Minimal techno

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Minimal techno, a minimalist sub-genre of Techno music, is characterized by a stripped-down, glitchy sound, simple 4/4 beats (usually around 120-135 BPM), repetition of short loops, and subtle changes.

Related styles include Detroit Techno, ambient techno, microhouse and tech house.

[edit] Style

Minimal techno is often atonal, featuring consonant harmony. Melodies, when present, are usually short loops of one or two bars, and emphasis is put on creating layers of unique sounds. Musical development is achieved mostly by adding or removing instruments (sounds) on eight-bar phrase boundaries and adjusting sound effects. Music created under this genre can range from melodic beautiful harmonies with a prominent bass line, to glitchy, unstructured, disjointed sounds which are unified to create an organised new track.

In recent years, the genre has taken great influence from, to the point of merging with the microhouse genre. It has also fragmented into a great number of difficult to categorize subgenres, equally claimed by the minimal techno and microhouse tags.

Minimal techno has found mainstream club popularity since 2004 in such places as Germany, The Netherlands, Spain, North Italy and the UK with DJs from a wide variety of genres incorporating differing elements of its tones.

By the second half of 2006, the term 'minimal' had in many ways become contradictory, as it serves as a denominator for the tech house sounds of the moment, many of which should rather be coined as 'maximal' in terms of their sonic content, in contrast to the original stripped down, i.e. minimalist electronic genre.

[edit] Artists

Notable artists include Ezekiel Honig, Daniel Bell, Richie Hawtin (a.k.a. Plastikman), Ricardo Villalobos, Robert Hood, Basic Channel, Wolfgang Voigt, Mika Vainio, Maurizio, Thomas Brinkmann, Jeff Milligan, Steve Bug, Luciano (Lucien Nicolet), Sleeparchive (Roger Semsroth), Sutekh (Seth Horvitz) and g-man (Gez Varley). Some record labels specializing in minimal techno are M_nus, Foundsound, Force Inc, Traum Schallplatten, Kompakt, Perlon, Cadenza, Poker Flat, Revolver Canada and Sähkö Recordings.

[edit] External links

Minimal Techno Forums
mnml.nl - international minimal house/techno orientated website
Technowar - Techno Music Portal Wildwide – the freshest news about the techno music, new substyles, international articles.
Nightsystem.com// A French webzine with playlists, interviews, night reports, mixes and suggested parties in Paris and London
Minimallondon // deep and minimal dancefloor orientated music in London
Medellinstyle.com La Comunidad Electrónica más Grande de Colombia (Electronic People Colombia)
http://www.minimal.ca/ - based out of toronto
http://www.mutek.ca/ - the premiere experimental, digital media, and minimal electronica music festival based in montreal

Techno
Acid - Detroit - 4-beat - Gabber - Ghettotech - Hardcore - Happy hardcore - Minimal - Nortec - Rave - Schranz - Tech house
Other electronic music genres
Ambient \| Breakbeat \| Dance \| Drum and bass \| Electronica \| Electronic art music \| Hard dance \| Hardcore \| House \| Industrial \| Synthpop \| Techno \| Trance