Minimal Wave Records

So the WIERD has been wondering if like us anyone else has become slightly suspicious of the specific origins of the term ‘Minimal Synth’ in the past few years.  I began wondering about this particularly after spending time in Germany and in correspondence with many slightly older musicians, and collectors and ‘historians’ of the genre who experienced it in Europe during its first wave in the early 80’s.  In particular it seems interesting that people I very much respect such as Andreas from Second Decay, Geert and Peter from Twilight Ritual and most of all the ultimate historian in my opinion of all things cold and Minimal Mr. Joerg Opitz never use the word ‘Minimal Synth’ but rather ‘Minimal Music’ or ‘Minimal Elektronik Music’.  It really seems that this ‘category is only used by fans in their 20’s and early 30’s - i.e. the ‘Internet Generation’...

With theses suspicions in mind I asked Frank Maier from Vinyl-On-Demand recently when he first noticed the word ‘Minimal Synth’ appearing, and he confirmed my suspicion and made the very acute observation that he first noticed the word appeared precisely with the introduction of Ebay in the mid/late 90’s and that he believes the term was ‘invented’ by a few very strategically minded ebay record sellers in Northern Europe to better facilitate American and English-Speaking buyers to find and buy their records when ‘Searching’ categories.

Perhaps this is simply a matter of language but I find it slighly difficult to say or hear this word in conversation knowing its origins were purely commercially oriented and not really a part of the authentic history of the Minimal Elektronik genre…very rare for sure… :?:

that he first noticed the word appeared precisely with the introduction of Ebay in the mid/late 90’s

I was just going to say that.
But I’m not sure if it even goes back that early.
I say it started in the 2000’s but then again I’m not a major ebay buyer and only have had my account since 01.
The first time I remember seeing the term was in the comp “minimal synth ethics” back in the mid/late 90’s but never made it a point to put any music in that category. As you also mentioned the terms were always “minimal” or “minimal electronics”

And yes! this is highly suspicious and annoying at times.

HAHAHHAHA!!

“minimal synth as in “the genre known as minimal synth” or minimal synth used loosely to describe records that use well, synth in a minimal manner? ”

ten points to you maschinemusik!

To anyone who actually made music in the early eighties, there is no “genre” called “minimal electronik music” and “minimal music” is what people like Terry Riley and Philip Glass are doing. I know several people who made fantastic music in 1981 or so, to whom the term “minimal” can mean an idea of production applicable to any music - minimal punk will be a duo recorded live in studio with no overdubs, for instance.

“synth” however is an instrument, and to those of us who like pop music played on that instrument, “synth” says something about the music that makes us interested.

“minimal” is a term we inherited from the industrial fans and goths who started getting into electronic pop, but were hesitant to call it electronic pop, synth pop or whatever, since they had to distance themselves from the commercially successful synth music of, say, Pet Shop Boys or Erasure.

I search regularly for “minimal” in eBay, and what I find is either “minimal techno/ tech-house/ dub/ etc”, dance music made the last ten years or so, or “minimal/ synth”, “minimal wave”, “minimal/ cold”, or even “minimal/ NDW” which is early eighties New Wave music, mostly with the instrument described above.

But “minimal synth” or “minimal electronik music” are posthumous genre descriptions, and as such can mean anything. On Ebay, which is a buy-and-sell internet service, of course it means “buy this product”. That’s the whole idea.

Opinions, as you know, are like assholes.  :wink:

Ø

i think ‘internet generation’ by Pieters definition certainly applies to me I’m afraid 8)

But I’m also not very comfortable with both words. Perhaps not so much for its commercial origins but mainly because both minimal and synth describe the means by which the music has been made, where it’s the result that counts to me.

I have to agree they are very practical from a sellers POV. ‘SYNTH’ generates much more hits then ‘electronic’ with fewer letters. And minimal seperates it from the bad overproduced synth pop stuff. Because it’s such an effective description most sellers use both to describe the music and a new genre is born. I read about ‘minimal synth’ first on eBay indeed

The stuff I’ve seen from then describes the music mostly as techno-pop/rock/punk, electrowave, coldwave or some other variation of those words. Synth wasnt used because it had associations with JMJ / Vangelis and the likes. Minimal wasnt used either AFAIK because it referred to Steve Reich / Philip Glass etc. like reactorlgtn said.

Darkwave also seems to have a somewhat later origin, no?

Looking FWD to more of your very rare contributions Pieter!

interesting story about this:

My wife did a compilation for a german New Wave artist some years ago with some bands like The Actor, Nine, Circles, Die Gesunden etc and some newer bands like Bakterielle Infektion, The Rorschach Garden, Alien Skull Paint etc
The recipient was very surprised about the “genre” minimal elektro or whatever because some of the tracks were simply pop-music for him :wink:
He really did something great and his band was one step ahead its time from the end of the 70s on and I was a little surprised to hear this from him, but I can really understand what he meant.
(and the band is still one of my absolute favourites !!!  :wink: )

I think there are always people trying to put a stamp on everything and some of them really need a name for everything.
I come to the point that this is all NEW WAVE music and I think that’s fair. Most of the artists try to move something and do some strange things with this very new equipment at that time. Nowadays it is easy to call it minimal-“whatever” but at that time there wasn’t a name for it and the people would call it simply pop or avantgarde or new wave or electro-punk or anything like that.

I think and if I remember right, I heard this term called minimal-elektronik first in the beginning of the 90s and I had several discussions about that since the middle of the 90s.
I’m not the biggest collector of musical items like records or cassettes , but I’m really interested in that kind of music and try to hear a lot of music to find out, what happened during that time with the music and the “evolution of sound”

A very nice discussion, thanks for that Pieter and I’m really looking forward to see what the others think about it!

My point wasn’t at all to ‘name’ this genre of music but rather simply suggest it has exactly aquired this name commercially and ‘posthumously’, and ‘minmal music’ is not the same as ‘minimalist’ music, which is actually what people like Steve Reich and the ‘avant-garde’ of the 70’s were originally referred to as.  The older guys I know who all played synths in 81 all call it simply, for lack of a better term perhaps, ‘minimal music’, and this is not ‘minimalism - as the avant-garde musicians were very much originally aligned with minimalist sculptors like Richard Serra et al.

The same situation of ‘posthumous naming’ I think applies as well to the dreadful name ‘gothic’ music, which as a cold, ugly American I know much better from growing up in Los Angeles in the heyday of CA deathrock.  At the time we simply called each other, as fans of postpunk, deathrock, and coldwave guitar music ‘freeks’ as we weren’t punks, hardcore kids or into techno.  The first time I remember seeing the word ‘gothic was on the cover of Mick Mercer’s book from 1988, obviously posthumous to all the great now ‘gothic’ bands’ existences.  Little did he know this titling would suffocate so many bands as in NYC now the second you get called a ‘goth band’ your basicly a joke and can pretty much forget playing in clubs or putting out records as the general connotations of that term are about as sad as the most poorly produced B-Movie horror film.

The same situation of ‘posthumous naming’ I think applies as well to the dreadful name ‘gothic’ music

That could be taken up with the missus herself

hey marilyn manson is gothic… let em rest in peace….

In the “Bible”, The International Discography of New Wave, second edition (1982/83), the term “minimal electronics” is used.

If I remember sorrectly, that description is found under Martin O’Cuthbert.

Perhaps “minimal synth” was invented just to point out that the music is quite DIY and a bit edgy but still more structured than Martin O’Cuthbert’s?

Only other thought I have on this topic is I actually think its actually quite good for the genre of music we all love that it has always ‘eluded’ having an obvious name as it literally makes it very difficult to even describe the ‘minimal’ genre to other people not familiar with it as you cannot say simply for example ‘I like Techno, metal etc’ - and thus I think may be a large part of why this music insistently thank god resists commercialism and remains underground, off MTV, and forever very rare, noone knows what to ‘call’ it…

A side note I’d also like to add is from all the myths I’ve long heard about the very mediocre, yet highly ‘collectible’ LA deathrock band Voodoo Church - 1 EP edition of 100 copies etc. etc.(the myth oldschool LA deathrockers will tell you goes that Rozz Williams ‘stole’ the whole look and sound for the first Christian Death LP after he saw the first VChurch show at the Whisky in Hollywood in early ‘82, which as a huge lifelong Rozz fan I’ve never believed…)  I think Voodoo Church is quite interesting as a phenomena though as their brief reformation last year was one of the first times I can remember that a band was encouraged to reform not by fans of the music(there are simply too few as only 100 people own the EP) but rather by the ‘myth’ of the band created solely by the prices the Voodoo Church EP has fetched on recent ebay auctions from RECORD COLLECTORS, often $100 - $200…and as many of us know who both play music and collect records, record collectors are generally very opposite sorts of people to music fans, ‘goth kids’, etc. who go out to see contemporary live music and hang out in clubs such as the whisky-a-go-go on the Sunset Strip.

Tina !!!

btw Pieter, check your emails

My friend Ben pointed out to me in 2001 that many of the records we were interested in could be found by searching ‘minimal synth’ on ebay.  Shortly thereafter I first saw the minimal-elektronik.de website and got very excited about other peole being into odd little records I could never get anybody else into as well as the sheer number of similar things I’d never even heard of.  It seems pretty clear to me that the ‘posthumous naming’ (commercial motivated or otherwise) is simply the result of this stuff being catergoriseable as a genre in hindsight.  I’m guessing many of the bands thought of themselves as ‘wave’ or ‘postpunk’ and the few people that heard them when the records were put out wrote them off as hicks from the sticks having a go at the styles they liked with whatever gear/studio time they could afford.

I know in at least one case this is pretty true of what the band was up to.  I loved the LP ‘Susan Sleepwalking’ from Arms of Someone new when it came out.  I promptly ordered all their old cassettes from Office records and would write periodically about when the new LP was coming out.  When it finally came out I missed the low tech charm of ‘Susan’ and was put off by the more realistic sounding drum machine, use of reverb etc.  Whoever I was corresponding with (I don’t know if it was Mel or Steve or who) was quite surprised as they saw it all as a big step forward in their sound.

I like to think of it as a result of a combination of cheap synths/beatboxes and coldwar/reagan-era zeitgeist.  There’s a bit of a Jausssian rezeptionstheorie thing going on now where people who were written off at the time as wannabe losers who couldn’t afford ‘real gear’ are appreciated as visionary when judged with a different set of standards.  What I love is that there is this particular bleak/electronic quality to both the ‘groundbreakers’ and the cure-wanabes.

Tina!!

Voodoo Church EP was a 1000 copies edition.

I have never heard of that “myth” about Rozz and VC.

Minimal Synth = maximal profit