''Minimal Nation'' is an album by American
electronic musician
Robert Hood. Released in 1994 through
Jeff Mills' Axis Records label,
it is considered a landmark release in the
techno genre
and one of the
minimal techno's key founding documents.
A restored and remasterered reissue of the album, featuring several tracks that were originally left off, was released in 2009.
A triple LP reissue was also released on Hood's own record label, M-Plan, in 2015.
Background and music
''
Fact
A fact is a datum about one or more aspects of a circumstance, which, if accepted as true and proven true, allows a logical conclusion to be reached on a true–false evaluation. Standard reference works are often used to check facts. Scient ...
'' magazine critic Marcus Scott stated that each track on the record "consists of rolling riffs that stammer and bounce across the metronomic rhythm, breaking the momentum with tiny synapse snapping manipulations.
According to ''
Wondering Sound'' critic
Philip Sherburne, the album "rendered the familiar thump and squelch of
Detroit techno even stranger, subtracting all remaining traces of
disco
Disco is a genre of dance music and a subculture that emerged in the 1970s from the United States' urban nightlife scene. Its sound is typified by four-on-the-floor beats, syncopated basslines, string sections, brass and horns, electric pia ...
and
R&B and imagining rhythm as a kind of chattering conversation between sentient machines." It also features traces of
jazz, "with the clash of fixed-interval chords undercutting conventional key signatures."
According to Hood, he developed ''Minimal Nation''s sound after coming across a chord sound on a
Roland Juno 2 keyboard and "realizing that he didn't need anything else other than the chord sound and a particular pattern".
He has cited the bleakness of the music as a reflection of his hometown,
Detroit.
He also reflected to its nature as a "a protest record", stating:
Reception and legacy
In an introspective review, Marcus Scott of ''Fact'' magazine praised the album, described it "as direct as
psychedelic music
Psychedelic music (sometimes called psychedelia) is a wide range of popular music styles and genres influenced by 1960s psychedelia, a subculture of people who used psychedelic drugs such as LSD, psilocybin mushrooms, mescaline, and cannabis to ...
gets". Scott also wrote that the record "sounds like
punk compared to what minimal means in 2009: a vision of hedonistic, wasted bohemian youth listening to gentle, anodyne
prog-rock
Progressive rock (shortened as prog rock or simply prog; sometimes conflated with art rock) is a broad genre of rock music that developed in the United Kingdom and United States through the mid- to late 1960s, peaking in the early 1970s. I ...
length tracks."
''
XLR8R''s AJ Calzada regarded the album's tracks as the "most important tracks in techno music; it’s
ictitle becoming the very blueprint for a new generation of machine-funk makers, warehouse movers, and minimal techno worshippers."
''Fact'' magazine also listed the album as number 53 on its list of "The 100 Best Albums of the 1990s".
Track listing
Original LP version
# "One Touch" – 3:58
# "Museum" – 5:12
# "Ride" – 4:16
# "Acrylic" – 3:54
# "Unix" – 3:14
# "Rhythm" – 5:04
# "Station Rider E" – 4:36
# "The Pace" – 5:40
Reissue
# "One Touch"
# "Museum"
# "SH.101"
# "Rhythm of Vision"
# "Unix"
# "Ride"
# "Station Rider E"
# "Self Powered"
# "Sleep Cycle"
# "Rhythm of Vision (Original)"
Bonus CD
# "One Touch
# "Museum"
# "SH.101"
# "Rhythm of Vision"
# "Unix"
# "Ride"
# "Station Rider E"
# "Self Powered"
# "Sleep Cycle"
# "Rhythm of Vision (Original)"
References
External links
*
{{Authority control
1994 albums
Robert Hood albums