second episode of ruin radio! it's all minimal synth ... kinda. but what's a genre anyway, right? well, this episode was actually an experiment in addressing that question. i wrote a biiit of an essay here; you're welcome to peace out on it and head to the download link or mixcloud widget below. but if you want to read some of my thoughts on the genre associated with this music, come on ride this train cuz it's a-chuggin.
since veronica vasicka popularized (coined?) the term "minimal wave" in the early 2000s, music writers and reviewers have used it to describe analog synthesizer-based music -- particularly music created in the first half of the 80s, as well as the work of more recent artists. this means a lot of music that previously occupied a variety of genre labels, or amorphous genres, or no genre at all has gotten subsumed under a minimal wave banner and subsequently become very popular, often more popular than much of the older stuff was upon its initial release. i can't talk about this kind of branding as something i'm removed from either as a consumer or as a wannabe synth music maker: i use "minimal wave" and the related term "minimal synth" to seek out music all the time.
but what is it that appeals to me? the warmth of analog synths? the sense of unpredictability and creativity that comes with less-digitally-controlled sound-making, as opposed to other forms of electronic music? do i treat "minimal" as code for both "lo-fi" and "independent"? it's probably all of these things. and often, it's probably the sense not only that "i can make this stuff" -- what i see as a good thing -- but that there's a kind of unbounded potential involved in that: i can make other weird buzzy dancey introspective ambient shrieking whatever stuff, too. however, i also start to notice people labeling music as minimal wave (and more particularly minimal synth; waves are vague1 but synths ain't) that doesn't make a lot of sense in that context to me, and sometimes music i see as pretty minimal and synthy didn't get invited to that party for some reason. what does it mean when my understanding of these terms conflict with how others use them?
like lo-fi indie music, it looks like minimal wave has a few commonly recognized technical elements. yet -- and it's got this in common with lo-fi, too -- the use of this term is also political, as with any genre. regardless of the instrumentation involved in creating it, the closer something is to a recognized industrial/noise/punk/electronic body music/techno/hi-NRG/disco/ambient/____ aesthetic, the less likely people will label it "minimal wave." minimal wave, then, while it may include music at the margins of all these things, usually refers to a kind of synthesizer-based pop music (and some post punky stuff). it's loosely connected to whatever "new wave" was. within synth pop, then, the use of the minimal wave tag correlates with the "alternative," "underground," or "indie"-ness of the music it's applied to. as far as i know, contemporaneous releases by both absolute body control in belgium and soft cell (or early depeche mode) in the UK would qualify as minimal synth on the basis of instrumentation, but i suppose it's both the social stature and production budget of the latter that elevate them into "synth pop" territory. minimal wave is sexy because it's ragged and forgotten and nobody's dancing/sulking to it but us aesthetes, or something. it was kinda edgy then and it's kinda edgy now, even the happy stuff. i think that's the implication.
often, however, just as i'll hear so-called synth pop that feels wonderfully low-budget (see the new scientists track on this week's mix, with its string samples and all), i'll find music identified as minimal wave/minimal synth that sounds like it's proudly sporting the high-fi production sheen (and maybe the budget) to match that of "synth pop." this is especially true with more recent artists, now that "minimal wave" is a scene with labels like vasicka's dedicated to turning out minimal-sounding products. and i assume high sonic "fidelity" means something a little different now that laptop music production is a thing: the standards for financial/social capital necessary to produce this sound quality have changed. there are also older "minimal" songs that sound really clean and crisp to me, though it's possible i've only heard remastered files of those recordings and that's affecting my perception, just as my perception of the new scientists song is affected a bit by all those vinyl pops. but let's disregard the production question for now: on the basis of instrumentation alone, there's a lot of music -- including music i fucking love -- that makes me wonder how it qualifies for a genre defined by how synth-based and minimal it is, never mind the more specific and technical-sounding tag "minimal synth."
this leads me to the limits i set up in creating this playlist. to the extent i seek out minimal wave music, my snooty ass actually tends to look for music identified as "minimal synth": this term seems to actually, well, stand for something technical, something that differentiates it from the history of guitar-based rock and pop music, as well as other forms of music historically rooted in acoustic instruments. this has a lot of nuanced implications in terms of the accessibility of music making,2 the gendering of music making,3 and sometimes the social status of the people who make it (which is not to say that synthesizers tend to be as cheap, portable, or low-tech as many acoustic instruments, but i think depending on one's surroundings they're often somewhat lonely instruments to use, especially monophonic analog synths as differentiated from keyboards). as i said before, part of the attraction for me when i hear minimal synth music is the thought that maybe i can learn how to play stuff like this. this is important to me when other musical endeavors feel more daunting and more defined by a hierarchy of prowess/"talent" and social recognition.
what i end up discovering, though, is that a lot of music described as minimal synth on review sites and blogs is driven by ... guitars. this is true even on user review sites that treat minimal synth as, at heart, "entirely based on analog synthesizers and drum machines." like with minimal wave, a lot of this minimal synth-plus is music i really love, but ... what makes this or this minimal synth, exactly? i considered both of those for this mix, but as soon as i noticed the integral use of guitars in those songs and others it felt like the unity of this playlist started to get real loosey-goosey. i think maybe other people look to minimal synth for something a little different than i do. i think other people can play guitar. i think other people are less intimidated or turned off by traditional instruments and their social context. it's not that i hate guitars. but what i ultimately decided is i want this minimal synth mix to consist of something a little different, and i decided that difference would take the form of freedom from guitars. it's still mostly "pop" music, and all from a canonical time period. i didn't take this genre personalization (purism) too far. but to the extent i was able,4 i've minimized this synth mix down to a guitar-free zone. so, tune in and rock out already.
oh yeah. this episode includes the first appearance of detailed voice breaks. not as detailed as what i first recorded, if the logorrhea of this post is any indication. but i like, mention all the songs i play and stuff. i also experiment a little with crossfades between songs. fancy!
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1. true. also a french joke.↩
2. it makes less sense to measure your investment in making "music" (or whatever you call the sounds you beep-boop) in terms of your virtuosity, or your capacity to learn a bunch of theory and/or technique you otherwise don't give a shit about, when you're twisting knobs and everything's always a little new and less systematized. at least, that's part of the appeal for me and i imagine others. my fears about making music come in anew when i think about the possibility making compelling analog synth music requires, if not skill in the sense of a guitar or sax, something parallel: a penchant for electrical engineering and programming -- that it's music for "gearslutz."↩
3. even to the extent they're both made by male-assigned, male-perceived, and/or male-identifying people, i still think of guitar-based music and keyboard-based music as differently gendered social experiences. on the other hand, i'm also conscious of ways music i play on this show still feels gendered; this becomes especially true in kinda aggressively male-gazing genres (like power electronics) more than others.↩
4. this raises a separate point i didn't really discuss here: when do artists use synths to sound like guitars and other instruments, and when do they use them to sound like something unique? when are they tofurky and when are they a quinoa-peanut salad? i don't have a definite preference on this. if it's vegan i'll eat it, as long as it doesn't make me too gassy. though it always makes me too gassy. and by vegan i mean synthy and by gassy i mean ... gassy.↩
5. recorded sometime in 1982-1984; released through the blog crispy nuggets in 2012.↩
6. from the bedsit tapes; recorded 1978-1979.↩
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