With minimalism so widely accepted and practiced today, it’s easy to forget that the name began as a pejorative and that this umbrella of musical styles had to fight for the cultural space it now occupies.
The history is worth a brief recap — both as a reminder that every artist working in this space is standing on the shoulders of giants, and as a framework for seeing the common underlying tenets of music that might on the surface seem quite different.
What is minimalism? It’s exactly what the name implies: a stripping down of art to its essence; a spare, judicious use of the basic building blocks of creation.
In visual art, minimalism came into focus in the late 1950s and early ‘60s in Frank Stella’s black paintings. In music, it came out of 1960s New York City and composers such as LaMonte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Phillip Glass. Their music incorporated elements such as drone, repeated patterns (often arpeggios) and consonant rather than dissonant harmonies.
No doubt there were numerous sources of inspiration for these composers: the philosophies and music of John Cage and Morton Feldman; Indian raga; African drumming; John Coltrane; and Miles Davis, whose explorations of mood, tone and space offer inspiration for both compositional ambient and minimalism more generally.
The shadows of those early pioneers have since been cast in literally hundreds of directions: Brian Eno, Max Richter, Talk Talk, Godspeed You Black Emperor!, Low, Stars of the Lid, Nils Frahm and many, many more.
What was the knock against minimalism? Essentially that it is quite literally not enough — that its elements are too simple to engage a serious ear. In a classical context — Western art music, if you want to call it that — this criticism comes from the fact that minimalism represented a repudiation of what came before it, which was fiendishly complex modernism.
Clearly I’m on the side of the minimalists or I wouldn’t be writing this blog. But there was a kernel of truth to the criticism: When taken too far, minimalism can become too predictable — too harmonically or melodically static. Of course, where that line falls is subjective: No doubt the music I make is too slow and devoid of surprise for some, while others might take comfort in its repeated patterns, layers of instrumentation and subtle variations.
At a certain point, it’s fair to ask whether “minimalist” still has any meaning. After all, the movement’s influence has spread so far and wide — among classical, film and ambient composers, and all along the spectrum from “art” to “pop” music — that it’s no doubt become an amorphous term. Not to mention that plenty of musicians and composers who have been tagged with the label reject it — and some of them have produced large, complex works that don’t fit easily under a minimalist banner. Also, terminology evolves. In the visual arts, the term “post-minimalism” has been used since the early 1970s, while in music it’s been around since about 1980.
So, is there any point to continuing to use the word “minimalism”? Again, it’s a fair question.
My answer is simple: Musicologists might split hairs over this, but I’m not going to. When I use the term “minimalist,” I’m referring to a framework of ideas — not strictly to the 1960s movement where those ideas originated. While there are certainly many subgenres that have spun out of the decades-old minimalist movement — and I’ll use those identifiers as needed — there’s still a common element that unites them all: the idea that less is more.
That’s not to say that minimalist music is always simple — in fact, lots of it has plenty of musical sophistication and subtlety — only that it starts from a philosophy that a single note, or even silence itself, can speak volumes. And that’s enough commonality for me to continue to use the term to denote a big-tent philosophy that continues to yield beautiful and meaningful creative works, both throughout the decades and across a range of related genres.
I told myself (and my wife) that if I started a music blog, I wasn’t going to let it become an enormous drain on my time. “I’ll post my Top 10 list with just a few words about each entry — two or three sentences at most,” I said. Then I promptly sat down and spent several hours writing — and editing, and writing again — about Hammock’s Silencia.
Realizing that if I spent several hours on each of my Top 10 entries, I’d be well into 2020 before I finished it, I decided to revert to the original plan: minimal words. I did a bit better the second time around — but not by much. Such is the challenge of serving as your own editor.
This list is a good snapshot of where I’m coming from musically. If you’re coming from a similar place, perhaps you’ll find something worthwhile here or in future Spot on the Hill posts.
Here’s my Top 10 list, in no particular order.
Trio Ramberget, Musik att somna till – My tastes generally run toward piano, strings, guitars and ambient textures, so I was as surprised as anyone to find that one of my favorite albums of the year combines bass clarinet and trombone, along with double bass. This Swedish group bills itself as an “ambient/free improvisation trio,” and that’s true as far as it goes. But to hear their soul-enriching, stunningly poignant music — conjured out of a gracefully resonant blend of breathy, ethereal and sometimes achingly sustained tones — you’d do them a tremendous disservice to think of their improvisation as anything less than exquisite composition-in-the-moment.
Hammock, Silencia – This duo from Nashville returns with another album of mesmerizing beauty. Silencia features a 20-piece choir and was mixed by Francesco Donadello, who has also worked with A Winged Victory for the Sullen and the late Jóhann Jóhannsson.
Listening to Hammock, it’s ironic that I haven’t taken more direct inspiration from them. Their musical values — melody, pacing, arrangement, introspection, texture — mirror my own.
The truth is, however, that I’m a latecomer to their spacious, compelling music. Still, from the moment I first heard “I Can Almost See You” (many years after its 2006 release), the Nashville-based two-piece has been on my radar. The track’s subtly propulsive build — achieved through ethereal keyboard swells, postrock guitar echoes, angelic but fleeting vocals, and the careful building and removing of textures — makes a compelling case both musically and emotionally. It doesn’t hurt that the track also carries clear hints of postrock pioneers Sigur Ros and Labradford.
Thirteen years after “I Can Almost See You” (from the album Raising Your Voice … Trying to Stop an Echo), Silencia finds Hammock demonstrating both how far the band has come and how true it has remained to its vision.
At its foundation, the album shows Hammock developing the same mesmerizing dynamic builds it was using more than a decade ago — but the beauty and elegance of the whole endeavor is now on an entirely different level. Layers upon layers of keyboards, strings and vocals rise and fall, over and over, as Hammock’s musical architecture slowly unfolds. Cellos enter and recede. Notes float, seemingly suspended in midair. A low, gentle pulse gives a heartbeat that keeps the music pushing forward in a measured, stately procession. The pace is glacial (sorry, I couldn’t resist a reference to the band Seam), but never stagnant. Silencia speaks loud and clear.
Astrïd, A Porthole (1)(Gizeh Records) – The violin on the opening track, “Nemalion,” lays out a beautiful melody that is almost painfully exposed, liked you’ve walked in on a rehearsal you shouldn’t be in. Textural, echoey guitars, the drone of a harmonium and subtle percussion follow. Throughout, the French quartet — sometimes veering into Talk Talk territory — explores the edges of postrock where it meets contemporary composition. This album delivers on its name, offering a porthole into an enchanting musical world.
Anne Müller, Heliopause (Erased Tapes) – Fans of contemporary approaches to the cello — think Maya Beiser or Julia Kent — should love this beguiling debut, which Müller wrote, recorded and produced on her own. “Solo? Repeat” combines long melodic lines, rapid string crossings and layered cellos — and resonates like an ECM Records release.
Nils Frahm, All Encores – If you search for this album on Apple Music, you’ll find its genre listed as “ambient.” Look for the same album on Google Play, and you’ll see it categorized as “dance/electronic.” Before I had the chance to see Nils Frahm live last year, I would’ve thought “ambient” was a bit of a misnomer (due to Frahm’s hushed, but structured, piano works), while “dance/electronic” was simply a miscategorization. But there’s a reason that Frahm is one of the most well-known artists making instrumental music, and part of it is his multifaceted appeal and engaging versatility, moving easily from close-miked, felt-dampened piano to the sublime drone of a harmonium to the insistent electronic rhythm of a track like “Spells.”
Deaf Center, Low Distance – I don’t know how widely used or accepted the term “compositional ambient” is, but I find that it’s a useful genre marker to delineate the space between pure ambient music and what might be called modern or contemporary composition. Deaf Center, the duo of Erik K. Skodvin and Otto A. Totland, resides squarely in this space. From indecipherable atmospheric sounds and drone notes to strings, static hums and slow arpeggios from a felt-dampened piano, Low Distance shows Deaf Center to be absolutely masterful at making dark, riveting instrumental music, no matter what you call it.
Sarah Davachi, Pale Bloom – Davachi, from Canada, holds a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and a master’s degree in electronic music and recording media. Her bio states what her work is about far better than I could, so I’ll let it speak for itself: Davachi’s work “is primarily concerned with disclosing the delicate psychoacoustics of intimate aural spaces, utilizing extended durations and simple harmonic structures that emphasize subtle variations in overtone complexity, temperament and intonation, and natural resonances.”
Davachi’s music is both heady and astounding; her 2018 release Gave in Rest is a magnificent display of her compositional power, full of multilayered elegiac meditations. Pale Bloom, meanwhile, opens with the focus squarely on her first instrument, the piano. The somber but elegant “Perfumes I” evolves out of a foundation of Bach and introduces electronics only in a subordinate role. “Perfumes II” sticks with the piano while also introducing vocals, while”Perfumes III” offers sustained drones overlaid by piano chords.
The last track on this four-track album, “If it Pleased Me to Appear to You Wrapped in this Drapery,” opens in a manner similar to Astrïd’s “Nemalion”: with beautiful yet painfully exposed violin, conveying a sense of musical and emotional vulnerability. Augmenting the violin are sustained tones and overtones whose origins I can’t identify. While the first three tracks take Davachi back to her pre-electronic roots as a pianist, the 22-minute closing piece finds her working with strings, organ and electronics, exploring subtle harmonic overtones in the tradition of avant-garde composer La Monte Young. Twenty-two minutes of minimalist drone isn’t for everyone — at least not every day — but wherever Davachi goes, it’s at least worth a visit.
Sjors Mans, Noord(Piano and Coffee) – If you had told me a year-and-a-half ago that ambient music made by brass instruments would become a theme among my Top 10 list, I wouldn’t have thought it possible. But then I heard Trio Ramberget and Sjors Mans. Noord gives us six tracks of blissful swells, atmospheric textures, delicately delivered trumpet and patient dynamic builds, along with some intimately creaking piano and occasionally frenetic synth work. All of it is thoughtfully constructed and mixed, delivering a result that’s profound and deeply satisfying.
Cenes, Carried – Comprised of cello, violin and piano, Carried is a meditative exploration of sound, with long drone notes and warm, sustained harmonies. Borne of an effort by composer/pianist Jim Perkins to step away from the grind of academic composition by taking a more instinctual, organic approach, the result is a wistful collection of brief and simple-yet-effective pieces.
r beny, Echo’s Verse– Two prominent features of ambient music are its dual focus on creating aural textures and on creating a feeling of drifting. San Francisco’s Austin Cairns excels at both, weaving complex, multilayered works from modular synths, tape loops and samplers. What separates r beny from, say, Hammock or Deaf Center, is where his music falls on the spectrum of ambient to compositional. Yes, of course it’s composed in the sense that Cairns is creating and organizing every sound — but the emphasis here is more on texture than on form, and the textures he creates are striking. On the title track, Cairns offers an ambient gem: an intermittent, wobbling hum carried along by a languidly paced melodic motif and punctuated by a static-y, higher-end tone cutting in and out and bouncing back and forth between left and right channels. Echo’s Verse is ambient enough to serve as background music, but you’re better off actually listening.
