yeah thats part of the whole hilarious thing in berlin, for me when i was there i had this sense, that, however fanciful and imaginary this may seem, that this music is the sound of the europe intellect finding a groove, and most of the stuff you here is just dry, , completely mnl, completely empty and repressed, rigid and stark and barren as humboldt university professors sex life..
but then you know you get those moments where there is all this machinic repetitiveness and discpline and germanness and so on and then there is this warm synth thats just giving it so much water and so much life and so much feeling that it just sounds like the human heart is making up for all that intellectual stupidity and the whole thing just coming into this beautiful union.. and, you know, thats usually when the kick goes out for 16 bars and everything starts to come together and when the track kicks in again the whole thing gets not just divine but sexy in the bodies truest sense
then your like yeah this music is great, and you hear all the aesthetic qualities that have developed in this music over the past 10 years or so, mille plateaux's depth and abstraction, chain reaction and basic channel etc etc, and you think, yeah fuck this is some truly amazing shit... so why are all these mnl jerks over here onto a different trip? Party culture is always like that, usually the majority of people will miss out on the true beauty of whats happening and give more energy to, say, the animalistic urges of getting fucked up, for instance. Then it just takes some jerk dj to come along and 'give the people what they want', project a big definintion of what he THINKS the music is, then it just fucks the whole operation up and it turns to shit and parties become meat-markets again.
But in short, i always described minimal, at least what i thought it was, as very emotional, very intimate, and very sexy - and in a very intricate and personal way. Of course, this is only about 10% or im sure much much less of what this 'scene' has become.
And like i said, its always mass psychology and psychic warfare between scenesters who want to take a collective thing and get people to align with their definition of it and thus make them the star of the show. Culture is never a 'thing', never can be definined or captured. Its a living process - and when this truth is really meditated on, perhaps all of our issues will find their answer.