Minimal RIP?

For the first time in my life, I end up agreeing with one of the Guardian's music blog posts . Minimal is indeed dying a slow and painful death (hang on, wasn't this the same newspaper that finally got cosy with minimal only late last year?), but I wouldn't be so convinced about the albums by Schneider, Dinky and Czubla or what it is replacing minimal. I find Jonny D's music to be very sterile, not that well produced or imaginative, more like a poor copy of US house, and I don't mean to single him out either: most of the house records that are meant to be putting some soul back on the dance floor are most notable by their blandness. If minimal has had a positive effect it is that it by default exposed people to great producers like Dan Bell and Rob Hood and paved the way for a new wave of tougher techno from the Hardwax/Berghain stables. It even, as the author posits, inadvertently renewed interest in all things dubby, which in the main is a good thing -  so let's toast it for these achievements as its corpse stiffens...

Comments

[tom/pipecock]

"most of the house records that are meant to be putting some soul back on the dance floor are most notable by their blandness."

seriously! there is so much of this going around that it really isn't so different from the days when mnml was more prevalent. there have been a couple new Euro/UK guys making some nice stuff (i like Lerosa, Andy Ash, Juju & Jordash, and a couple others as well) but by and large the music seems to be just as dull despite the producers giving props to better artists. i'm not sure what to think about the whole thing, mainly i just ignore it as much as possible.

[chrisdisco]

what i find remarkable about that article/post is how behind the times it is... mnml is dead as a creative force? umm. no shit. that has been pretty obvious. and the deep house lite trend that has replaced it has already been around for quite some time. completely agree with jonny D. if you want real deep house, go to move D, not jonny. there is a shift in sounds going on at the moment but this has been happening for quite some time. basically that guardian post really irritated me. a pointless exercise in the obvious.

[Steve]

I don't think minimal has died so much as become a touch less anorexic. Sure, there's been a return to melody in house, but even that's been dried out and reduced to a single piano line or a droning Rhodes (this trick is the most overused).

[Sam]

I salute minimal for bringing an end to the hard techno trend of the late 90's.

But yeah it's pretty much turned to shit now. And the majority of the deep house revivalism stuff bores me to tears. There's still some great stuff coming out of course. I've been loving Peter Dundov's 'Oasis' track from this year.

[tom/pipecock]

didn't the "microhouse" thing sort of beat mnml to the punch of killing off the banging techno trend? i mean, at least in the banging techno realm there were some people i really liked. in microhouse and then mnml (the more i think about it, the more the equation seems to be microhouse+proghouse=mnml) there really wasnt much of shit i was into at all. believe me, i was sick of how pervasive bangers were becoming and i guess if nothing else the movements since were good for bringing the average BPM of records way down, but they were not emotionally satisfying.