One of the nice things about electronic dance music, which is also one of the rather frustrating things, is that it mutates and diversifies like a virus on Red Bull. No sooner do you discover a variant of techno that you particularly like than it splits into five or six subgenres. What is documented on this compilation from the Lantern label is a variety of minimal techno house that is particularly popular in Japan. Only serious scenesters will likely be able to explain what distinguishes minimal techno house from minimal ...
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One of the nice things about electronic dance music, which is also one of the rather frustrating things, is that it mutates and diversifies like a virus on Red Bull. No sooner do you discover a variant of techno that you particularly like than it splits into five or six subgenres. What is documented on this compilation from the Lantern label is a variety of minimal techno house that is particularly popular in Japan. Only serious scenesters will likely be able to explain what distinguishes minimal techno house from minimal techno, or indeed from deep house, but no matter: all of the tracks here are worth hearing, and some are quietly brilliant. There are no slamming beats, just carefully constructed grooves that sometimes bounce in a glitchy way (Mr. Dee's "Winter") and sometimes build slowly from layers of off-kilter TR-909 tracks (Sven Weisemann's "Get Smart"), and very frequently throb and echo with dubwise effects. The album's final track is its strongest, a vocal number by Glimpse and Lee Van Dowsky titled "My Son"; it manages to be both dark and wispy at the same time, with a distracted sort of funkiness and a dreamy, abstract mood. What are almost completely lacking, strangely enough, are recognizable house beats, but the term "house" has pretty much been stripped of any specific meaning by now anyway. ~ Rick Anderson, Rovi
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