Minimal / Microhouse
early 1990s · Detroit, United States, then Cologne and Frankfurt, Germany
Techno stripped to a kick, a hat, and one idea. Robert Hood cut Detroit techno to its bones in 1994, then Cologne, Frankfurt, and Berlin producers folded house's warmth back in as microhouse (DJ Mag, Wikipedia).
The sound
Techno's machine-funk pulse stripped down to almost nothing, a kick, a hi-hat, one melodic phrase, with house's warmer groove and vocal snippets folded back in over top.
Listen for: Count how few elements are actually playing at once. The space between the hits carries as much weight as the hits themselves, and a stray vocal fragment or click can become the whole hook.
Things to know
Robert Hood released 'Minimal Nation' in 1994 on Jeff Mills's Axis Records, stripping Detroit techno down to little more than a kick drum, a hi-hat, and a single melodic phrase. The record is now credited as minimal techno's founding statement.
Critic Philip Sherburne coined the term 'microhouse' in a July 2001 piece for The Wire, after hearing Perlon's 'Superlongevity' compilation and describing house music stripped down to 'rhythm, soul and silence.'
Ricardo Villalobos's 2003 album 'Alcachofa,' released on the German label Playhouse, is widely credited with cementing microhouse and minimal techno's mid-2000s crossover. It topped Resident Advisor's list of the best albums of the 2000s.
Key tracks
Family tree
- Techno: Minimal techno started as a subtraction. Robert Hood, who'd worked with Jeff Mills and Underground Resistance, released Minimal Nation in 1994 on Mills's Axis label, cutting techno down to a kick, a hi-hat, and one melodic element as a pushback against sample-heavy rave tracks. Resident Advisor argues those textures still sit at the center of techno today.
- House: Microhouse is the house side of the deal. Critic Philip Sherburne coined the term in July 2001 in The Wire after hearing Perlon's Superlongevity compilation, describing house stripped down to rhythm, soul and silence. Bandcamp Daily puts it plainly: producers blended minimal techno's textures with house's musical stylings. So this branch has two parents, techno's reduction and house's warmth.