Minimal Music - Minimalism in Popular Music

Minimalism in Popular Music

Minimal music has also had some influence on developments in popular music. The Experimental Rock act The Velvet Underground had a connection with the New York down-town scene from which minimal music emerged, rooted in the close working relationship of John Cale and La Monte Young, the latter influencing Cale's work with the band.

During the 1970s progressive rock, experimental rock, art rock, krautrock and avant-prog genres demonstrated the influence of experimental music, including minimalism, for example acts such as Soft Machine, King Crimson, Brian Eno, Robert Fripp and Mike Oldfield. In the 1980s and 1990s, artists working in alternative rock, shoegazing, post rock, and other genres, including the bands Spacemen 3, Experimental Audio Research, and Explosions in the Sky, continued in a similar vein.

Following the minimal electronic music of Brian Eno and the krautrock band Tangerine Dream, 1990s electronic dance music was influenced by changes in technology that lead to the use of production methods based on repetition, especially the genres of trance, minimal techno and ambient. Well-known artists include The Orb, Orbital, Underworld and Aphex Twin.

Sherburne (2006) suggests that the noted similarities between minimal forms of dance music and American minimalism could easily be accidental. Much of the music technology used in EDM has traditionally been designed to suit loop based compositional methods, which may explain why certain stylistic features of minimal techno and other forms of electronic dance music sound similar to minimal art music. One group who clearly did have an awareness of the American minimal tradition is the British Ambient act The Orb. Their 1990 production Little Fluffy Clouds features a sample from Steve Reich's work Electric Counterpoint (1987). Further acknowledgement of Steve Reich's possible influence on EDM came with the release in 1999 of the Reich Remixed tribute album which featured reinterpretations by artists such as DJ Spooky, Mantronik, Ken Ishii, and Coldcut, among others.