LOGANMIX004: Music For Non-Existent Dance Floors

In 2007, dial records released two of the best electronic records of the past decade: Pantha Du Prince's This Bliss and Efdemin's Efdemin. Both albums represent the high-water mark of - as well as the catalyst for my well-documented obsession with - the electronic sub-genre minimal techno.

"Minimal" and "techno" are two terms that have little context or association for the average music listener, much less when they delimit each other. As a electronic music dilettante myself, I usually rely on my own "I know it when I hear it" test. Thus, I defer to the experts:

Philip Sherburne, in his essay Digital Discipline: Minimalism in House and Techno, categorized minimalism in electronic music as tending to take one of two paths: skeletalism or massification.

"Skeletalism is the imperative to carve everything inessential from dance music's pulse, leaving only enough embellishment (syncopation, tone color, effects) to merit the variation…

Massification, on the other hand, represents the strain of electronic dance music that attempts to create extreme densities with a relative paucity of sonic elements."

Pigon's "Promises" represents perhaps the best illustration of the genre. Constructed around a steady drum beat and a hypnotic synthesized rhythm guitar loop, the track builds tension by slowly adding (massifying, if you will) - and, for the climax, subtracting - percussive elements to the mix. With its skeletal palette and repetition, "Promises" is essentially an electronic "Boléro."

Perhaps this is still a bit academic, so let me provide an oblique analogy:

The dominating visual metaphor of IDM was the couch as portrayed in the cover art of Warp's seminal album, Artificial Intelligence, signifying that this was dance music for the headphone crowd.

Minimal techno, for me at least, is all about travel -- particularly on rails. Michel Gondry's music video for The Chemical Brother's "Star Guitar" - which, strictly speaking, is not a minimal techno track, but nevertheless - captures this feeling: the repetitive percussion provides the locomotion, while the melodic and rhythmic building blocks provide the variation in scenery. Tim Finney acknowledged as much when he opened up his review of Pantha du Prince's This Bliss by confessing that the album "hit [him] hardest during a train ride on a foggy evening." I had my own augenblick moment while listening to Superpitcher's "Black Magic" while catching the Amtrak Cascades on the way back from Decibel.

In essence, minimal - like IDM before it - is electronic music for non-existent dance floors.

In honor of dial record's 10 year anniversary and in hopes of introducing the lurking masses to minimal techno, I have corralled together a mix from the label's accomplished stable of artists.

For a change of pace from my usual and cumbersome form of disseminating mixes, I enlisted my good friend DJF to seamlessly blend the tracks into a single set. Via Soundcloud you can stream it straight from the blog or download and take it for a future train ride. Either way you decide to listen to it, just be sure to sport some quality headphones.



LOGANMIX004: Music For Non-Existent Dance Floors (DJF's Logan is Cosmos Megamix)

00:00 - Promises - Pigon [Promises]
06:50 - Along the Wire (Superpitcher Remix) - Lawrence [Along The Wire]
14:23 - Happiness (Lawrence Remix) - Superpitcher [Lowlights From The Past And Future]
20:15 - Saturn Strobe - Pantha Du Prince [This Bliss]
25:50 - Swap (Carsten Jost Dub) - Lawrence [Swap]
33:01 - August - John Roberts [Glass Eights]
36:50 - Le Ratafia - Efdemin [Efdemin]
42:17 - Berkeley - Pawel [Berkeley]
47:38 - Bohemian Forest - Pantha Du Prince [Black Noise]
54:55 - Bergwein - Efdemin [Bergwein]