Minimal techno blowing up

T

tate

Brown Sugar
mms said:
nice innerview with ricky v
http://www.higher-frequency.com/e_interview/ricardo_villalobos02/index.htm

apparently his next album will be a loooong track on cd..
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Thanks for the link, mms - it's the famous interview that gek has mentioned a couple of times, where villalobos said that 'sound design ended with autechre two or three years ago.' Incidentally, Sieso and Ichso were two of my favorite tracks of the year. Both great for mixing and, yes, both quite long. Btw, is the long-rumored 30-minute track actually going to happen/has already happened, does anyone know?
 
C

childrentalking

Well-known member
it's 44 minutes long. pretty sure he played it all at Fabric last time... I've heard the second half a few times out now. seriously good 8am closing up business. it's called 'Zieheuer Fizheuer', believe it's coming out on Playhouse fairly soon (catalogue number assigned and everything).
 
Z

zhao

there are no accidents
my point exactly:

minimal techno makers and enthusiasts include:

bearded (sometimes overweight) slobs
skinny people in Prada
people in quasi modern-primitive gear
ravers
shirt and tie ironic or pseudo-corporate types
pale nerds in non descript dressed down clothing
people with strange lolapalooza haircuts (hawtin)
people that don't give a fuck any which way
and many, many others that look like they could be from another scene.

there is no cohesive image like electro-clash, which is instantly identifiable.

also there is no attitude which ties it all together like the irony and spite of electroclash - a vague and general snobbery is not NEARLY enough.
 
swears

swears

preppy-kei
I guess you are right, but stereotypes of scenes don't always include everybody in it. The press tend to hone in on one interesting clique and that becomes how the scene is perceived. A lot of people into electro in 98-99 were your general record collecting faux-B boy dance hipsters in combat pants, but nobody was interested in that image because it wasn't exclusive to the scene. When I used first started going out to Voodoo the Liverpool techno/electro club, before "Emerge" there were hardly any glam 80s throwbacks, but that exploded maybe a year later after the press hyped all the Gigolo stuff.
 
Landfill Elektronikz

Landfill Elektronikz

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gek-opel said:
Can I mention minimal scarves?
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i think a couple of ppl already have...?

so anyway, this week i have been mostly listenin to that new LP by Andy stott. It's about 50% really good, i reckon. not as hard as some of his 12" tracks might suggest, but still proper melodic techno album music, like they used to make when i were a lad. a bit worried by the piano mood-pieces, which are in a sort of Harold Budd zone but just a little too sugary sentimental, like there's a hint of Richard Clayderman. i like it better when he keeps the melodies simple. a couple of nice dubby halfstep flavas too, esp.'Blocked' which is like a not-too-distant relation of something like '7th Curse by' Headhunter.

nice length too - a 45 minute album where all the tracks stick around the 5 min mark. one of the things always bugged me in the old days was the excessive duration - so many tracks that simply didn't warrant being 8-10 minutes long. albums being 78 mins for the sake of it, etc.

nice whan Andy. not a classic, but still a nice step in the right direction. bravo!

am also listening to the Villalobos album 'Alcachofa' (yes, I know its about 3 years old, but i'm just catching-up, ok?!). really like that track called 'Dextor'. lovely melody.

ok, you can carry on now...:)
 
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Tim F

Well-known member
Swears is right: I don't think electroclash had the coherent scene-image it's being attributed here: most of the time when I went to a club or a bar playing electroclash it was typical slightly scuffy student types who were there - never any leather or make-up or anything, and certainly no cocaine!

The important thing here is not what people in the scene are <i>actually</i> like, but how the media portrays them. And if you read the dance magazines at the moment, minimal is portrayed in exactly the manner I described upthread, and that which is implied by any random picture of Ricardo Villalobos.
 
Landfill Elektronikz

Landfill Elektronikz

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Tim F said:
implied by any random picture of Ricardo Villalobos.
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Hrrrrm. I find it hard to reconcile the wanky pictures with the austere, sensitive music. i hate to say it, but i think i'm really comfortable with the idea of serious techno producers being bald, poker-faced nerds.

I haven't actually been to a techno club in years. i think my future relationship with it must, by necessity, take place between my turntables, my speakers and my ears. the reality of the 'scene' (whatever the hell that is) is best left to the imagination!
 
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T

tate

Brown Sugar
Nick Gutterbreakz said:
i think a couple of ppl already have...?
am also listening to the Villalobos album 'Alcachofa' (yes, I know its about 3 years old, but i'm just catching-up, ok?!). really like that track called 'Dextor'. lovely melody.
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Haha yep dexter is a lovely one, i always found it more melodically compelling than 'easy lee,' though easy lee seemed to be the one that people talked about more at the time. I love that moment on rv's mix taka taka when dexter comes in . . . like a breath, ethereal, gentle.

Though to be honest, if we are talking older villalobos, Hiereklon is the one I can never get over. from the au harem record. It just sounds amazing on a system, i played it out last saturday night, there are two different bass lines throughout, and though i was extremely skeptical about the nylon string guitar the first time that I heard the tune, he managed to make the guitar part work and work well, both rhythmically and harmonically. Which is a pretty amazing feat actually.
 
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gek-opel

entered apprentice
Is Hireklon the one that sounds like an acoustic Derek Bailey track played over gorgeously produced ergonomic plip plop? Thats brilliant... The rest of Au Harem kind of sags in comparison.
 
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Tim F

Well-known member
Don't sleep on "True To Myself" from <i>The Au'Harem...</i>.

Gutterbreakz, when Villalobos plays live he often mixes in a lot more upbeat and anthemic stuff alongside the minimal epics. Actually I find he has excellent taste in straight-up house, sometimes parts of his mixes bore me with their scrupulous minimalism but his conservative house choices are (funnily enough) always brilliant (his use of Kids in the Street's "Keep On Turning Around (Motorcitysoul Original Dub)" on his <i>Green & Blue</i> mix is a good example of this).
 
D

D84

Well-known member
That reminds me of when I saw Thomas Brinkmann last year in Sydney and he threw in C + C Music Factory's big song (Everybody Dance Now?), if memory serves.

This is an interesting thread.

How do the Berliners keep going for so long? (yes, drugs I know) Don't they have to work? Or is it really that cheap a place to live?

I'm afraid I've been consuming most of my dance-floor music lately via DJs at clubs/nights as I just don't have the money or space to keep collecting 12s at the moment. And I'm not sure where the minimal tracks end and the non-minimal ones begin, esp. as was said earlier in the thread that heard over a big sound-system it all sounds erm big. The better local DJs usually mix it up with house, electro, funk, whatever.

The exception of course is Richie Hawtin, whose set was easily identifiable as "minimal" - very dry in parts and interesting but the night wasn't a party per se: people were there for the music.

Also "minimal" for me is what happens at some of the (not so well organized) techno parties where once the name o/s DJ finishes his set and the crowd dissipates and the remaining local DJs play their favourite old Jeff Mills, Hawtin, Surgeon and Ben Sims style tracks: ie. time to leave!
 
T

tate

Brown Sugar
Tim F said:
Don't sleep on "True To Myself" from <i>The Au'Harem...</i>.
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No you're right, I always forget how much I like the rest of the record until I go back and listen again. Miami definitely, not so much True to Myself b/c the vocal scat-like melody thing wears a bit thin after a few listens (for me anyway). But yeah, I've always really respected the fact that rv makes tracks that many people find a bit of a slog to get through. I like Serpentin too, for example, until that key change at four and a half, which grates on my ears. And to answer my own question posed earlier (thanks, ILM, smile), I guess he's playing the 44-minute track out now. I really enjoyed the interview linked above by mms, btw. A few really insightful things in there.
 
C

childrentalking

Well-known member
you can hear 20 minutes of 'Zieheuer Fizheuer' at the very end of his Awakenings set from July 2006, which is well worth tracking down, even if the sound quality leaves a lot to be desired. does some very clever things with the levels of the horns which just don't come across on the live recording. (note: there are mp3s from previous years about too)
 
M

mms

sometimes
isn't the dance genre most likely to blow up the whole ed banger 'french touch' scene, they look indieish, say they dont really like dance, lots of post windowlicker edits, lots of midrange aggro basslines, more melody, it's about the only thing nme push that's actually dance in their neo rave invention too. some of it's great , the oizo single nazi's is amazing,the justice mix standing way out, and he's just done a mix of jamelia of all people ..
 
swears

swears

preppy-kei
mms said:
isn't the dance genre most likely to blow up the whole ed banger 'french touch' scene, they look indieish, say they dont really like dance, lots of post windowlicker edits, lots of midrange aggro basslines, more melody, it's about the only thing nme push that's actually dance in their neo rave invention too. some of it's great , the oizo single nazi's is amazing,the justice mix standing way out, and he's just done a mix of jamelia of all people ..
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I like all this stuff too. I think the Super Discount 2 compilation heralded a new, harder slightly more electro-ish (for want of a better word) sound five years after the filtered disco of volume 1. And Mr Oizo is has been putting out good stuff for ages.
Justice? They're okay I guess. The big tune of this whole electro-house thing at the moment is Smash TV's "Yellow Asteroids". There's quite a lot of crossover with minimal, you could do a set with both styles in there, easily.
 
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