Various - X-Mix-3: Richie Hawtin & John Acquaviva - Enter: Digital Reality

Stud!o K7: 1994

No longer satisfied with one DJ for their X-Mix series, Stud!o K7 settled for nothing less than a tag-team set for volume three. Or they had no choice in the matter, Richie Hawtin and John Acquaviva a package deal at this stage of their careers. If you want one of these techno dons, you gotta' book the other – a brilliant marketing tactic that carries on to this day by many scene-whoring sorts (Steve Angello & Sebatstian Ingrosso, Excision & Datsik, Dimitri Vegas & that guy who shouts shit). Still, though one would go onto mega-stardom while the other remained a 'DJ's DJ', at this point you couldn't think of one without the other, their Plus 8 print one of the hottest labels to emerge out of Windsor Detroit-region in the early '90s.

It's remarkable that for a German label, !K7 didn't really rely on their local DJs in this series. Yeah, Paul van Dyk provided the MFS-showcase kick-off, but his pure trance set's now regarded as an outlier in the X-Mix canon. DJ Hell and Hardfloor would get mixes down the road, but !K7 did their homework in scouring the globe for techno talent in need of a debut commercial set for their discographies. That... was among their manifestos, right? It's definitely a trend they held up for most of these releases. As an aside, I find it amusing that, for as many Genre Defining, Trend Setting, Forward-Thinking, and Very Important mix CDs Richie Hawtin would put out over the years, his first mix CD was in service of old-school CGI rave videos.

But first, we're treated to Mr. Acquaviva's mix, featuring tunes from Speedy J, Hardfloor, Laurent Garnier, and L.S.G. Whoa, wait, what's Blueprint doing here? Aren't these guys techno through and through? Maybe Richie is, but John's often more adventurous with his sets, and X-Mix-3 is no exception. Despite burning through a half-dozen tracks in around twenty minutes, the opening portions of his mix has a surprising prog-house vibe going for it. Obviously not proper prog or the like, but techno and acid house that's rather groovy, chill, and spaced-out for the time. Can't deny being a little put off hearing such blatant sampling of Steve Hillage's Garden Of Paradise in Orson Karte's Metamorphosis though.

Eventually John settles into the sort of acid techno you'd expect from the owners of Plus 8, building things to a nifty crescendo of Hardfloor's Alternative. When Hawtin takes over, he can't help but use an ambient interlude bridging things together, a small letdown coming off the acid high of Hardfloor, but Hawtin's gotta' start fresh for his unfussy minimalism.

His set runs shorter than Acquaviva's, and does about as you'd expect of a mid-'90s Hawtin rinse-out (just tunes, none of that micro-edit mixing). Spastik's here, of course, as is Spaz, his LFO collab' Loop, a remix he did on Teste's The Wipe, plus cuts from Lemon8, Peelo, and Speedy J. Man, did techno dudes ever love them some J' back then.

Sven Väth & Richie Hawtin - The Sound Of The Third Season

M_nus: 2002

Standing out in a crowded DJ mix CD market was no mean task a decade ago. You could have a stellar selection of tunes and credible hype getting your name out there, but even the best PR may not sway folks to your offering if it’s still presented as just another rinse out of current tunes. Sven Väth though, he knew he had something special going on with his Cocoon nights at Amnesia. The Monday night slot only helped its allure grow with underground heads, Cocoon becoming a refuge for partiers tired of weekend superclub excess, and Väth had no trouble providing uncompromising techno they would appreciate. Soon he was bringing in premier techno jocks the world over, including one Richie Hawtin for a tag-team residency in the summer of 2001. Their night was so successful, so memorable, so life-changing and affirming (especially for Richie!), that they sought to capture the vibe for home hearing pleasure. Whether as seductive advertising for the club night, or a postcard memento of the experience, The Sound Of The Third Season hoped to take the listener on an immersive dive into the Cocoon experience.

By the by, if you’re a newer participant in this global culture of dance music, you should know we’re dealing with the Pre-Crisis versions of Hawtin and Väth here. The latter is still in his doofy eurotrash phase, so no grizzled Papa Sven beard for you. And Hawtin had yet to grow his hair back, still rockin’ the perfect robot scalp of the ‘90s, though clearly in brighter spirits than those dour times.

This is also before Hawtin decreed all techno could only be serious and ‘mnml’ music, thus instead rinsing out some absolute bangin’ material for his opening portion of this CD. True, it was the preferred sound of techno at the time, but it’s almost startling to hear a Hawtin set encompass things like an actual hook in DJ Shufflemaster’s Play Back, Pt. 3, to say nothing of the slightly tech-trancey chords in Smith & Selway’s rub of Slam’s Step Back. I wonder if Richie’s embarrassed by this phase of his today? As for Sven, he picks right up from Hawtin with the techno pummelage, then goes into noisy electro and punk techno (Vitalic, Hacker, Legowelt, and John Starlight all make appearances), which isn’t surprising for a 2001/2 set of this sort.

What marks Sound Of The Third Season as a unique entity, however, is all the field recordings Sven and Hawtin gathered, interjecting them at various points throughout the mix. Their aim was to recreate the atmosphere of a night out with them, including a t-bone steak dinner prior to the club, plus some afterhours shenanigans too (with Swayzak music!). Some folks complained these bits ruined the set flow of the CD, and Väth never repeated the trick in future installments of this series. I find it a worthy experiment though, plus rather hilarious for the final bit of ‘not-at-all-high’ dialog at the very end.

Various - min2MAX (Original TC Review)

M_nus: 2006

(2014 Update:
If this music is so minimal, then why is this review so maximal, AMIRITE!!?? Wow... I mean, just wow. How did I ever manage 1,200 words for this one? Right, a good four-hundred is spent at the start getting TranceCritic's reader-base caught up on what the whole minimal craze was about. We were just under a year late in doing so, but it needed addressing, and I was lucky enough to spot an eye-catching cover in the local HMV megastore that had a bunch of the music on it. Besides, it was a fresh stylistic movement that deserved some attention. Surely something like minimal would remain just a short-term fad though, one kept in underground, off-road events; nothing this gimmicky could endure and infest nearly every other genre and club for too long, right? Haha ha.

Ah well, 2006 was the honeymoon year, and as such saw occasional clever works being put out. There's a few on here too, but Hawtin's iron-clad manifesto of what his assembled M_nus roster should sound like is incredibly apparent on this compilation. While Magda, Wink, and Heartthrob break free of his shackles, it's apparent the rest struggled to meet his standards, coming out with relatively forgotten works now. Except that JPLS track - its suckiness is forever burned upon my poor ears.)


IN BRIEF: More than meets the ear.

Now here’s a style of music that’s sparked some debate. Minimal techno, in all its unassuming-yet-pretentious history, has dug deeper trenches in the Genre Wars than nearly any other genre out there. By listening and even getting something out of minimal, you’re considered far more cultured in music than the commoners of the pop world; a worthy gauge to test your sonic intellect. If you can’t comprehend it, then you simply must be a simpleton, so why not just go scurry on back to your Scooter albums, Junior, while the grown-ups enjoy their forward-thinking music.

Truthfully, the minimal crowds have a point when they make such outlandish claims. This music is not going to hold your hand and lead you to insta-melodies or pummeling percussion. Instead, it demands your undivided attention to pick out its nuances; those with short-attention spans need not apply. A slight change in pitch or rhythmic variation can have the same impact as a sputtering synth in epic trance or roaring bassline in jungle. This is music mostly for the head rather than the body or soul.

Of course, there’s always the trap of trying to be too clever, and this is often where minimal stumbles with a casual fanbase. Like other kinds of head music (psy dub, nu-jazz, drone), the old cliché of ‘rewards paying attention’ is suited, but minimal has the annoying habit of never anteing up such a reward. Too often what you hear is what you get, and this can be frustrating for those who want something out of the music they listen to, even if it’s subtle.

Richie Hawtin has bridged the gap between party hedonism and stubborn pretensions better than anyone, and has become the poster boy for minimal’s mission to bring a sense of class back to clubland without losing the fun along the way. I can’t say for sure whether he’s succeeding or not, but hanging out with Sven Väth certainly seems to have lightened up the Windsor native. In the process, Plastikman has gone ahead and started a label, Minus, promoting his manifesto.

min2MAX showcases a bevy of Minus producers, each giving us their take on the minimal sound. I suppose if you’re new to this music, such an idea sounds frightfully dull. Who has the time to sit through an entire compilation of minute beats and sound? Actually, further listening on min2MAX revels a decent amount of diversity within minimal’s structure.

Heartthrob’s Baby Kate gets this show on the road with a simple groover as bleepy sounds and bouncy bass bobble about. It’s all very subtle sounding, but bits of volume tweaks and reverb tricks do keep things ever-shifting. Similarly, follow-up Scatter from Gaiser pulls the same stunt on its percussion while a deep bassline grumbles about and sparse, static sounds do weird things in the background. Listening to these, it’s pretty apparent these tracks are more interested in creating atmosphere than anything else. In this, it does succeed, but your enjoyment of it will probably stem from whether you like mechanical mood music.

However, even mood music can use some melodic substance at times, and Magda gives us it with Staring Contest. Yeah, the rhythms are slight, and there still aren’t any major hooks to be had, but with twinkling sounds echoing in the background, there’s still an air of benevolence to be had. It’s the kind of stuff you might expect to hear on a Drexciya release, as it contains that ‘underwater resonance’ the group was known for. Of course, it also helps Magda has crafted a rhythm that is actually rather funky for something so minimal.

Unfortunately, Konrad Black’s offering here shows what’s so wrong with this genre. You get some bobbling bass sounds and sparse rhythms, and that’s it for the duration. Sure, a couple effects or percussion switch-ups occur at points, but none of which do anything remotely interesting, causing the track to loop along uneventfully. At least Troy Pierce’s GVRL retains some of that lost interest with an acidy bassline that’s nicely tweaked as it loops, all the while bleepy sound effects and better percussion fill in the surroundings. It’s still not terribly enduring, but a better effort in creating some of that moody atmosphere that was apparent early in this compilation.

Now here’s an individual that’s made the most out of the least. Wink’s Higher State from back in the 90s was pretty much just a funky electro beat, time-stretched vocals, and an acid line that got tweaked and distorted like a rockin’ guitar solo. So what’s he got in store for us here? Maintaining min2MAX’s theme, it seems. Have To Get Back is yet another dark, moody excursion into minimal sounds and layered loops. However, Wink does keep the tension on a continuous climb, letting layers overlap each other with increasing frequency. Eventually, some danceable tribal rhythms make an appearance via distorted percussion, but it never erupts the way you might hope the name Wink would lead you to believe. Still, it’s an interesting track while it lasts.

Marc Houle and Niederflur provide a ‘minimal-at-opposite-ends’ segment with these next two tracks. The former’s kind of similar to Pierce’s go, with a wobbly acid bassline and housey rhythms that groove you as plinky electronic noises work their way around them; probably the most energetic song thus far (although that isn’t saying much). Meanwhile, z.B. goes the other way, getting as minimal as minimal gets. The bassline is a mere pulse, synth stabs break the gloom infrequently, and clicky noises worm about, creating a rather choking atmosphere. Actually, this is closer to dub techno than minimal, but the two aren’t that dissimilar when you break them down. Is it any good though? Not bad at all, provided you don’t get distracted from all the yummy mechanical resonance. Yeah, yeah... I likes me some dubby resonance.

“But enough with all this dark, moody, serious stuff,” you say. “Can’t minimal get its head out of its ass long enough to at least have a sense of humour?” Look no further than Tractile’s Unquenchable then. The sounds used here, plinky-plonky electronic stuff sounding like some sort of dwarf-sized factory, end up taking a goofier slant on things compared to what we’ve heard so far, and it’s certainly a welcome relief to see some fun injected into this compilation, even if it’s only just this once.

With that out of the way, min2MAX gets back to business as usual for the final stretch, with two good tracks of groovey, deep techno sounds (Victoria Station and Orchidee), and an utterly horrible track lodged between the two of them. Seriously, this... Twilite 7; what on Earth is this? It takes the plinky-plonk sounds of Unquenchable and puts them in the sparse production of z.B., with none of the charm of either. It shows off everything that minimal gets mocked about in spades, and is an unfortunate blemish on a rather decent compilation in general.

Yeah, this is a decent compilation, and I’m sure fans of this stuff will love it. The bigger question, though, is whether there’s enough substance here to sway the anti-minimal crowd to switch sides. Frankly, it all depends on whether you buy into the agenda min2MAX sets out to accomplish. As mentioned, the music on here is more for your mood rather than to make you move; it’s far better suited to sitting back and listening to despite a few booty-shakin’ worthy moments. Although I’m not a big indulger of the minimal sounds of techno, I have to admit I still found myself occasionally getting lost in the murky atmosphere of these tracks.

min2MAX gives a suitable balance of sounds for the curious. If you want to hear what the fuss regarding minimal is, this is a safe purchase.

Plastikman - Closer

Novamute: 2003

Plastikman is Richie Hawtin, a very important person in the world of techno. A part of Detroit’s second generation, he was instrumental in de-Eightiesfying the genre, ushering in a 'less-is-more' aesthetic for a new era. Unfortunately, due to his near-perfect production, rumours persisted that he was a robot, and a self-image celebrating chrome-dome geekery didn't help. Sensing distress, a kindly German named Sven saved him from an existence of droidhood, and Richie regained his humanity through various acts of debauchery. Having done so, he embarked upon the most noble of white human pursuits: corporate shilling of self-stylized brands. Something like that anyway.

As much fun as that paragraph was to write, it's a horrible lead-in for this here album titled Closer, the third and (so far) last full-length released under the Plastikman banner. For that matter, I'm not sure what an effective lead-in would be, beyond the dry particulars. It’s not a popular album and, when discussing Hawtin’s legacy, barely brought up. Fans were confounded by it, casuals were uninterested, and the techno scene at large shrugged it off, figuring Richie would make a proper dancefloor album later.

Still, I’d argue it’s at least an important album. If anything, Closer was ground zero for the minimal scene’s rise in the middle 00s, as all the tricks that turned into clichés are present: simple lyrics spoken with pitched down vocals, plink-plonk production, white noise wank, etc. In 2003, such sounds were still tucked in the realms of experimental labels like Mille Plateaux. Hearing it on a Plastikman album legitimatized it as where techno should go next, and Hawtin made damned sure he promoted the hell out of the sound on his M_nus label, not just as a form of music, but as a way of life. Erm, yeah…

If you found the minimal wave ridiculous, then Closer isn’t going to convert you - best to stay away. For those who didn’t grow tired of it …well, this album’s still a bit of a chore. It’s the sort that can only be appreciated in a single sitting, but takes forever to build any momentum. All too often progress is undone by Hawtin’s need to detour into sound effect gimmickry, the worst offender being the middle track Slow Poke, which is nothing but sound effect gimmickry. I’ve listened to Closer at least a half-dozen times now, and still the only highlights for me are those crunchy claps in the second half.

That said, Hawtin succeeded in crafting an album that works in spite of itself. The mood is kept tight and claustrophobic, enveloping you into a dark journey of paranoia that you want to take in its entirety - I’ll bet those crunchy claps wouldn’t sound so cool if I hadn’t put up with hissing nonsense beforehand. While this is by no means revolutionary, it is effective, and if that’s enough for you in a concept album, then by all means get closer to, um, Closer.