The Nameless Evil
I responded to a comment by Clint on this thread by saying:
“It’s funny to have a chart with Einmaleins, Mobilee and Vakant all there, the three “height of minimal” labels for me, but despite all the criticism for the sound, are those three releasing bad music now? Not to my ears.”
While there’s no doubt that those three labels aren’t at the centre of the same hype they were, they’re putting out good music that seems beyond just being “minimal”. This gets me thinking. When I think of awful clicky minimal the only label I can really indict is M_nus. There must be tons of other labels doing it but I have no idea who they are.
For instance now that I’m in London I find you can end up at a “crap minimal” (TM) night very easily. You can end up at one in Fabric, or an even worse one somewhere else. You know, the nights where you think the next day “what was the point of any of that music?”. When I go out and hear terrible minimal or terrible dance music I tend not to know a single track, and I don’t mean that as a boast, I suspect that’s true for lots of people. I think it’s always a bit like this with dance music, the amount of unknown awfulness out there is really beyond belief.
And the stuff you don’t know or don’t have a name for is probably the worst of all, the truly disposable dreck that’s mashed together for hours on end at some awful club night. It’s a bit like being at Glastonbury and hearing music that actually has no identity whatsoever, that’s just some lost collection of Goa-Trance or something. For me this is hard to endure, the sheer boredom and futility of a club where the music means nothing to you, good or bad.
For whatever reason there seems to be a minimal scene that’s akin to those sort of psy-trance nights, I guess like the way you have blog house nights where the tunes are made by all the DJs. Maybe the divide between big names and no names has become a bit blurred by this.
People often lament the amount of music out there, saying it makes it easy to be a DJ. But as I’ve no doubt said before the problem is more that it makes it easy to be a bad DJ. Of course it’s a matter of taste, there’s no definitively bad music, but by bad DJ here I mean somebody who plays a lot of that stuff on Beatport that nobody will ever argue about or recommend.
You know, those endless singles that seem to just hit the water and sink. There are so many of them, like blank newspapers. As I say, you can’t scientifically prove they’re worth any more or any less than any other release, but perhaps it’s okay to suggest that nobody anywhere is indicting or praising these records. Nobody knows what they are!
Truly bad dance music is that which is so worthless and boring that it always escape specific indictment.
Onirik wrote:
I agree with you that the minimal “hype” has amplified the number of “i’ll never remember this” releases. However there are a lot of good “minimal” releases out there as your last (very good) chart proves it. I don’t wanna go back to the neverending debate on minimal. As always hype is a threat to the music.
I don’t really agree on your view of M_nus. It is true that they have quite a few “clicking” type of minimal releases on their catalogue. Nevertheless M_nus has put out some brilliant records, just think of Decompression, Baby Kate, Horse Nation, Seeing through Shadows or in a more banging way Bay of Figs. Ok, recently it was a bit more quiet and honestly all this Kube stuff makes laugh more than anything else, but still, there’s more than a click for me.
Posted 05 Sep 2008 at 2:19 pm ¶
Ronan wrote:
nah I agree with that, M_nus has had good releases for sure….
and I don’t even think it’s minimal creating more bad music, it’s just that people have wider choices to make when buying music now….and there are more DJs too.
Posted 05 Sep 2008 at 2:21 pm ¶
Ciaran wrote:
“what was the point of any of that music?”
Had a fair few of those nights, serious soul searching in the morning. lol.
Posted 05 Sep 2008 at 3:34 pm ¶
sam wrote:
Actually there are a lot of “i’ll never remember this” releases in that deep house and bongo/conga style of music…
Posted 05 Sep 2008 at 6:45 pm ¶
sam wrote:
In 5 years some M-nus release will still be classic. I am not sure about Oslo/8 bit/Below etc… releases
Posted 05 Sep 2008 at 6:47 pm ¶
Ciaran wrote:
Possibly but that’s if your into it or not. Personally it’s the simple groove I love and have done for years but I understand for others it’s plain boring. Goes for most people I would imagine.
Posted 05 Sep 2008 at 7:42 pm ¶
Ronan wrote:
I certainly don’t expect people to be lauding Oslo from the mountain tops in five years….but then I don’t place all my value in “will people be praising this in five years”, never have.
Mind you I don’t think M_nus releases will necessarily be top of the pile either.
In any case who do you mean will/won’t be doing this future praising?
“Actually there are a lot of “i’ll never remember this” releases in that deep house and bongo/conga style of music…”
Also to be fair what I singled out as a mark of truly bad records was a lack of discourse/debate in either direction, which M_nus is excluded from obviously.
Posted 05 Sep 2008 at 8:12 pm ¶
Onirik wrote:
orbitalife is already one future classic for Oslo
Posted 05 Sep 2008 at 8:16 pm ¶
Onirik wrote:
and Manipulation too…already 2 out of 9 releases
Posted 05 Sep 2008 at 8:18 pm ¶
Ronan wrote:
the argument could go on all day really…..what is and isn’t going to be remembered.
ultimately the personal is more important, if you like a record a lot, you’ll remember it yourself.
this is the joy of dance music for me, sharing records with friends and knowing they can become more than the sum of their parts because of shared memories/significance….
in 5 years I might be bald with a wife and kids…..I’m sure I’ll still listen to electronic music but I won’t care what some far flung tastemakers in the washington state capital are saying about Oslo or M_nus!
sincerely,
John McCain techno critic
Posted 05 Sep 2008 at 8:22 pm ¶
mind at large wrote:
olympia is the capitol of washington state.
john mccain will reside in the district of columbia when he and that dumb cunt win the election. (i have no faith in my people)
Posted 07 Sep 2008 at 4:44 pm ¶
ralphy wrote:
agh come on people, surely be to god john mcain loves melodic techy trancey deep neo detroit house? sure its it all the rage in alaska at the moment, no?
Posted 07 Sep 2008 at 11:40 pm ¶
Jacob wrote:
Anyway Trapez is the most guilty of releasing truckloads of anonymous bobbins.
Posted 09 Sep 2008 at 3:08 am ¶
Ronan wrote:
I dunno, some people actually play Trapez stuff to be fair…it seems harsh to lump them in with completely faceless music.
Posted 09 Sep 2008 at 12:14 pm ¶
Anders wrote:
Please, can someone name 10 completely faceless minimal releases? I’m actually really curious about those.
Ok, perhaps not as it’s not very polite to call a release faceless without providing a deeper analysis. But to be honest, I really would like to know the name of the labels and artists who are releasing those records. Everyone seems to be talking about “the majority of all releases” being crap, but I rarely see anyone giving examples.
However, it does perhaps lie in its nature not to know those titles since the records are, well, faceless and you didn’t mind to remeber it.
But really…I actually would like to know
Posted 10 Sep 2008 at 7:06 pm ¶
Ronan wrote:
nah anders you’re completely right…I mean literally anonymous labels, the ones nobody ever mentions that litter beatport….
they barely deserve a genre name
Posted 10 Sep 2008 at 11:06 pm ¶
Synik wrote:
I suppose the underlying point is that, subjectively, there’s a lot of music out there that seems disconnected from the roots of what house and techno stood for - creatively and philosophically.
While everyone here is clever enough not to pointlessly argue why some music is BAD I think its more that a great multitude of people would agree that what’s available and what is ultimately being delivered by less discerning DJs seems to fail at both being timeless OR providing a fun ‘moment’ in an evening out - and that’s a tragedy.
Bring on the disposable stuff that blows up a dancefloor as much as the next Carl Craig remix that we’ll all be enjoying for years on end.
Posted 15 Sep 2008 at 10:53 am ¶