Right. Nice and simple request this. I’ve recently been exploring a territory of music that I’m not enormously familiar with. Thanks to Mr Biddulph, I’ve stumbled upon two EPs of minimalist progressive techno group Minilogue which have completely taken over my stereo. There’s a track called Certain Things Around You (Part Two) that I particularly love which you can hear a selection of over on emusic.com. It’s based on a Radiohead sample and sort of loops and builds and makes me happy. So here’s my question – where do I get more music like this?
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19 replies on “On Minilogue…”
Pandora uses the music genome project to suggest similar music to searches that you perform …
http://www.pandora.com
Last.FM also makes suggestions to you, but that’s based more on “people who listened to this also listened to …”
I’ve always prefered the suggestions from Pandora, but if they’re new or quite obscure, Last might be a better bet.
-S
Yeah – I sort of know about those, unfortunately. They were my first point of call. Unfortunately Minilogue are such an obscure act that they’re not really heavily played anywhere enough to start benefitting from the whole collaborative filtering effort.
Check out James Holden, Nathan Fake, and other stuff on Holden’s Border Community label. Minilogue’s sound is often compared to Holden’s remix of Nathan Fake’s “The Sky Was Pink.”
Thanks for the heads up on Minilogue. Great stuff.
I love it when you use words like ‘collaborative filtering effort.’
Reminds me of The Orb and Tangerine Dream. A bit more mellow than Future Sound Of London. So Ambient Electronica, if you want a truly horrible music genre.
Why do Music Genre suck so badly? I’m heartily sick of the 20 or so major genre and the way bands and tracks are stuffed into them. But judging by Last.FM, user based tagging of music doesn’t seem to work any better.
If this were 1995 I’d be calling it intelligent dance music or inteliigent techno. There’s elements of minimalist techno, but with a hook or vocal of some sort. The big hitters are Underworld, Orbital and Fluke (all my favourites)… in particular check out the recent Riverrun project by Underworld, or their 4 hour live show from Cocoon (which is “available” around the nets).
How about, at different ends of the spectrum, Basic Channel and Booka Shade? Both are on eMusic, iirc, or try Beatport, which does have enough users to do ‘users also bought’.
I stand by my idea that Pandora is a music service for people who don’t like music – last week I fed it Underworld and it gave me Tiesto and lots of dodgy euro poptrance. Sigh.
For a harsher equivalent the first track that sprang to my mind is Felix Kubin’s ‘Jane B. Ertrinkt Mit Den Pferden’ on Diskono – it takes a tiny bit of a 60s Jane Birkin track, loops it, and adds layers of delay and distortion. By the end it’s kind of like hearing the sea in a shell, but in a world where the sea is made of rusty needles.
As for loop-based minimal electronics, that’s kind of a huge area, dating back to avant garde classical 1950s folk to free noise people today (eg. I think you’d like Inca Ore, a lady who does stuff with breathy vocals and guitar pedals…) via practically every bespectacled man in Germany with a laptop 1990-1995. As for where to get it, your best bet is just to buy the Wire for a couple of months in a row and check out everyone mentioned in the same sentence as the word ‘loop’!
ooh I like minilogue! Thank you! You probably know about Akufen (http://www.last.fm/music/Akufen) and Ricardo Villalobos (http://www.last.fm/music/Ricardo%20Villalobos) already, but they’re what minilogue reminded me of first of all. Also the Junior Boys first album (http://www.juniorboys.net/), although that’s a bit more downbeat I guess.
Boomkat are a great online record store, who list recommendations and have listening samples for almost anything. They have two Minilogue EPs listed: Certain Things and Leopard. Good luck.
Good find, Tom.
Here’s a free sample set from their site:
http://download.sonkite.com/live/minilogue_live_in_berlin.mp3
you could start with more minilogue tracks 🙂
the later ones are closer to what you like i guess..
if you like minilogue you probably like nathan fake, guess you might like the new trentemoeller album on poker flat too (different from his previous releases). the rice twins ?
Tis indeed a wonderous track. Check out the QT samples at Mililogue’s label: http://www.traumschallplatten.de/ (click on the Traum link, select a release.) Might be something there you like.
Also here: http://www.liebedetail.de/index2.html (select ‘releases’.)
Also:
Plastikman (http://www.last.fm/music/Plastikman)
Lali Puna (http://www.last.fm/music/Lali+Puna)
Boards of Canada (http://www.last.fm/music/Boards+of+Canada), specifically ‘The Campfire Headphase’.
Tunng (http://www.last.fm/music/Tunng?q=tunng)
Or check out If Music (http://www.ifmusic.co.uk/catalog/index.php) which was where I got my copy of the Certain Things EP. Probably best to pop in and ask if they’ve got anything else wot sounds like Minilogue.
I’ve blogged a bit about music discovery (http://davidporter.wordpress.com/tag/discovery/) but you seem to know most of the folks.
For minimal stuff, I’d second Beatport (to buy singles) and suggest checking out http://www.ump3.de/ (great free live sets).
As a lover of electronic music and an active minimal techno club night attendee here in London i can strongly recommend ‘microhouse’ tag radio on last.fm. You’ll get the works.
Disclaimer: i develop for last.fm.
Plastikman sprang to my mind too, though many of the tracks are darker and more psychotic than Minilogue’s laid back vibe.
Richie Hawtin (formerly Plastikman) now puts out stuff under his own name, which is much more mellow.
Also much of the stuff on his Plus 8 & Minus labels is worth a listen. Try the Kontakt 2 MP3 currently on the Minus home page.
You might want to get hold of some Jeff Mills material as well. I know less about him, he’s been on my “must investigate” list for years now.
if you like progressive techno and house music than you might also like http://friskyradio.com. great music to listen to all day.
Very nice! sadly the eMusic free sample is just from the intro, but from what I can make out you might want to try http://www.minimallondon.com/ – who put on Minimal Techno events and have a variety of mp3 mixes available for download on their site.
Also, why not explore the mp3 blogosphere with http://hype.non-standard.net and http://elbo.ws?
both are search engines and aggregators for Mp3 blogs, searching there might help you net some bloggers who are into a similar sort of thing.
Otherwise, my own reccomendations would be Nathan Fake (as above) and anything on Ellen Allien’s bPitch Control label (especially Ellen Allien herself – try her collaboration with Apparrat – the ‘Orchestra of Bubbles’ LP for starters) or Kompakt records.
Have fun!
Tim
i would agree with the nathan fake/james holden recommend. in fact, holden’s remix of fake’s ‘the sky was pink’ is an amazing track.
a good album to own would be sasha’s ‘airdrawndagger’. although a little heavier in production it still carves a niche and is considered genre breaking by many.
check ulrich schnauss out too. his own stuff is pretty minimal electro and his remixes are delicious.
‘the modernist’ would work well for you and there may be a few tracks by ‘oxia’ that you like.
hope that helps 🙂
tak