Microhouse, buftech or sometimes just minimal, is a subgenre of
house music
House is a genre of electronic dance music characterized by a repetitive Four on the floor (music), four-on-the-floor beat and a typical tempo of 115–130 beats per minute. It was created by DJs and music producers from Chicago's underground ...
strongly influenced by minimalism and 1990s
techno
Techno is a genre of electronic dance music (EDM) which is generally produced for use in a continuous DJ set, with tempos being in the range from 120 to 150 beats per minute (bpm). The central rhythm is typically in common time ( ) and often ...
.
History
Microhouse has its roots in the
minimal techno
Minimal techno is a subgenre of techno music. It is characterized by a stripped-down aesthetic that exploits the use of repetition and understated development. Minimal techno is thought to have been originally developed in the early 1990s by Detro ...
,
bitpop (both developed in the early 1990s), and house (developed in the early 1980s) genres of music. Its first echoes appeared in a glitch album by German experimental artist
Oval
An oval () is a closed curve in a plane which resembles the outline of an egg. The term is not very specific, but in some areas of mathematics (projective geometry, technical drawing, etc.), it is given a more precise definition, which may inc ...
, in 1993. Like many contemporary electronic genres, Microhouse has many influences, most notably
techno
Techno is a genre of electronic dance music (EDM) which is generally produced for use in a continuous DJ set, with tempos being in the range from 120 to 150 beats per minute (bpm). The central rhythm is typically in common time ( ) and often ...
and the "click and pop" garage house that has emerged from
Yorkshire Bleeps and Bass (or "Bleep"), bitpop and minimal techno. Contrasting with
tech house, which is often thought of as 'house music with elements of techno in its arrangement and instrumentation', microhouse is more aptly described as 'housey minimal techno' – a marriage of the funky and groovy backroom house elements with bitpop and the driving, repetitive sound of techno. Emphasis tended to fall on cushiony kick-drum thumps and the accompanying hi-hats, with faint textures provided by synthetic strings and dreamy keyboard tones.
Full-fledged microhouse artists start appearing in the late-90's to early-00's such as German producer
Jan Jelinek. His contributions are notable in the genre considering works like "textstar+" (as Farben) and "Loop-finding-jazz-records". Both works have amassed cult status and widespread acclaim with its distinctive microhouse sound. Microhouse has continued on in the late 2010's-20's with electronic artists like Jon Hopkins, The Field, Pantha du Prince, Rival Consoles, Matthew Herbert, Actress, Four Tet, Isolée, and many others. "Vocalcity" by Luomo is a hallmark album in microhouse and has been credited as one of the main works that helped popularize the genre.
Throughout the late ‘90s and early 2000s, several small labels thriving on this approach cropped up. A fair percentage of the output from already-established labels like (
Isolée, ), Kompakt (Sascha Funke, M. Mayer) and (Farben) made for some of microhouse’s most thrilling moments. Other labels — such as
Force Tracks (Luomo, MRI),
Perlon (
Ricardo Villalobos
Ricardo Villalobos (born 6 August 1970) is a Chilean-born German electronic music producer and DJ. He is well known for his work in the minimal techno and microhouse genres, and is one of the most significant figures in the minimal techno scene.
...
, Pantytec) and
Trapez (
Akufen, M.I.A.) — were virtually all-microhouse in scope.
[Nye, Sean]
"Minimal Understandings: The Berlin Decade, The Minimal Continuum, and Debates on the Legacy of German Techno,"
Journal of Popular Music Studies 25, no. 2(2013): 154-84.
Coinage
The term ''microhouse'' was coined by music journalist and DJ
Philip Sherburne[Michaelangelo Matos (April 7, 2010)]
"Pantha Du Prince: Techno Music A Rock Fan Can Love"
'' NPR Music''. in a July 2001 article for the magazine ''
The Wire
''The Wire'' is an American Crime fiction, crime Drama (film and television), drama television series created and primarily written by the American author and former police reporter David Simon for the cable network HBO. The series premiered o ...
''.
Dave Stelfox wrote in
Hyperdub that the term described "the spectral, hypnotic interpretation of classic Chicago grooves emerging on labels such as Perlon, Kompakt, Playhouse, Ongaku, Klang Elektronik and the Mille Plateaux family of imprints-most notably Force Tracks and Force Inc- at the turn of the millennium."
Sherburne recalled how listening to Perlon's ''Superlongevity'' compilation in 1999, he "had the strong impression that House had been stripped down to a trifold essence: rhythm, soul and silence." For Sherburne, this was "not so much House as 'MicroHouse'," capturing "not only the proportions of the music, but also its semi-underground status, positioned at odds with more traditional
Deep House
Deep house is a subgenre of house music that originated in the 1980s, initially fusing elements of Chicago house with the lush chords of 1980s jazz-funk and touches of soul music. Its origins are attributed to the early recordings of Larry Heard ...
, to say nothing of the genre's even more mainstream,
megaclub fare." He traced the sound's reductionism to "
Chain Reaction
A chain reaction is a sequence of reactions where a reactive product or by-product causes additional reactions to take place. In a chain reaction, positive feedback leads to a self-amplifying chain of events.
Chain reactions are one way that sys ...
's blissed out minimalism," and its "punchier and groovier" qualities to "
Matthew Herbert's clipped, cushioned romps, and the minimalist Chicago disco pioneered by the likes of
Moodymann and
Theo Parrish." He traced further antecedents in "the catalogues of German labels like Klang Elektronik, Playhouse and subsequently Force Tracks".
Characteristics
Like house and techno, microhouse is built around a 4/4 time signature. Its
tempo
In musical terminology, tempo (Italian for 'time'; plural 'tempos', or from the Italian plural), measured in beats per minute, is the speed or pace of a given musical composition, composition, and is often also an indication of the composition ...
ranges between 115 and 130 BPM. A noticeable 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, which more often than not are stretched out and last longer in drops.
Microhouse artists often experiment with different forms of
sampling to achieve this effect.
One characteristic feature of microhouse is the use of 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's "Deck the House"). Vocals in microhouse are often simplistic, nonsensical, and monotone in nature, although some artists, such as
Matthew Dear, combine singing with microhouse production. This is one of the main characteristics of microhouse compared to deep house, for example, which tends to feature no vocals and also a slower tempo going to as low as 115 BPM in some songs.
Microhouse is somewhat obscure when compared to other genres of house and techno, but several cities including Bucharest, Melbourne, Berlin, London, Paris, Montreal, the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, Miami, Detroit, and Chicago, have budding scenes, and with the minimal techno boom of the mid-2000s, is now gaining great popularity in German, French, Canadian, Italian and Spanish clubs. Mainstream tech house records and CDs will occasionally have microhouse or minimal reworks of tracks. On top of this, several tracks have become major club hits over the years, and a few others have even gained European radioplay.
The following labels generally release minimal techno, deep house or other genres but also release microhouse:
*
*
BPitch Control
*Cadenza
*
Cocoon
*
Ghostly International /
Spectral Sound
*
Kompakt
Kompakt ( Labelcode: LC 12012) is a Cologne-based electronic music independent record label and vinyl/CD distributor, owned by Wolfgang Voigt, Michael Mayer and Jürgen Paape. They specialize in microhouse and minimal techno, and are known ...
*
Macro
*
Mille Plateaux
*
M nus
*
Traum Schallplatten
*Truesoul
*
Raster-Noton
Notes
External links
minimal boardAllmusic article on microhouseAn article on the Minneapolis minimal/microhouse sceneAn article on the click-hop subgenre of microhouse, with some discussion of microhouse as a genreFWD – Minimal House podcast
Hyperdub articleElectrofied– Electrofied Radio Show – Electro / tech/ fidget & minimal house podcast
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House music genres