Microhouse

Microhouse, buftech or sometimes just minimal, is a subgenre of house music strongly influenced by minimalism and 1990s techno.[2]

This article is about music. For the human dwelling-structure, see List of house types.
Microhouse
Stylistic origins
Cultural originsLate 1990s, Europe[2]
Regional scenes
  • Frankfurt
  • Cologne
  • Montreal
  • Paris
  • Barcelona
  • Melbourne
  • Romania (DC10)
Other topics

History

Microhouse has its roots in the minimal techno, 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, in 1993. Like many contemporary electronic genres, Microhouse has many influences, most notably techno 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.

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 Playhouse (Isolée, Losoul), Kompakt (Sascha Funke, M. Mayer) and Klang Elektronik (Farben) made for some of microhouse’s most thrilling moments. Other labels -- such as Force Tracks (Luomo, MRI), Perlon (Ricardo Villalobos, Pantytec) and Trapez (Akufen, M.I.A.) –- were virtually all-microhouse in scope.[3] [4]

The term microhouse is usually credited to music journalist and DJ Philip Sherburne,[5] writing for the magazine The Wire in 2001, to describe, according to Stelfox, "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."[6]

Characteristics

Like house and techno, microhouse is built around a 4/4 time signature. Its tempo 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.[7][3] 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, Cologne, Paris, Montreal, the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, Minneapolis, Detroit, Chicago, DC and Portland 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.

Notable microhouse record labels

The following record labels mainly release microhouse:

  • [a:rpia:r]
  • The Lab Records
  • Background Records
  • Cynosure
  • Perlon
  • Microcosm
  • Minisketch
  • Pampa Records
  • Ware

The following labels generally release minimal techno, deep house or other genres but also release microhouse:

Notable artists

Notes
  1. Reynolds, Simon (2013). Energy Flash: A Journey Through Rave Music and Dance Culture. Soft Skull Press. In microhouse, elements of techno and disco, electro and house, acid and trance, get shuffled;
  2. Ishkur (2005). "Ishkur's guide to Electronic Music". Retrieved August 12, 2014.
  3. "Microhouse". Retrieved August 12, 2014.
  4. 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.
  5. Michaelangelo Matos (April 7, 2010). "Pantha Du Prince: Techno Music A Rock Fan Can Love", NPR Music.
  6. Stelfox, Dave (2002). "Clicky Disco: Microhouse's Forward March". Archived from the original on 2004-03-15.
  7. Ishkur (2005). "Ishkur's guide to Electronic Music". Retrieved August 12, 2014.
  8. Baines, Josh. "A Bullshitter's Guide to Microhouse". thump. Retrieved 17 November 2016.
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