Minimal

Minimal on vinyl: repetition, space and reduction

In short: Minimal has two faces: in new music it means pieces made with reduced means – repeated patterns as in Terry Riley’s work from the sixties on, or slowly changing fields of sound. In club music it stands for stripped-back techno, as Richie Hawtin shaped it as Plastikman in the nineties. The Vinyl Room currently has 36 minimal records.

What does minimal mean?

Patterns and fields of sound: Terry Riley with “Shri Camel”, Phill Niblock with the long, sustained sound fields of “Exploratory”, Hiroshi Yoshimura with “Green” and Cluster & Eno.

Stripped back in the club: Plastikman with “Sheet One” and the Dane Mikkel Metal. Working across styles with few means are Arooj Aftab on “Vulture Prince” and Park Jiha on “The Gleam”.

What to look for

Among our minimal records the 2020s are the largest group; most editions come from Europe and the US; label, catalogue number and year of release help you tell which edition you have – it’s noted with each copy.

From our stock

First pressings

New in

→ Ambient · Experimental · Tech house · Electronic on vinyl · How to spot a first pressing · Grading explained

FAQ

What does minimal mean? Two things: music made with reduced means – repetition or slowly changing fields of sound – and stripped-back techno.

Who shaped minimal music? Composers such as Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Philip Glass.

What is minimal techno? Techno that gets by with few sounds – Plastikman, for example.

Which minimal records do you have? Here, for example, Terry Riley’s “Shri Camel” and Hiroshi Yoshimura’s “Green”.