Waves Pt. II

Dark wave, minimal wave's moody older sister, has more visibly defined elements and idiosyncracies. Interestingly, though perhaps not always recognized for it, dark wave is responsible for the entire spawn of electro wave newborns*, and other post industrial influenced groups, french cold wave, general cold wave, and the Nueu Deutsche Welle, a movement unpopular or simply unheard of outside of Germany. In fact, dark wave really wasn't blossoming anywhere so much as it was in Germany, France, and to a lesser extent, Belgium. Though the specific terminology developed after the establishment of goth, its primary influence, dark wave explains anything new wave or post punk with a dark atmosphere. Yet to say something is a part of dark wave honestly means it is more deliberate, perhaps. Where goth developed organically and by some sort of cultural accident, dark wave set out to perpetuate the already constructed darkness in the shadows of post punk.The darkness becomes somehow more fetishized. Essentially, goth is dark wave, just as dark wave contains goth. Wave refers more to the overall implication and movement, goth being a member, and therefore the wind on the surface of this black ocean, transferring beautiful torment to the water through friction between melodic air and water molecules.


*please keep in mind i am going to just going to ignore Electropop altogether on this blog, it will just be nothing but a mess.*

Waves

Lets talk about minimal wave.

Minimal wave, in fact, attempts to be defined, or rather, "named" and named 'contentiously' at that, a genre of electronic music that focuses on instrumentation (emphasizing a pre-1982,but not pre sequencer) and quote, 'themes of sincere rather than ironic (?) detachment.' lets think about this for a moment. Clearly this genre is not truly classified into a category and it has been questioned as to whether it is definable at all. But that leads to the point, or lack thereof, of this excerpt.

what I'm really thinking about, honestly, is wikipedia's sad excuse for minimal wave description. "Contentiously"? there seriously seems to be some fear in clearly defining minimal wave due to its extreme elusiveness and confusingly impossible differentiation from synth pop or any wave for that matter. 

Did I forget to mention synth wave? How can we make the difference between these two genres more concrete? Thats because we can't. There is absolutely no difference and thats exactly what minimal wave wants.  Minimal wave wants to be nothing, is nothing and cannot be. Yet it will fight to stand alone as a genre and genre itself is just dumb. minimal wave requires a certain amount of exclusivity, both literally as well as figuratively. when i say this i am referring to the use of unpolished production involving synth and drum machinery manufactured from the 70s to mid 80s that helps us get a better idea of what it consists of structurally. Minimal wave implies a darker edge of some kind, and can function perfectly well on the shelf beside the royalties of dark wave and post-punk synth based anything for that matter.  Bands like Belgium's Autumn, Oppenheimer Analysis, Solid Space, Futurisk, and as much as it prefers to be tied to the broader spectrum of synth wave, Linear Movement, all constitute this group. lets not get into the contemporary place that minimal wave is today, or should i say rip off bands that call themselves minimal wave but are really just a couple wannabes with synthesizers lost on the internet and okay with never achieving any sense of fame/recognition. (of course this was never a goal of anyone in the minimal wave genre either).

Trying to define minimal wave is like trying to write a book in a language that doesn't exist. This abstraction is precisely what it strives for. so thank you minimal wave, for existing in whatever sense that means and reminding us all of the pointlessness of genre and the somewhat undeniable satisfaction of abstraction.