Do you know your handbag house from your Eurotrash from your Detroit techno from your twinkle prog?
Ishkur seems to, and having read this intro on openculture.com, I dipped into his scalable, chronological map of electronic music genres and was entertained and educated by his sweary, jokey, informative guides to different micro genres.
Maybe you might be too? Go on, have a go – even the FUQ* is fun.
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*Frequently Unasked Questions
One of the less filthy genre descriptions (most are very rude and insulting)
genre: Minimalism
also: Minimal music
scene: Pioneers
emergence: late 60s
Minimalism (not to be confused with the art movement Minimalism and only a specious relationship with Minimal Techno, Minimal Tech, or Minimal Prog) is the savant of music.
If Musique Concrete was the random, atonal, unrhythmic explorations of new recording technologies, Minimalism was its polar opposite: Real instruments in little phrases and iterations, looping incessantly, ceaselessly, without end, like an autistic child rocking back and forth or like a raver with their eyes rolled in the back of their head swaying to and fro.
The real genius of Minimalism is its gradual drifting into new phrases and patterns slowly over time, so slowly that you may not notice it. Despite being basic and repetitive Minimalism is a genre that challenges you to pay attention and rewards you for it.
Technically Minimalism is the aesthetic godfather of all electronic music. It introduces structure, rhythm, timbre, and an earnest repetitiveness that is offputting to anyone not used to music that doesn’t fit the verse-bridge-chorus template. Even today, 50 years later, Techno and Tech House are still adhering to the basic theories introduced by Minimalism, and are filling clubs and festivals with it. We all love hypnotic, repetitive music. That’s what makes it music.
Minimalism is more famous than you might think. It serves as excellent existential mood music, as in the wordless art documentaries of Godfrey Reggio and Ron Fricke:
If it sounds familiar, it’s Doctor Manhattan’s origin story in Watchmen. And Hans Zimmer ripped it off for Interstellar.
Minimalism represents order, structure, progression, anticipation. The counter to that — those that hate Minimalism and repetition — is chaos, unpredictability, randomness. There is nothing wrong with wanting that in your music but generally people don’t like it and will never like it and I’ll tell you why.
Human anxiety comes from trepidation about the future. We are hard-wired to anticipate future events and one of the strongest human fears is uncertainty about what happens next. When things change, it is a common tendency to resist these changes. We cannot anticipate the dangers the changes may bring us. We develop false positives — superstitions — in an attempt to bring order to chaos, because what we can control cannot hurt us.
(This explains also the popularity of gambling: It taps into the underlying thrill of not being able to predict the outcome. Like horror movies and roller coasters, we enjoy indulging our fears on a superficial level)
Minimalism is a gift from evolution for the aggressive pattern-seeker species. We enjoy Minimalism and we don’t know why, and that is because the alternative invites suffering, misery, confusion, and death.
Ish.
All species are pattern seekers. That’s how they survive.
Thanks for that.
Good stuff. Is progressive rock not electronic? I was looking forward to the piss getting ripped from it by someone who is genuinely funny and insightful. (I’m not being ironic.)
I think, although prog, acid and r&b are terms mentioned, they refer to genres of dance music, not rock music.
Very entertaining stuff. I imagine I could spend quite a while browsing around this.
Makes me think nostalgically of our old AW colleague, PoppySucceeds. She really knew her electronic onions.
Seconded. I hope you are well, wherever you are @Poppy-Succeeds!
The Electronic Onions. Great band. What happened to them?
As a band, they were a’peeling, but they called it a day – “That’s shallot”, they said as they left the stage for the final time, after playing a cover of Fast and Bulbous.
For some reason, I thought@Leicester-Bangs was her new nom-de-plume.
Oh my, Sal. This is a tremendous discovery! I will lose hours to this site.
Excellent! Bring back anything you find that’s worth posting. I think I oversold the scurrilousness and swearing. Having read a few more of his articles on genres – house, techno, garage, noise, industrial, etc – there seems too be more serious history, explanation and critique, than flip, disposable oneliners – I’m learning quite a lot. Plus, every article comes with a helpful soundtrack to bring the words to life more.