ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you,
Carol and Herbert, my parents, for everything. Thomas, brother from another mother and Maria, sister from another mister. Luis, for inspiration and endlessly good advice. Hans, Paddy, Romain, Nina and Syrta, for dancing with me and putting up with my philosophising on dancefloors. Jari, for the mnml cover design. Shinozaki, for translating the Japanese train conductor in Villalobos’ ‘Samasai’.
Dancing is the loftiest, the most moving, the most beautiful of the arts, because it is no mere translation or abstraction from life; it is life itself.
Havelock Ellis, The Dance of Life, 1923
Table of Contents
Chapter 1. Introduction 4 Chapter 2. Minimalism in house and techno 17 Chapter 3. Embodied listening 41 Chapter 4. Affect and Process as EDM listening methodologies 61 4.1 An expanded reading of Hemment’s Deleuzian Affect and Individuation 64 4.2 Whitehead’s process as method for understanding the ‘surface image of difference’ 76 Chapter 5. Facilitation of the ‘surface difference’ in the ‘groove’: minimal EDM’s structural devices and sonic grain 96 Chapter 6. Case study of Ricardo Villalobos’ musical oeuvre 114 6.1 Ricardo Villalobos Profile and Aesthetic Approach 116 6.2 Affect and Process Analysis: Villalobos’ pressurising rhythm through the use of human voice and other material means 127 6.3 Incomplete tension cycles, punctures of rhythmic surface and the engendering of rhythmic multiplicity: Villalobos’ DJ sets 144 Chapter 7. Conclusion 161 Bibliography 176 Videography 182 Full Discography of Musical Works Cited 183Chapter 1. Introduction
“[...] in preserving sound as material trace, recording created an artefact that is available to be reworked, and so a second order domain of sonic transformations. Envisaged as a means of storing and documenting audible events, the tradition of recording inaugurated by the phonograph ruptured the metaphysics of sonic presence and opened up the interstitial space of copies and recordings. This opened the door to a new kind of music making, one based in a foregrounding of interference [...] a plastic art
working within and through the grain of the machine. This has persisted through a path of increasing abstraction, from grooves cut in cylinder or disc, through the magnetic imprint on tape, to strings of 0s and 1s, and can be discerned in everything from Cage’s rudimentary experiments with turntables, through musique concrete, the street phonography of hip hop, ‘versioning’ and the remix, to the real-time digital shaping of sound.” 1
1 Drew Hemment, “Affect and Individuation in Popular Electronic Music,” in Deleuze and Music , eds. Ian Buchanan and Marcel Swiboda (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), 80.
This dissertation concerns electronic dance music (EDM) and our durational perception of its sonic form. As a popular music EDM gained cultural footing in the late 1970s and early 1980s in the ‘post-disco’ era in styles such as dance-pop, boogie, electro,
Italo-disco, house and techno. Introducing this text was Drew Hemment’s brief but emphatic schematisation of sonic metaphysics in the 20th century, and within it we can locate the ‘creative advance’ of EDM in ‘versioning’, the ‘remix’, and ‘the real-time digital shaping of sound’ - thus, at the end of a path of increasing abstraction where ‘original’ and ‘copy’ come to mean increasingly less, and considerations of how we perceive, interpret and rework sound electronically comes to mean much more.
Specifically, this dissertation concerns ‘minimal’, a sub-genre within the EDM
meta-genres of house and techno. The title “Distorted Surfaces, Distorted Temporality” regards minimal EDM’s musical surface in material terms, and correspondingly situates perception of time in the context of listening as elastic. It is my view that the monolithic regularity of minimal’s 4/4 time is subverted by surface nuance manifested in
manipulations of sonic texture. This subversion is conducive of perceptual phenomena which for introductory purposes can be called ‘time dilation’ and ‘time contraction’. It is music with highly repetitive structuring and an emphasis on incremental change over time. This project approaches the task of understanding how we can perceive minimal EDM as being productive of sonic difference: how interlocking sonic components - layers and phases in repetition - lead the listener to form her own imagined patterns, his own second-order sonic constructions. How does minimal EDM in the midst of its
intense rhythmic cycles dislodge the listener from linear timekeeping? Beyond its concern for musical forms, this dissertation is a metaphysical inquiry and encapsulates the construction of a philosophical/musical apparatus for the analysis of electronic music which will incorporate theorisations of ‘affect’ and ‘process’.
In the colloquial sense ‘minimal’ refers to house and techno minimalistic in nature: Philip Sherburne, a journalist instrumental to the genre’s codification, notes that minimal house and techno styles foreground the strategies of many classical
minimalists via an emphasis on repetition. Beat oriented EDM often explores the very nature of repetition itself - an effective carrying of the mantle of the likes of Steve Reich and Philip Glass. In contrast to the minimalist experiments in rock music from the 2 1960s onwards, where stripped-down viscerality of sound led to notably expressivist movements such as ‘no-wave’ and punk, in minimalist electronic music the ‘groove’ became the key, and immersion and temporal dislocation its indices. From the peak of disco music’s first wave in the late 1970s emerged a style of long, manual DJ mixing pioneered by the likes of Larry Levan at New York’s Paradise Garage in which repetition and rhythm were foregrounded (in lieu of song-like verse/chorus structure). This culture spawned ‘tracks’ intended for mixing, a desirably ‘incomplete’ musical form: their emotive and dance-inducing physicality only becoming truly apparent when paired with other tracks in a sequence, on a sound system, mixed by a skilled DJ who would take the dancer on a journey. Decades later and 21st century dancefloors are still moving to
2 Philip Sherburne, “Digital Discipline: Minimalism in House and Techno,” in Audio Culture , eds. Christopher Cox and Daniel Warner (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2004): 322.
the same idea, but digital technology has allowed for automation of what was once manual, and the aesthetics of a great deal of EDM is a reflection of its means of production: digital and post-human. Indeed, minimal house and techno foreground machine-like aesthetics and are celebrations of sustained, metronomic rhythmicality which the human player could not imagine performing (certainly not for the night-long and sometimes longer durations of minimal parties). House and techno EDM styles are populated with ‘DJ tool’ tracks which can be understood as “building blocks [...] fodder for performance in the hands of the DJ.” More than temporally adapting the structures 3 of pop songs, a pioneering disco producer such as Tom Moulton is described by music journalist Peter Shapiro as “toying and playing with these records, using his equalizer to boost the bottom end and adding breaks to create disco extravaganzas out of three-minute pop songs.” These structural and aesthetics dynamics were to become 4 fundamental in disco’s transition to house and techno.
The history of house and techno is a tale of “doing more with less” - cultural theorist Kodwo Eshun writes, that “Disco remains the moment when Black Music falls from the grace of gospel tradition into the metronomic assembly line” If this is so then house 5 music celebrates the art of said assembly line: the grooves and breaks of disco
intensively looped with a focus on rhythm and bass. Techno was born, says renowned 6 producer of the style Derrick May humourously, when Kraftwerk and George Clinton
3 Ibid .
4 Peter Shapiro, Turn The Beat Around: The Rise and Fall of Disco (London: Faber, 2005), 44.
5 Kodwo Eshun, More Brilliant Than The Sun: Adventures In Sonic Fiction (London: Quartet, 1998), 001. 6 For an example of early house music, see the hypnotic ‘On and On’ (1983) by Jesse Saunders.
got stuck in an elevator together, inferring a foundational aesthetic of equal parts 7 spartan, driving rhythms taken from 1980s European synth pop, and the psychedelia and rhythmic grooves and basslines of funk. Juan Atkins’ 1985 track ‘No UFO’s’ under his Model 500 alias epitomises this period in Detroit techno’s development well. Its aesthetics comprise a continuation of early 1980s electro styles in its heavy use of Roland TR-808 drum machine sounds. Its veritable rhythmic battery and pulsing bass synthesiser motifs would become understood as foundational to the techno
movement. “While the first-wave artists were enjoying their early global success, techno also inspired many up-and-coming DJs and bedroom producers in Detroit" , 8 among which were artists who would have a large influence on the minimal direction in techno: names like Richie Hawtin, Robert Hood, Carl Craig and Jeff Mills. Robert Hood articulated the sound of this second wave of techno’s aesthetics as,
“A basic stripped down, raw sound. Just drums, basslines and funky grooves and only what's essential. Only what is essential to make people move. I started to look at it as a science, the art of making people move their butts, speaking to their heart, mind and soul. It's a heart-felt rhythmic techno sound.” 9
7 Mark J. Butler, Unlocking The Groove: Rhythm, Meter and Musical Design in Electronic Dance Music (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006), 42. 8 Beverly May, “Techno” in African American Music eds. Mellonee V. Burnim and Portia K. Maultsby (New York: Routledge, 2007): 340. 9 John Osselaer, “Artist Interview Robert Hood,” Spannered , 1st February 2001, http://www.spannered.org/music/802/ For additional context : “When I was at parties in the ‘80s, the best moments were always when a break came on the track and you could just hear the drum and bass, just the rhythm. Chicago house was based on that. I wanted to combine that simplicity, that idea of rhythm tracks, with the sound of Detroit techno. Emotional, but funky. Not just a DJ tool, but a song. The hihats sing a melody if you listen close enough. And that song is as powerful as a song by Mariah Carey.” Robert Hood quoted in Felix Denk and Sven von Thülen, Der Klang der Familie: Berlin, techno and the fall of the wall (Norderstedt: Books on Demand, 2014), 221.
Thus far the explication of ‘minimal’ has served to highlight its aesthetic parameters for introductory purposes, and to illustrate what matters in electronic music - factors which Ola Stockfelt describes as those tantamount to adequate listening. To hear a few bars 10 of a minimal techno track and say “it’s just the same thing over and over” is not
listening adequately. To hone in on what Robert Hood aforementioned calls both an ‘art’ and a ‘science’ of moving people and communicating emotively and intellectually - understanding how minimal EDM achieves this over its extensive durations is to listen adequately.
‘Stretch Souls’ (2016) by Vinyl Speed Adjust is a contemporary exemplification of minimal EDM. Its rhythmic crux is its quarter note kick drum pattern occupying 4/4 downbeats, a compressed and reverberative clap/snare sound occupying backbeats, and open hi-hats on every second eighth note offbeat. Further momentum is supplied by a shaker sound playing sixteenth notes and a low-register rolling bassline playing a repeating pattern. The timbral quality of the clap/snare and hi-hat modulate over time incrementally. Layered on top of this rather spare rhythmic palette are subtly wavering synthesiser notes held with long sustainment, befitting of the title of ‘Stretch Souls’ - their mood is wistful and their unfolding a continuously elongating, kaleidoscopic
10 “what is relevant to the genre in the music” in Stockfelt’s outlining of adequate modes of listening . Listening is adequate, argues Stockfelt, “when one listens to music according to the exigencies of a given social situation and according to the predominant sociocultural conventions of the subculture to which the music belongs [...] To listen adequately hence does not mean any particular, better, or “more musical”, “more intellectual” or “culturally superior” way of listening. It means that one masters and develops the ability to listen for what is relevant to the genre in the music, for what is adequate to understanding according to the specific genre’s comprehensible context. ” Ola Stockfelt, “Adequate Modes of Listening” in Audio Culture , eds. Christopher Cox and Daniel Warner (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2004): 91.
event. Someway in to the track it becomes difficult to orient oneself in time. Only at 6:02 - 6:32 does a breakdown of the rhythm occur. Otherwise we are left in a musical landscape in which the rhythm is unchanging, only its timbres modulating and
becoming. In the seemingly perpetual drift of ‘Stretch Souls’ we’re presented with an eternal present in which directionlessness becomes a device of rhythmic immersion.
Empirical, measured time seems to dissolve and one could expect the track to roll on endlessly. So too does the imagination drift in this kind of sonic environment. What I would deem to be imagined patterning can occur with a track like ‘Stretch Souls’. How easy it, for example, to focus one’s attention solely on the hi-hat and determine it to be the focal rhythmic driver, with all other elements seeming to dance around it? Apply the same listening method to every other pulse-like element. Minimal EDM is known for its experimentation with duration, and in its seemingly never-ending constructs we are given duration to experience sound-objects’ unfolding and relation-forming across time.
This perception of ‘difference’ in minimal EDM’s repetition is, as aforementioned, the object of study for the present dissertation. How does intricacy of textural layering and structuring in EDM - its material ‘surface’ - subvert the regularity of 4/4 time and
produce a temporality of multiplicity, and perceived difference-in-repetition? The phenomenological ‘unit’ I devise for analytical purposes is the ‘surface image of difference’. In chapter 4 I will elucidate on the Deleuzian ‘image’ in use here. For the purposes of orientation around the phenomenon I describe, this ‘image of difference’ is
the ‘percept’ resulting from this dislocation from time in which sonic form seems to alter in repetition - the ‘image’ carries us away, however momentarily.
I make the claim that in listening to EDM the dancer/listener exercises a kind of performative agency in forming perceptual patterning between sonic elements which taken together form the ‘groove’, and that this kind of engagement in listening can be situated as a kind of affect: to use Brian Massumi’s working definition of the Deleuzian sense of the term, the “prepersonal intensity corresponding to the passage from one experiential state of the body to another and implying an augmentation or diminution in that body’s capacity to act.” Affect denotes the capacity to act and be acted upon 11 and the transfer of intensities between bodies. These ‘bodies’ need not be human bodies, and the very passages of these intensities or ‘resonances’ are the subject of analyses of affect. Minimal EDM is and has affect, and upon this basis this dissertation proceeds to interrogate what constitutes an affect-based listening of minimal EDM. I seek to question how affect theory can develop an understanding of the
correspondence between musical affordance (what is structurally and aesthetically given) in minimal EDM, on the one hand, and performative listening agency (the perceptual determination of sonic elements in themselves, as patterns, as imagined patterns) on the other. Minimal EDM is a music of phases, cycles and incremental change, rendering it a music of process and our engagement with it processual. We do not simply arrive at hearing imagined patterns in minimal EDM. With the example of
11 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia , trans. and foreword by Brian Massumi (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press), xvi.
‘Stretch Souls’ it takes several minutes of its rhythmic accumulation, its ‘building up’, before any of the temporally disorientating affects of listening occur. Thus, with minimal EDM a music of affect and process, I articulate the aforementioned propositions and lines of inquiry into the research question: “What is the relationship between the philosophies of affect and process in listening to minimal EDM?”
In order to answer this question I propose the construction of a philosophical method which encompasses a close reading and expansion of Drew Hemment’s Deleuzian affect-based account of the aesthetics of EDM, and Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy primarily articulated in his 1929 volume Process and Reality. The allure of Whiteheadian thought in relation to what I here have understood as listener agency in EDM is based on his philosophy’s non-anthropocentricity. It is not a simple case, I argue, of the music telling us its story and us following along (as teleologically linear Western art-music tradition dictates), but a complex interplay and processual
becoming (and perishing) of objectification and subjectification. Whitehead’s atomistic
process theory will provide a suitable analytic tool for approaching the sonic landscape of the ‘ever-changing same’ of minimal EDM in which aesthetic agency is exercised over the music by the listener, and temporally distortive effects exercised over the listener by the music. This combination of affect and process theory will be filtered into a music-analytic apparatus which will then be applied in a case study of Ricardo Villalobos - a Chilean/German musician whose oeuvre counts among EDM’s most distinctive and frequently confounding. Villalobos’ approach to production, and to
transmission in DJ sets, is frequently reflective of the temporally distortive aesthetic that I described in relation to ‘Stretch Souls’. But whereas ‘Stretch Souls’ is quite linear in its construction of accumulation and rhythmic ‘plateauing’, Villalobos’ work is
labyrinthine in its structuring and disruptive of the musical surface. What ends Villalobos’ disruptions to meter and timbre serve will be laid out in affective and processual analysis.
The organisation of the dissertation will in the first place serve to orient the reader in the history, aesthetics and cultural milieu of minimal EDM, before diving into more theoretically abstract chapters of affect- and process method-building and case application. Chapter 2 historicises minimalism in house and techno, picking up on several of the themes already presented here in the introduction. While not situating minimal EDM in direct lineage with ‘classical’ minimalism pioneered by the likes of Philip Glass and Steve Reich, the chapter seeks to identify parallel aesthetic and structural interests between these movements. Formative producers and labels in minimal EDM will be explored, with emphasis placed on the sonic reductionism of Berlin’s Basic Channel and its indebtedness to Jamaican dub-reggae’s creation of sonic spatiality. The chapter will also reintroduce Philip Sherburne, the music journalist and chronicler of minimal EDM, whose 2003 text Digital Discipline provides insightful aesthetic diagnostics in the style, and situates this dissertation’s case subject Ricardo Villalobos as a proponent of a style Sherburne calls massification.
Chapter 3 approaches musical experience of EDM as grounded in bodily reception of sonic form over time. In addition to offering a cursory survey of literature on EDM as cultural practice, the focal points here will be the work of cultural theorists Kodwo Eshun and Robert Fink, who address embodied responsivity to EDM in terms of sonic
shape and temporality, respectively. The first section of chapter 4 engages with
Hemment’s Deleuzian articulation of ‘surface affect’ in EDM, developing the
perceptual/aesthetic phenomenon sketched here in the introduction into an analytic apparatus which will be called the ‘surface image of difference’ - the mechanism by which minimal EDM’s sonic-affective dimensions and our perceptual reception of its forms result in interpretive multiplicity. The second part of chapter 4 analyses this ‘image’ of difference within Whiteheadian process metaphysics, providing an atomistic analysis of the sonic encounter in which the eternal present unfolds and becomes. It furthers Hemment’s identification of the sonic ‘event’ into Whitehead’s realm of metaphysical events and will build the analytical shape of ‘surface difference’ into a processual form capable of describing the temporal/aesthetic logistics of minimal EDM. Chapter 5 aggregates chapter 4’s abstract philosophical work into a musical method, using Mark J. Butler’s work on theorising temporality in EDM and Luis-Manuel Garcia’s application to EDM of Pierre Schaeffer’s work on sonic ‘grain’ - the perceived texture of sound. With chapter 6 I apply the methodology of the ‘surface image of difference’ to Ricardo Villalobos’ idiosyncratic minimal EDM - a challenging musical oeuvre known for its slippery temporalities and otherworldly sonic character. Chapter 7 will conclude with a summarisation of the dissertation’s theoretical and applied work
and reflect on the potential for further study of affect and process theory in relation to electronic music.
A small note ought to be given to situate and justify the claims already made and those forthcoming in this dissertation. My choice of EDM and specifically minimal EDM as an object of study is based foremost, before academic enquiry, in accumulated personal experience. As an active member of Amsterdam’s electronic music scene I write with a degree of authority on the musical and cultural workings of the music presented as evidence in this dissertation. As a DJ of many years I possess a developed knowledge of the structural, temporal and aesthetic mechanisms by which minimal EDM operates. The claims I make in this thesis pertaining to notions of entrainment, musical devices of tension building, sustainment and release, and rhythmic composition in tracks as
microscosmic reflections of larger rhythmic and narrative superstructures in DJ sets are based on accumulated experience of working with such devices and even more time on dancefloors dancing and internalising them. With a longstanding interest in how Ricardo Villalobos’ approach to minimal EDM possesses a transportive, temporally distortive quality, my opting for a case study of his work, furthermore, also arises from involved and considered personal experience. Where some view his take on house and techno styles as self-indulgent in terms of their length and lack of clear narrative arcs, I see in his sonic expanses complex sonic puzzles. They ask of the listener a certain paradoxical combination of concentration and a simultaneous willingness to submit to their horizontal drift. How Villalobos’ distortions to temporality are achieved will be
dissected and interpreted with philosophical methodology. With my writing here I aim to orient the reader both theoretically and sonically to ideas of minimal EDM’s
operation on imaginative, creative listening and do so without assuming any preexisting knowledge of the electronic music scene. A full discography of musical works cited is presented as appendix at the end of the dissertation. With the wonders of the modern age the entirety of this discography is readily accessible on YouTube and I thusly present a fully operational archive in the form of a ‘playlist’ which is consultable via the supplied URL in the discography. An additional playlist comprising the references to video in this dissertation is also provided for convenience in consultation.
Chapter 2. Minimalism in house and techno
“Minimalism is very old. It's not just Steve Reich. I think the first minimal "tracks" were made by church bells in the 14th century, 13th century, maybe earlier. Every ding and dong from a church bell is information -- digital information, really.”
- Thomas Brinkmann, 2009. 12
“What it's called later by other people is useful. It's easier to say "minimal" than it is to say "Steve Reich/Philip Glass/Terry
Riley/John Adams/blah blah blah." But that's about it. And if you're interested in this kind of music, then what you're interested in is how these composers are different from one another. Therefore, for me, minimalism never existed -- people existed.”
- Steve Reich, 2009. 13 12 Philip Sherburne, “Thumbnail Music Redux: Part Seven Thomas Brinkmann,” Philip Sherburne . 29th December, 2009, http://phs.abstractdynamics.org/2009/12/thumbnail_music_redux_part_sev_1.html 13 Philip Sherburne, “Thumbnail Music Redux: Part Two Steve Reich,” Philip Sherburne . 12th December, 2009, http://phs.abstractdynamics.org/2009/12/thumbnail_music_redux_part_two.html
These two quotes from Thomas Brinkmann and Steve Reich, both in conversation with Philip Sherburne in 2009, go a long way to dispelling any overarching narrative or definitional conception of ‘minimal’ music. Tracing a neat historical trajectory of
minimalism in music would be as superfluous as tracing the origins of Brinkmann’s bell programmers. Sherburne writes of minimalism in techno, that it’s “unclear exactly when the term “minimal” crept into Techno’s self description” but he asserts that there may 14 be something of a ‘teleological urge’ inherent to the genre, a propensity to reduction, just as punk rock was driven to harder, faster and louder impulses. Indeed, from disco producer Tom Moulton’s invention of the ‘remix’ on 12” single vinyl in 1974onwards, disco then house and techno exploited the mechanisms of repetition and extension for the purposes of playback for a dancing audience. Repetition and temporal extension of dance music’s grooves are arguably the keys to its affect over a dancer, thus it is of benefit to let a reduced sound palette and rhythmic architecture ‘sink in’ over time.
This purpose of the present chapter is to historicise minimalism in house and techno, offering a heuristic exploration of the sub-genre ‘minimal’ within the ‘electronic’ meta-genre of popular music. The account provided here will anchor later chapters’ analytical dealings with minimal EDM in a larger historical context of 20th century musical minimalism. Steve Reich’s early compositions for tape and percussion, and his seminal 1969 minimalist manifesto Music as a Gradual Process will be be situated as foundational musical and textual work in classical minimalism. Its importance here is its
foregrounding of certain compositional techniques and attitudes towards process that are evidenced in minimal EDM. Thereafter, attention will be turned to characterising house and techno’s minimal strands, their provenances and compositional/stylistic overlapping with the minimalist structural ideals articulated by Reich. The aim is to acquaint the reader with milestone figures and works in minimal EDM’s development, culminating with Ricardo Villalobos and his considerable influence over the genre from the early 2000s onwards. Many of the technical terms and musical strategies
highlighted in this chapter will be fleshed out more fully in the later chapters concerning the method-building of affect and process, and thus will be here treated in a more cursory manner, with the focus being on orienting the reader in what minimalism means in house and techno, and what it sounds like.
The minimalist prototype
Simon Reynolds, in his influential volume on dance music culture and history Energy
Flash, writes that “Minimalist and systems-music composers like Steve Reich, Terry
Riley, Philip Glass and Michael Nyman offered [another] prototype for electronica: the ‘cellular’ construction of complex tapestries of sound by the repetition and weaving of simple melodic units.” Chronicling classical minimalism, Keith Potter writes that Steve 15 Reich’s usage of tape technology from the 1960s and beyond “remains one of the most important instances in musical history of the influence of electronic music on music for
15 Simon Reynolds, Energy Flash: a journey through rave music and dance culture (London: Faber and Faber, 2013), 200.
instruments alone.” In full appreciation of the dialogue between classical minimalism 16 and electronics, the following proceeds to introduce the work of Reich and chart stylistic confluences within his work with modern day electronic music.
The tape-loop works of Steve Reich (1936-) such as It’s Gonna Rain (1965) and Come
Out (1966) are important works of both electronic and experimental music history,
works that foregrounded phasing and repetition and have been heavily sampled in 17 later electronic music. In 1970 he travelled to Ghana to study the drumming of Gideon 18 Alorwoyie, after which he composed a 90 minute piece entitled, suitably
minimalistically, Drumming (1970). Among Reich’s most famous works is Music for 18
Musicians (1974), marking a period in which he began writing for larger ensembles of
live players. 18 Musicians is a notable example of Reichian composition which focuses on the accumulation of small rhythmic cells and cycles. In his 1969 manifesto Music as
a Gradual Process, Reich explicates what he means with music as process: processes
present in the music are audibly apparent, close listenings thereof making apparent incremental change over time, ‘processes’ effecting,
16 Keith Potter, Four Musical Minimalists: La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 180. 17 Phasing is a musical device in which the same part, a repetitive phrase, is played by two (or more) instruments in steady but different tempi. Gradually the two instruments shift out of unison, creating an echo effect as one instrument trails behind the other, then doubling as the same note is heard twice, and finally doubling back into unison. These differing tempi are almost identical so as to perceive in listening that they are the same tempo. A parallel shall be drawn further on that continues this kind of phasing in ‘classical’ minimalism to ‘metric dissonance’ in minimal techno, as defined by Mark J. Butler, wherein two or more layers in a composition exist in a state (however long, before being resolved, or not) of nonalignment. 18 For example, see “Little Fluffy Clouds” by The Orb (1990), which makes extensive sampling use of Steve Reich’s “Electric Counterpoint”.
“impersonal, unintended, psychoacoustic by-products [...] These might include sub-melodies heard within repeated melodic patterns, stereophonic effects due to listener location, slight irregularities in performance, harmonics, difference tones, and so on. Listening to an extremely gradual musical process opens my ears to it but it always extends farther than I can hear.” (Emphasis original) 19
The elusive it that Reich aims for is characterised by one hearing “the details of the sound moving out away from intentions, occurring for their own acoustic reasons.” Recalling the perceptual phenomenon I sketched in the introduction of the ‘surface image of difference’ - a parallel interest can be identified in Reich’s gradual processes producing ‘sub-melodies’ and other ‘by-products’. These kinds of second-order
perceptual processes constitute the aesthetic thematic of the present dissertation, and their character will be developed in analysis in the chapters to come. So too will
Reich’s emphasising a shift of attention that occurs in process-oriented music, “away from he and she and you and me outward toward it” discernible in the futurist,
depersonalised account of embodying electronic music as presented by Kodwo Eshun, and discussed in the context of entrainment to a groove, to rhythms and their
production of perceived difference-in-repetition on the dancefloor. Further parallels in the heuristic structural/aesthetic continuum of classical/electronic-dance minimalism I offer here are the prevalences of non-narrative and non-teleological forms. Wim
Mertens, too a minimalist composer, musicologist and author of the definitive volume
American Minimal Music, writes that,
19 Steve Reich, “Music as Gradual Process” in Audio Culture , eds. Christopher Cox and Daniel Warner (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2004): 305.
“the traditional work is teleological or end-oriented, because all musical events result in a directed end or synthesis [...] a directionality is created that presumes a
linear memory in the listener, that forces him or her to follow the linear musical evolution [...] The music of the American composers of repetitive music can be described as non-narrative and a-teleological. Their music discards the traditional harmonic functional schemes of tension and relaxation.” 20
Indeed the allure in techno, according to pioneering Detroit techno artist Kevin Saunderson, is located in the sound in itself - revealing continuities within 20th 21 century sonic experimentalism that are traceable through the 1950s work of John Cage, Pierre Schaeffer and his musique concrète through to sample-centric
compositional practices in hip-hop and repetitive electronic dance music. It can be 22 said of minimal dance music that the a continual focusing into the sound event in itself (as opposed to what Mertens called the ‘end-oriented’ teleology of Western classical music) is prevalent, and finds its processual foreshadowing in the work of classical minimalists such as Reich. So too the minimalist compositions of Philip Glass, whose cyclical Music in Twelve Parts (composed 1971-1974) is as repetitive as any
20 Wim Mertens, “Basic Concepts of Minimal Music” in Audio Culture , eds. Christopher Cox and Daniel Warner (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2004): 307308. 21 Reynolds, Energy Flash, 383. Referring to Saunderson interview Music Technology magazine 1988. “The sound’s the most important thing”. Reynolds writes: In techno, melody is merely an implement or ruse for the displaying of texure/timbre/soundmatter. This is why most rave music shuns complicated melodylines in favour of riffs, vamps and ostinatos (short motifs repeated persistently at the same pitch throughout the composition). 22 For a comprehensive chronicling of the creative uses of sampling in electronic music a reading is advised of Paul Miller, Sound Unbound : Sampling Digital Music and Culture (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2008). An illustrative example of electronic music making sampling use of classical minimalism is a 1999 Steve Reich remix album entitled Reich Remixed featuring versions by the aforementioned Paul Miller (as DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid) and Coldcut among others.
contemporary minimal house and techno track. Music in Twelve Parts in full takes over three hours and is based on extremely gradual development of themes, such that new sounds introduced are profound. Andrew Porter writing for the New Yorker in 1978 on the transition from Part I to Part II of Music in Twelve Parts: “A new sound and a new chord suddenly break in, with an effect as if one wall of a room has suddenly
disappeared, to reveal a completely new view.” The same could be said of renowned 23 techno track ‘And Then We Planned Our Escape’ by Robert Hood (Music Man, 2007). At 3:47 a hissing, resonant hi-hat pattern enters the track (almost half way through), following minutes of disorientating synthesiser modulations and an unadorned battery of quarter note kick drum pulsation. The effect of this “new sound” in the hi-hat is profound. At 4:30 it develops to a full ‘open’ hi-hat sound and the momentum of the track is altered dramatically, revealing a ‘completely new view’. As one Youtube commenter puts it: (sic.) “What this hats do in a crowded club with good suround is beyond your imagination.” They emphasise the impact of this singular element - the 24 hi-hat - in a dancing situation in a crowded club (thus inferring correspondingly high crowd energy) with a good sound system capable of true reflections of the track’s full range of frequencies. This speaks volumes to the minimalist programming of Robert Hood that someone can claim that the introduction of a single musical element can send a crowd rapturous.
23 Tim Page, “Music in 12 Parts” in Writings on Glass: Essays, Interviews, Criticism , eds. Richard Kostelanetz and Robert Flemming (New York: Schirmer Books, 2007): 100.
24 Canal de Detroitbcn, “Robert Hood And Then We Planned Our Escape” Original release2007. Youtube video. Uploaded May 2009. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8PhL_u9Q5Y
What musically characterises house and techno In the electronic dance genres under the ‘minimal’ banner is a continuation of a transparency of process that continues the thought and work of Reich and other mid 20th century minimalists. Where he wrote that he is interested in a compositional process and a sounding music that are one and the same thing , so too in a dance music such as minimal house one will experience 25 deliberately incomplete tracks paired together via a DJ mixing them together. Building blocks of rhythmic cells accumulate through repetition, expansions and contractions of themes. The following is a schematisation of production and performance in EDM, designed to give the reader an orientation in the professional environment of working with electronic dance music, and provides familiarisation with EDM-specific technical vocabulary which will feature heavily in the coming chapters.
The production and dissemination of minimal EDM
In terms of production, the ‘recording artist’ is more often than not the ‘producer’, and ‘remixers’ can serve under this category too, enlisted by other EDM producers and labels to rework their material. Regarding performance in EDM, the prototypical performing artist is the ‘DJ’, but producers can also play live. Crucially, for the
purposes of the present dissertation, dancers are understood to have a performative role in listening and responding in a ‘party’ situation. There is therefore a give and take dynamic to EDM playback - a successful DJ reads a crowd, who in turn provide
information to a DJ in the form of movement and noise. Simple as this may sound, this dynamic is the fundament of a good party and a receptive crowd will often spur a DJ to take bigger risks in terms of track selection or mixing technique. The interface of
DJ/crowd in minimal EDM is developed over relatively longer durations to other kinds of EDM (aforementioned that minimal tracks take time to ‘sink in’ in listening, and the blends between them in a mix often long and subtle) and virtuosity is regarded as the ability to make subtle changes in a mix significant (recalling the previously noted example of Robert Hood’s deployment of a hi-hat to drastically alter a track’s
momentum). What will be demonstrated in chapter 6.3 is how Ricardo Villalobos in the DJ-context frequently disturbs the musical surface, rendering the introduction of new tracks and new elements an unpredictable process, but one that nevertheless is
transparent and constantly teasing the listener - to continue the previous metaphor of a wall of a room removed producing a new view: Villalobos shows us aa new view and rapidly takes it away again, only for it to (possibly) reappear in a new configuration minutes later.
Continuing the thematic of feedback, there is a discernible creative overlap between DJs and electronic music producers within this cultural milieu. Producers with
technical/studio experience are often well equipped to know how to ‘work’ a
dancefloor as a DJ: intimate knowledge of frequency manipulation in studio production often equates with developed knowledge of ‘live’ equalisation of sound sources (vinyl, CD, digital files). Equally, DJs, possessing knowledge of what ‘works’ on a dancefloor
can produce exemplary dance tracks in the studio: structuring tracks based on
developed, intuitive experience of dance music’s temporality in situ. Many DJs and/or producers will rise to prominence having been committed dancers and promoters of dance music. Connoisseurship is also frequent among a dancing audience, especially 26 in niche styles such as minimal house and techno. Without anthemic choruses,
melodies, or ‘earworm’ types of songs and instead a focus on longform repetition and mastery of minute changes, the venues putting on events for such styles can produce small and intimate settings for perhaps only a hundred people - it is a common joke in for example the Berlin electronic scene to guess how many attending a small venue are DJs/producers themselves.
Mark J. Butler develops the role of the DJ as “much more than a person who simply plays records, the EDM DJ functions as an intermediary between the producer and the audience.” A DJ selects tracks, sequencing them into an unbroken unity over lengths 27 of time spanning anywhere from 45 minutes to 12+ hours, this event being called a “set” - “not only do DJs create an unbroken flow of sound, they also minimize the distinctions between individual tracks, so that the emphasis is on the larger whole rather than its components” - novelty in ‘mixing’ tracks is noteworthy and celebrated DJs, such as Ricardo Villalobos, make an art out of rendering the listening experience
26 Complicating this DJ/producer hybridity is the economic drive behind taking up DJing that motivates producers to do so in 2017 it is tremendously difficult to make a living from being a producer of dance music alone. Notwithstanding other employment, in the music industry or not, the sale of vinyl records and/or digital copies of original music, or income from streaming services, is most likely not enough to support a producing artist alone. This is an interesting topic that is worthy of further, dedicated exploration, beyond the scope of this dissertation. 27 Butler, Unlocking The Groove, 49.
challenging as well as danceable. Cutting between records rapidly is common in hip-hop and other broken-beat forms of dance music such as drum & bass and
dubstep - a technique sometimes employed tactically in more minimal forms of “four to the floor” EDM styles such as house and techno. In these meta-branches of EDM, the mixing one encounters more often takes the form of ‘layering’: parts of tracks
combined - eg. the bass of track A attenuated via a modulation of the low frequency band to bring in a bass line of track B, while track A’s mid and hi range percussion, for instance, continue. The technique of ‘beatmatching’ (manually via adjusting pitch in vinyl mixing, or with digital ‘syncing’ means) is arguably the most important core skill in DJing with house and techno tracks. This is the means by which a constant tempo is maintained among multiple tracks. When this technique is successfully performed and two or more tracks play at the same speed (Ricardo Villalobos, as a point of interest, is renowned for sometimes using three or more sources simultaneously), the listener perceives a sonic unity. When this goes awry, it is instantly noticeable: Butler quotes a DJ describing two unsuccessfully beat-matched tracks as sounding like “shoes in the dryer.” More than just possessing the ability to match beats, however, a DJ’s 28
knowledge of his or her tracks is just as imperative. In order to create a certain kind of mix between two tracks - taking energy up/down or sustaining it - knowledge of every track’s temporal and textural organisation is required such that the moment in time in which a new track becomes audible in a mix it achieves the desired effect. A DJ set which mechanically utilises the intro- and outro- sections of EDM tracks will if anything
highlight each track in its entirety, but will hardly give a dancer anything surprising or rhythmically challenging to respond to. DJing, with its intermediation of crowd to music and all the ‘reading’ of a dancing audience that entails, combined with the
aforementioned technical aspects of sequencing and mixing, can therefore be regarded as a semi-improvisational/compositional musical practice requiring developed archival knowledge. For further insight into the technical applications of DJing consulting Butler’s comprehensive schematisation is advised. 29
Minimalism in house and techno EDM styles
The production team and record label Basic Channel was formed in 1993 by Moritz Von Oswald and Mark Ernestus in Berlin. Originally releasing their music on vinyl only, and across various aliases, the duo are regarded as instrumental in the creation of minimal techno. Basic Channel’s sphere of operations have included Ernestus’ distribution company and record shop Hard Wax and mastering studio Dubplates & Mastering - two institutions that are still operational and highly regarded in the dance music world. Under the Basic Channel umbrella, Von Oswald and Ernestus are
responsible for genre defining releases such as “Lyot Rmx” (1993) and “Quadrant Dub” (1994) . Daniel Chamberlin, writing journalistically in 2003, regards Basic Channel as a point of origin for minimal techno, describing parallels between their techniques, as well as those of Richie Hawtin, Wolfgang Voigt and Surgeon, to those of Steve Reich. 30
29 Butler, Unlocking the Groove, 4758.
30 Daniel Chamberlin. "Party Arty: Minimal techno producers live up to their avantgarde heritage and turn the party out, brainiacstyle" The Miami New Times , September 18, 2003,
He writes that “Minimal techno was patented in the Nineties by Basic Channel, a German duo that fused the pristine lines of Detroit techno with the warm echoes of Jamaican dub.”
This sonic nexus of techno and dub came to be known, unsurprisingly, as ‘dub techno’. Somewhat different from the minimalism of Ricardo Villalobos, whose work will
nevertheless also be come to be understood as distinctly spacious further on in this dissertation, Basic Channel’s further reduction of already minimalistic Detroit techno is described by Joanna Demers as having “bare-bones percussion and irregular
modulating synth chords [...] The dry, precise attacks of first-generation techno are softened with echoes, as if the sounds are traveling through water.”31Indeed, when listening to a track like Maurizio’s ‘M7’ (1997) (Maurizio was an alias used by Von 32 Oswald) this analogy becomes quite clear. The metronomic boom and tick of the kick and hi-hat provide a rhythmic grid upon which synthesised textures seem to gravitate. There is no sense of development across its 8:25 duration, its handful of elements just seeming to wallow: a ‘dry’ sounding kick, low-in-the-mix hi-hat, backgrounded
machine-hiss, a pulsing bassline, synthesiser notes echoing around the acoustic space. http://www.miaminewtimes.com/music/partyarty6346689. 31 Joanna Demers, Listening Through The Noise: The aesthetics of experimental electronic music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 97. 32 Maurizio was an alias used by Von Oswald. The Basic Channel duo’s range of aliases also included Cyrus, Phylyps, Quadrant and Rhythm and Sound. The latter in places more overtly explored their penchant for Jamaican dub, and these productions often included work with vocalist Tikiman.
Steve Goodman’s comments on ‘versioning’ in dub enlighten an understanding of modulation of sounds that inspired later German dub techno. Having developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s and early 1970s and finding its roots in modifying reggae vocal tracks, dub
“essentially remixes the original, using an array of effects, usually morphing the song into a series of ghosted vocal traces haunting the rhythm track that has been stripped down to a functional minimum of bass, drum and effects.”33
Hence the ‘dub’ in dub techno evokes a minimalist aesthetic - its emphasis on spaciousness and horizontal movement, with little in the way of dramatic changes occurring throughout a track, facilitated by a reduction in sonic materials. Simon Reynolds, in his chronicling of EDM movements, writes that “In the ultra-minimalist ‘tech-house’ of the Basic Channel and Chain Reaction labels, simple riffs serve to 34 twist and crinkle in the sound-fabric in order to best show off its properties; what you thrill to is the scintillating play of ‘light’ as it creases and folds, crumples and kinks.” 35 What comes to light in this experiential description by Simon Reynolds, on the ‘light’ of dub techno, is the intriguing descriptive turn required to musically describe much electronic dance music: a traditional musical scoring is almost redundant, particularly in ‘dubby’ dance tracks which feature little to no melody, persistent and often
33 Steve Goodman, Sonic Warfare: sound, affect, and the ecology of fear (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2012), 162. 34 A Basic Channel sublabel. Founded in 1995, it released music by dub techno producers other than Von Oswald and Ernestus. Notable producers on this label include Substance, Vainqueur, Monolake and Vladislav Delay. 35 Reynolds, Energy Flash, 383.
indeterminate bass notes, with atmospheric ‘pads’ and noise the only orientating earmarking features. Texturally and timbrally interesting, but redundant to notate or describe in melodic terms. Indeed, Reynolds writes that “timbre and space cannot be notated on a score”, and yet “these amnesiac, ineffable, untranscribable elements [...] are the most bliss-rich.” When discussing the sonic matter of repetitive, minimal 36 dance music, discussion will often need to take on visual and tactile metaphors to convey through indexing what some element or composition feels like or might look like. This is a thematic of sonic texture and surface that will be explored in more depth in chapter 5’s encompassing of sonic ‘grain’ and referentiality. In focusing our attention on texture and material instead of progression, in dub techno we experience what Demers calls “a paradoxical static trajectory in which the only changes are shifts in volume or modulation of synthesized materials.” Returning to Reynolds’ 37
summarisation of dub techno, he highlights its spatiality and subtractive aesthetics. Basic channel distilled house and techno down to their ‘barest essence’.
“no songs, no vocals, barely any melodies, sometimes not even a drum track. The result was a music made entirely of texture, pulse-rhythm and space [...] endlessly inflected, fractal mosaics of flicker-riffs and shimmer-pulses.” 38
The present dissertation’s case subject Ricardo Villalobos has spoken on the aesthetic parameters of Basic Channel, and his elaboration on their separation of frequencies in
36 Ibid.
37 Demers, Listening Through The Noise, 98. 38 Reynolds, Energy Flash , 495.
production will be seen in chapter 6 to parallel his own interests in the very same. “It’s all about the bass drum sound, the hihat, the clap sound and maybe one sound in between in the mids, most likely something from Sequential Circuits. It’s an aesthetic thing and that’s supersimple, because it 39 focuses on the beauty and togetherness of these very few elements. [...] they reduce a danceable club track to the most minimal form [...] only what’s necessary to be there for House or Techno productions. You can listen to it for two weeks without getting bored, because there’s so much space in between. This is what everyone has to search for to find the beauty of the space and the frequencies.”40
The aesthetic pioneered by Basic Channel, argues Reynolds, set the tone for what was to develop soon after in Berlin’s electronic scene in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Minimal house, or ‘microhouse’, Reynolds describes as entailing the transposition of the minimal techno aesthetic onto the warmer sound-palette and more relaxed, inviting tempo of house. It developed through the output of German EDM labels such as
Kompakt, B-Pitch Control, Perlon, Playhouse, and Get Physical. The coinage of ‘Microhouse’ as a term is attributed to Philip Sherburne, writing in 2001, whose article ‘Digital Discipline: Minimalism in House and Techno” lays out a fairly comprehensive
39 Sequential Circuits was an American synthesiser manufacturer, founded in the early 1970s and sold to Yamaha in 1987. Its arguably most iconic product was its first, the Prophet5 released in 1978. The Prophet5 was the first affordable polyphonic, fullyprogrammable analog synthesiser. Its centrality in 1980s Western popmusic cannot be overstated.
sketching of the state-of-the-art, and will be referred to regularly in this dissertation. Sherburne identified at the time of writing two prevalent streams in microhouse:
skeletalism and massification. What follows are brief descriptions of these aesthetic
groupings, combined with exemplifying material and references to artists’ works that are notable in these styles. Sherburne writes, “Just as Picasso could exhibit the African mask divorced from its social context as an example of ‘pure’ geometry, domestic Techno seems to pursue ever more specific lines of inquiry into the function of repetition.”41The techno referred to as ‘domestic’ here refers to productions not
necessarily intended to contain enough rhythmic heft to sustain a crowded dancefloor, but instead furthering the objective of exploring the repetition of very few synthetic materials around a rhythmic pulse. This indeed can draw comparisons to 20th century abstract art’s interest in ‘purity’ of geometry - Mondriaan’s extensive usage of vertical and horizontal lines, for example, was his manner of expressing harmony and rhythm in visual terms.
Skeletalism
Doing more with less. Sherburne writes of this strain of minimal EDM, in his eyes dominant at the time of writing in 2001, that it is “the imperative to carve everything inessential from dance music’s pulse, leaving only enough embellishment (syncopation, tone color, effects) to merit the variation.” , citing early Chicago House (for example, 42
41 Sherburne, Digital Discipline, 323. 42 Ibid. 324.
see the work of producers like DJ Deeon and DJ Funk on the label Dance Mania) and 90s Detroit Techno as forebearers of this movement. A great variety of minimal EDM falls under this descriptor of ‘skeletalism’, much of it treading a thin line between sound-art experimentalism and dancefloor functionalism. What follows is an elaboration of Sherburne’s exemplifiers of the skeletalist aesthetic.
An important figure in the history of ‘microhouse’, or what in 2016 is often referred to as ‘minimal house’, is Matthew Herbert with his distinctly reduced house sound of the mid-1990s works on the albums 100 Lbs (1996) and Around the House (1998). The latter took a micro-sampling approach using everyday sounds from around his own house to replace well established percussion sounds in house music. For example, see ‘Never Give Up’ from Around The House. This track adheres to structural norms in house music and remains a DJ-standard in contemporary house sets. To the uninitiated listener it is not apparent that percussion and auxiliary rhythmic sounds are not (in the first place) synthesised materials but field recordings. Jan Jelinek (also known as Farben)’s Loop Finding Jazz Records (2001) exemplified a minimal house and techno / ‘glitch’ or ‘click’ crossover style that continued a 1990s ‘IDM’ (Intelligent Dance Music) continuum in electronica. Far from catering to the functional immediacy required for moving a dancefloor, this sound, advanced by artists such as Jelinek, Akufen, Oval, Pole and Thomas Brinkmann prioritised repetition and was notable for its
microprocessing of sound and highly original sampling techniques. In Jelinek’s Loop
contexts, becoming textural devices accompanying original synthesised materials. Sherburne writes that Jelinek’s work as Farben, or the Clicks + Cuts compilations on the label Mille Plateaux , connect to the moiré effect in minimalist op-art, eschewing 43 club-ready production intensity, instead working as reaction to club music- and existing in a somewhat avant-gardist realm of electronic music. The link to the visual 44
overlapping moiré effect can be explained with the example of Farben’s ‘Raute’ (2000) in which shifting pulses and textural layers overlap in seemingly angular and disjointed patterns over the metronomic 4/4 and hi-hat ‘tic’. The effect is one of overlapping sonic layers producing illusive kinds of patterning in which one can shift one’s perspective of an interference.
Marc Leclair’s work as Akufen in the early 2000s, for example on the album My Way (2002), showcased a unique time-intensive production style that involved
microsampling short-wave radio. Opening track ‘Wet Floors’ exemplifies a threshold 45 aesthetic between fragmented, experimental sampling aesthetics, and rhythmic directness capable of sustaining dancefloors. While ‘Wet Floors’ contains the familiar pulsing thump of a house and techno kick drum, the chopped vocal samples rapidly panning across the stereo field as short rhythmic accents are quite jarring and demand
43 An interesting link between the worlds of minimal electronic music and philosophy the Mille Plateaux record label taking its name from Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s 1980 book of the same name. 44 Sherburne, “Digital Discipline”, 323. 45 As described by ethnomusicologist LuisManuel Garcia: “Rather than sample complete hooks of songs or radio broadcasters, which would be illegal in almost any country, he uses brief slivers of songs, commercials, DJs’ banter and staticmost often less than a second long [...] [weaving] these microsamples together into a dizzying collage.” LuisManuel Garcia, “On and On: Repetition as Process and Pleasure in Electronic Dance Music,” Music Theory Online , 11, No. 4 (2005): 6.2.
some time to internalise the patterns they form. More familiar EDM elements are introduced - at 1:55 a submerged pizzicato bassline enters, and at 2:27 a full rhythmic palette of kick drum, bassline, hi-hat and snare are formed. However, the heavily processed sampled voices and other sonic microsamples continue to tug at the listener and give the track a restless energy.
For heuristic orientation purposes, suffice to say there are innumerable minimal house and techno record labels ranging from small vinyl-only imprints, to the likes of
worldwide ‘brands’ such as Cocoon. For the relevance of the present dissertation’s case study of Ricardo Villalobos, a label whose contribution to stripped down, ‘skeletal’ house and techno that has been incredibly influential (releasing Villalobos’ records among many others) and worthy of substantive exploration is Perlon. The German label, founded in 1997 in Frankfurt by Thomas Franzmann (Zip) and Markus Nikolai, now based in Berlin (with a residency event Get Perlonized! at the infamous
Berghain/Panoramabar club), has surpassed 100 releases in its output to the present day. Resisting contemporary trends of digital distribution, its entire catalogue is only available on vinyl and in some cases CD. Notable artists on Perlon include the aforementioned Akufen, as well as longstanding figures such as Villalobos, Thomas Melchior, Zip and Fumiya Tanaka. Almost 20 years into operations, Perlon records still sell prolifically well, and in recent years newer affiliated artists such as Binh, Maayan Nidam and Margaret Dygas have been instrumental in maintaining the label’s presence in the scene, and in later years adding a female presence to a musical scene which for
many years was heavily male. A Perlon record’s utility to a DJ in the aforementioned mode of having a ‘tool’-like status might go a way towards explaining the label and its artists’ longevity.
Listening to a celebrated Perlon release such as Melchior Productions Ltd.’s ‘Different Places’ (2006), Sherburne’s ‘skeleton’ is alive and well, the track’s rhythm and bass sections utterly sparse but still emphatically swung and ‘groovy’ in the sense of continuing a Chicago house tradition. An ambiguous atmosphere hangs over it, downcast pads and the repeated vocal mantra “I get lonely in different places” offset by an abstracted but soulful female “yeah” vocal sample that could have come from any number of soul, disco or R&B records. Indicative of many key minimal tracks, atmospheric and emotional indeterminacy are central, and like many other Perlon records, ‘Different Places’ contains untraditionally melodic parts. At 4:11 what sounds like a malfunctioning digital piano repeats an irregular, modulating refrain for the next two minutes before disappearing, leaving the listener with just the swung beat, the male and female call-and-response style vocal abstractions, and an uncanny, bouncy synthesised bass ostinato. The bizarre malfunctioning synth reappears briefly, before giving way to the original “I get lonely” vocal sample and the introductory downcast chords. This kind of juxtaposition of sonic materials, layered over an insistent and dance-friendly kick, hi-hat and click/hit hat pattern, are typical in Perlon records and contribute to their skeletal idiosyncrasy.
