Minimal

Style

Minimal is merely a style of techno like Detroit or progressive whose origins are found in the 1980s.While most producers of techno were found in the U.S., in the 1990's the style of music was popularized in the U.S and U.K and has remained a constant style of techno.[citation needed][clarify] Many Minimal techno works feature consonant harmony, but most lack functional chord progression, sometimes to the point of seeming atonal. 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.

Development

Minimal techno, like most contemporary electronic dance music, has its roots in the landmark works of pioneers such as Kraftwerk and Detroit Techno's Derrick May and Juan Atkins, all of whom worked in a relatively pared-down style. Minimalist composers, including Steve Reich and Philip Glass also influenced the development of electronic music in the 1980s and 1990s. Minimal techno focuses on "rhythm and repetition instead of melody and linear progression", much like classical minimalist music and the polyrhythmic African musical tradition that helped inspire it, a connection exemplified by Richie Hawtin's "Afrika". By 1994, according to critic Philip Sherburne, the term "minimal" was in use to describe "any stripped-down, Acidic derivative of classic Detroit style." 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.