out,' which happens once or twice a week; the second he calls 'screening.' When John needs to concentrate on something, the Dazzling Dark is pushed to the background, and the 'role' of John Wren-Lewis takes the attention on the forefront of his mind. He used the metaphor of a camera shutter closing briefly then re-opening so he can see the world 'correctly' (in eternity consciousness) again. Occasionally, the camera shutter gets 'stuck,' and this results in the slip-out. But he falls back into Enlightenment as soon as he remembers the Dazzling Dark, and no harm is done.

The other kind of regression, screening, is a more extreme slip-out -- the shutter closes, and John cannot relocate the Dark. This has happened to him only a couple of times, and it has always been associated with severe physical or emotional pain. John describes the time when he is apart from eternity as his own 'dark night of the soul.' "

Susan Blackmore:

"I found that the confusion of ordinary awareness can be dropped, or let go, and clarity is simply there. It is not something to be sought or obtained."

Personally I feel that clear awareness is the meta-state that underlies all consciousness. For quite a long period I was often in that state (although I'm contradicting myself as I agree with the belief that there is no difference between this meta-state and any other state). Anyway my belief is that any kind of practice such as meditation or dancing to techno or whatever, though it may have some results, is more likely, especially over time, to lead to a conditioned awareness, and not to clear awareness.

But I was largely lead to "clear awareness" intitially by going out dancing to house and techno while under the influence of MDMA or LSD.

But in terms of unusual, altered states of consciousness where you are "inside the music", once when Simon Caldwel was DJing at the old Sublime in Pitt Street here in Sydney, I was dancing on ecstasy to this house track with a choir of ethereal female disco vocals and (although its hard to remember the details of the experience after so many years) my body, and the dancefloor, literally completely disappeared so that there was only the music and nothing else.

the mixes over here pretty much have it all

thats exactly how trance (the state not the music) works for me, and its unbelievable how drugs can get in the way of that! its impossible to lower your attention level when youre on speed or e (or even weed, sometimes). i think the "feeling the music yet noticing all the details" thing has more to do with euphoria, and that trance and euphoria are polar opposites, vanishing vs becoming everything, imploding vs exploding

Olga + Jozef - Late Wedding Repetitives - B1

(Discogs link

I had been getting a bit bored with Jeff Mills/Robert Hood 4/4 minimalism and was looking for something a little more ... intricate. I found this record, went mental for it, and went on a binge looking for other records that were this jagged and irregular.

This demands to be heard on vinyl (the mp3 transfer doesn't really do it justice).

i was just coming here to post pretty much the same thing after meditating on this thread for awhile and it's based on personal experience with dancing where i find i have the best time when i just surrender and let go of everything else. no thinking except for the rudimentary stuff like people around me and when even that goes, then i'm really locked in. i've even had this experience when dancing really closely with someone else and when that happens and you're locked together like that it's just indescribably nice. it's not even heightened awareness; it's more like distributed consciousness or like being simultaneously lost and found. i agree that drugs can ruin it, too, but sometimes you're after something different.

-- Julio Desouza

Yes, that sounds right. Or, you could say you point your ears at the music and just wait indefinitely, as a mode of listening. According to Ehrenzweig this allows you to hear the parallel and serial structures simultaneously, with nothing left out, and thereby all contradictions find their place within the auditory field as a part of the total auditory field.

***

Are you still interested in music that merges techno with metal? When you refer to "complex polyrhythms", are you thinking of the rapid-fire drumming of black metal?

--MindInRewind

The electonic metal thing: I'm still interested in that, and pursuing it actively in my band. Stylistically the black side of what we're doing is merging more with a doomy/boogy kind of thing on the drums than the rapid fire thing. I have tried the rapid fire thing on the drums and it seems that there's a bit of a knack to it - it's not as easy as it sounds. One key aspect of the process appears to be that, as Fenriz said once (I paraphrase): 'the drums are not so important, they are just there'. Have you noticed how quiet and clicky the blastbeats are in the mix on many black metal recordings? There appears to be a reason for that - you make them loud and very little else can be heard. This would be appear to be a problem for adapting blastbeats for the dancefloor. I think psychedelic ultra hardcore gabba might be the trick for grasping a useable method here.

Incidentally I wouldn't personally call blastbeats polyrhythmic - I am not sure about my definitions here but I understand polyrhythms to be overlaid patterns that follow different metres, eg 7/4 over 4/4 etc.

Once the rhythms become that complex, "beatmatching" is no longer a useful recourse, is it? Beatmatching allows a DJ to seamlessly flow from one like-sounding rhythm to another, for hours on end. What's the point of doing this with two rhythms that are nothing alike?*

--MindInRewind

Hmmm,possibly, though not necessarily.... Because 4/4 can remain the common denominator, there is no reason why dancers need be alientated or that the music be hard to mix - in principle, 4/4 patterns could underlie polyrhythmic rhythm overlays as a reference point, while polyrhythmic percussion goes wild over the top. I think that would be easy to beatmatch.

I am imagining a much more percussive kind of DJ set, one that has a sort of Haitian drumming feel about it. Not too many melodies, if any, but plenty of tonal percussion and interesting, fuzzy textures that create a magical feeling.

Yet, Moley & Jacob's comments have stuck in my brain like troublesome little thorns somehow. Still grappling with those. Hmmm.

Oh well, at least I know what I was trying to get at. The Wignomy Bros are fun though! I guess being German they know how to stop before heading into wacky/'crazy'/novelty territory perhaps. Mind you in helps not inviting rock & beer dudes to the party...

Minimise to maximise

I need help!

About a year and a half ago, I spent a few months in Berlin. Since coming back I've been dying to hear more of the stuff that was played in the clubs there (bar 25, watergate, etc). It was a minimal techno thing, but everything I've found since is NOT MINIMAL ENOUGH! I can't really even properly describe what I mean...everything either has vocals or some sort of theme or goal or...i'm not making sense. I want a beat and some bloops and bleeps and nothing else.

The closest thing I've found to it has been jürgen paape or gui boratto, which I love, but it's still NOT hitting it on the head.

Here's an example, one of the only I've been able to find, which features a really unbearable-to-watch dude in a stripey polo, from youtube:

hope this wasn't too vague or confusing!

you want ... music from a year and a half ago

I was in Berlin a year and half ago, and they were playing exactly that sort of music at a Poker Flat Recordings night. So you might want investigate stuff on that label. I know Steve Bug, the head of Poker Flat Recordings does gre

(Whoops, sorry for that.)

I know Steve Bug, the head of Poker Flat Recordings does great stuff in this vein, so you might start from him:

gui boratto?

ok lol at the polo dude

That live snippet is so action-packed: crazy polo guy! shots behind the decks!

Anyway:

By the way, back in the late 90s, when I still hadn't heard anyone speak of microhouse or minimal house as a genre, some local DJs were playing stuff called "monotrack". Unfortunately I never caught any artist names, but "monotrack" was basically just simple beats combined with minimalist bleeps and bloops, thought it lacked the dub effects and other "deep" elements that characterize later minimal house/techno. I wonder if "monotrack" was purely a Finnish phenomenon, or if it was going on somewhere else too?

Was it kind of like Daniel Bell/DBX?

I've never heard of Daniel Bell before, but this does come pretty close to what it was like:

I think "monotrack" was much influenced by Panasonic and other early Sähkö Records stuff, so it could've been largely a Finnish phenomenon.

I guess the main difference between monotrack and minimal house is that monotrack was/is harsher and starker and less deep. Kinda like Emmanuel Top's mid-nineties material, but even more minimal and less 303-oriented.

Or like Studio 1/Profan etc?

Kinda like that, yeah. I guess early Panasonic/Pan Sonic is the best example of this.

re: Monotrack: like Kim Rapatti & Dum? (also Finnish, no?)
Your description also reminds me a little of TD5's stuff on Truck and Plug Research (though maybe it was more just straight-up loopy hard techno, I don't really recall).

Kim Rapatti also goes by the name Mono Junk, right? Yeah, he's Finnish, actually I think Mono Junk was one of the acts that played in those 90s monotrack clubs.

yeah, Mono Junk, that's the name i was trying to remember...

can someone recommend me a quintessential/classic minimal techno comp plz? like an equivalent of 'bangs and works' for juke but for mnml.

michael mayer - fabric 13
kiki - boogybytes vol 1

Depends on definition of "minimal techno".

First wave minimal techno - Jeff Mills Live @ the Liquid Room

Microhouse - The Button Down Mind of Dan Bell, Michael Mayer's 'Immer', Triple R's 'Friends'

2005 mnml - Andre Galuzzi's 'Berghain', Dominik Eulberg's 'Kreucht & Fleucht'

i can't believe i never heard kreucht & fleucht

FliederLieder - Tobi Neumann
Pass You Bedtime - Tobi Neumann
Hypercity - Andrew Weatherall
Luciano - Live at Weetamix
Luciano - Sci Fi Hi Fi

sorry it's Pass Your Bedtime..

http://gripewhine.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/can-of-worms.jpg

Superlongevity 2 - Zip
Cologne Summer - Dominic Chevalier

ok i think thats more than enough to be getting on with! thanks guys.

i love this!

https://i.discogs.com/C_l-xRenfQ_Weuv3NKKj3UouwRkrM1sWOJwaUFg1RNc/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:592/w:600/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTQ5Mjc0/LTEyNjcwMTU0Nzcu/anBlZw.jpeg

https://i.discogs.com/ifwpM6Om9FVx_HF9lVUzgxQA7nPsxl-xc-nyP9LHQ1o/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:477/w:600/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTQ5Mjc0/LTEyNjcwMTUyOTEu/anBlZw.jpeg

the whole thing is just kim rapatti. aka mono junk. aka dum label owner. single tracks and tracks just for this release. so cool. go finland. rocking me in 2024 in western mass on a very hot day.

I have that too. It's brilliant. When I bought I was kind of disappointed it didn't have some of his other work on there, in particular Channel B. I guess it was a label thing and Channel B was on Thomas Heckmann's Trope label.

This is great too, all Argentinian artists I think. Some parallels with Kompakt but generally a bit weirder..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRXCXZh3rSo