Live - M_nus 10th Birthday, SEOne

Richie Hawtin, the man credited with coming up with the whole concept of minimal techno during his Platikman days, has built a veritable empire in the form of his M_nus record label. The empire is celebrating its tenth birthday with a series of gigs aroung the world revolving around the Contakt theme. Ed has already blogged about this concept, but essentially it involves a cube that feeds off the energy of the crowd and I'm not really sure what's meant to happen after that. It is all a bit pretentious and not really in keeping with what these kind of things should be about, which is the music. Thankfully, M_nus cannot be attacked too much, for despite all the peripheral fluff, the music has been blazing a trail for years and is still in full flow. There has been much talk of the demise of minimal techno of late, with its gradual replacement by something a bit deeper and a bit more soulful. While I agree that a lot of generic minimal techno has come out as it has become the "in" format of electronic music these last few years, I feel that rumours of its death have been greatly exaggerated, to paraphrase Mr. Twain. Ed has already pointed out in the comments of another post that if the "in" crowd move on to something else, that does not mean that the cream will not remain and keep churning out real high-quality stuff. If the crowd at SEOne at London Bridge was anything to go by last Saturday night, it would certainly seem to be the case that minimal techno is far from dead.
First off, I have read a lot of bad press about this gig. People have argued that the venue was poorly chosen, and that it should have been in Fabric. I will admit that SEOne, while quite cool in ways, was a bit soulless, too big, way too packed, and the sound was very poor. I suppose M_nus would argue that it was the only venue that could cater to such phenomenal demand, with hours long queues before the gig. If you want an intimate gig, don't go to the 10th birthday extravaganza of a massive record label, you moaning c**ts. As for the Cube, I didn't even see it to be honest. Not a clue where it was. Just a fad as far as I'm concerned. As for the music, however, anybody that complains can just piss off. Gaiser got things going early on, and after a delay, Hawtin, Magda, Marc Houle, Troy Pierce, and possibly Heartthrob all played on stage together messing on different bits of equipment. The place erupted. They all played a set on their own afterwards, and the quality on tunes, if not the sound, was through the roof. Glitches, clicks and kicks were the order of the day, coupled with bit treble-heavy build-ups and massive bass-laden kick-ins and euphoric roaring and leaping from the crowd. It was classic stuff, but just what you would expect from a M_nus gig.
All this could of course have been achieved without the Cube or the fuss, but it will still go down as one of my gigs of the year.

Here's a video of Troy Pierce playing a particularly tasty one: