Minimal – characterized by the repetition of short phrases which change very gradually as the music proceeds.

Some consider Minimal House to be intelligent House, whatever that’s supposed to mean. Music in any form is intelligent if you ask me. Minimal House is another sub-genre of House and Glitch music a.k.a. Microhouse.

First off a little bit of history on this Minimal thang. You see much of all this music you enjoy comes from Disco or the musical dinosaur Techno. Minimal first appeared from a German group called, Oval. . The influences of this sub-genre are of Techno and Garage House.

This is where it gets funny, Glitch is basically technology gone bad, that’s right it takes computer sound samples such as bugs, crashes, system errors, hardware noise, skipping and audio distortion, all captured and provide the basic building blocks of Glitch music

Basically Micorhouse strips House music down to its core. It’s Housey Minimal Techno; a marriage of funk and groove from basic House elements with Glitch driving the repetitive sound of Techno.

Whew! I know what a definition. Maybe that’s why some call it intelligent.

Microhouse is built around a 4/4 beat just like House. The difference between Microhouse and House is the replacement of typical House kick drums, hi-hats and other drum machine samples with clicks, static, glitches, and small bits of noise. Maybe that’s why I find the ride with this genre a little slow and the dance, well minimal.

One keen characteristic of Microhouse is sampling: extremely short ('micro') samples of the human voice, musical instruments, everyday noises and computer created wave patterns are arranged to form complex melodies such as can be heard in Akufen –“Deck the House”.

Vocals in Microhouse are often simplistic and monotone although some artists, such as Matthew Herbert, Luomo and Justus Kohncke, combine singing with Microhouse.

I like Minimal, I feel there is a time and place for it and a dancefloor at peak time just isn’t it.

Several cities including Cologne, Paris, Montreal, San Francisco, Seattle, Minneapolis, Detroit and Chicago have budding Minimal scenes, and its gaining great popularity in German, Canadian (as you already know), Italian and Spanish clubs.

To those I surveyed on Minimal many don’t like it or maybe it’s because to some it sounds like a Ketamine induced haze by someone who’s done too much (that was one theory). Or maybe they don’t understand it as some industry professionals have commented. Like I said what is there to understand? Music either moves you both emotionally and/or physically and if it doesn’t it isn’t because you don’t understand it.