Five essential Minimal Wave excavations
Upon first hearing the obscure synthpop single ‘Devil’s Dancers’ by UK electronic duo Oppenheimer Analysis, DJ and East Village Radio resident Veronica Vasicka was immediately struck by its austere urgency and skeletal fizz. A crackling slice of buried lo-fi pop that surged with hooky infection amid its frigid and glacial atmosphere. Spinning the long-lost relic one night in Brooklyn to a crowd that immediately hit the dancefloor the moment its somatic sequencer shot off the speakers, Vasicka began dreaming up her Minimal Wave Records project.
Launched in 2005 to issue ‘Devil’s Dancers’ on a limited vinyl along with three other cuts, Vasicka dusted off an old 1980s home-Xeroxed zine filled with contact details of the related bedroom synth artists and sought to unearth more tapes and home recordings for the new minimal wave label. A revision of her Minimal-Electronik Plus radio show, Minimal Wave proved to be the perfect umbrella term for her electronic reissue and restoration label, honing in on two essential sonic components of synthpop’s chillier satellite—pared-down primitivity in its arrangements that dwell in an icy terrain of nonchalant detachment.
The UK fared better with the colder end of synthpop, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, John Foxx, and early Human League all enjoying cult yet respectably commercial success, but numerous post-punk adjacent new wavers in Europe, Japan, and odd corners of America became lost by the wayside. Bal Paré, Das Ding, Jyl, and In Trance 95 gleaning at best local success before disappearing as electronic music’s minor footnotes, only ever heard by the dedicated online blogs and old-fashioned mailing communities keeping the blue flame alive.
Yet, Vasicka had launched Minimal Wave Records at the perfect time. For a few years previously, the coldwave gems had been spun in select Brooklyn music circles, shared via Soulseek file exchanges and enjoyed through extremely limited imports from Germany’s Genetic Music. Soon enough, minimal synth had arrived, heralded by the Wierd Records label and party nights, propelling the likes of Xeno & Oaklander and Led Er Est to electronic fame—the renewed veneration for analogue synthesisers perfectly married with Minimal Wave’s expanding roster of forgotten synth pioneers.
With such an incredible back-catalogue of vital artists, not to mention the crucial Cititrax sub-label specialising in techno and modern variants, we take a look at Vasicka’s minimal wave excavations and in no order, present five releases for the intrepid newcomer.
Five essential Minimal Wave Records excavations
Moderne – ‘Moderne / L’Espionne Aimait La Musique’
Formed in Tours in 1979 and fronted by Gérard Lévy, the French Moderne presented a unique synthpop sound that bristled with angular jabs yet frosted with shimmering production. At times spiky and buoyant with ‘Dilemma’, or stirringly evocative with the immersive ‘Vers L’est’, Moderne straddled a beguiling sonic intersection of taut, Conny Plank-style production snap that cuts a distinct presence in the Minimal Wave collection.
Little known and bereft of detail despite Vascika’s best investigative efforts, Moderne only ever released two LPs and a smatter of surrounding 7″ singles. Their two albums, mixed at Studio Rudas Düsseldorf, the same place Kraftwerk mixed 1978’s seminal The Man Machine, Minimal Wave packaged both their eponymous debut and L’Espionne Aimait La Musique sophomore in 2009, and archived a fantastic jewel of lost European music, affording Moderne’s glimmering constructivist pop the updated polish it deserved.
Futurisk – ‘Player Piano’
Less frosty than Minimal Wave’s usual rescues, the Florida synthpunk outfit Futurisk were more indebted to the primal urgency of The Units or DAF over their peers’ typical brittle freeze. Very much a band rather than a homespun moniker, London emigrant Jeremy Kolosine shoved, jived, and swung with punk swagger while fronting the live drums and synth attack, all crumpled together with a raw splutter of scrambled sequencers and atonal squall.
Among arresting cuts such as ‘Army Now’ and ‘Lonely Streets’, it’s ‘Meteoright’ that towers as their finest moment. An electro-skulker that hacks and slices with cinematic stir featuring the thickest, baddest keyboard solo ever and peppered with gloriously tech-surrealist lyrics: “She’ll lick your mind then she’ll take a bite!”
Sat in their roster with a welcome belligerence, Minimal Wave gathered The Sound Of Futurism 1980/Army Now and Player Piano EPs and issued all Futurisk’s material in one cracking release in 2010. Having been heard on James Murphy’s eccentric DJ sets on the cusp of forming LCD Soundsystem, it’s wholly possible Futurisk’s organic electricity helped inform Murphy’s future dance-punk records.
Ohama – ‘The Potato Farm Tapes’
When announcing “I live on a potato farm in Western Canada” on the chugging proto-techno driver ‘The Drum’, Tona Walt Ohama wasn’t joking. Working away in a home studio underneath his parents’ potato farm in Rainier, Alberta, Ohama scored a particularly eccentric sonic collage of media samples, punchy drum machines, and a slice of lo-fi synthpop that inhabits the cusp of electronic music’s transition from analogue to later MIDI and digital innovations.
Ohama’s tapes provide an unfiltered peek into his sideways view of the political and cultural landscape of the early 1980s. With only a TV offering a window into a fraught and dangerous world beyond the secluded potato farmland, Ohama presented a set of songs that were both isolated yet plugged into the commercialised paranoia of his southern national neighbour. There’s a warped, cartoon edge to cuts like ‘Midnite News III’ or ‘My Time’, gunked with a molten slew of honking vocal bends and gelatinous sound fonts.
While previous tracks had been dropped on various Minimal Wave compilations, Vasicka collated 1982’s Midnite News cassette and various rarities on 2012’s The Potato Farm Tapes, an exceptionally curated document of Ohama’s distinctly disquieting and cynical synthpop vignette of buzzing, broadcast radiations.
Deux – ‘Decadence’
Coldwave needn’t mean aloof or remote. Formed in Lyon by Gérard Pelletier and Cati Tete, the French duo Deux crafted a sultry and enveloping minimalist sound shrouded in an inviting intimacy. Coloured by an unmistakable and effortless elegance, they wielded their synths as instruments of wistful impressionism, each track like an opening curtain, letting in the light among the scene’s oft-hollow climate. While Deux’s pop craft is certainly minimal in structure, their sprightly spirit and attitude anchor their work to a giddy, brighter plane.
Pelletier’s love of Kraftwerk shines all over Deux’s early work, gifted with an expert knack for wringing maximal impact and feeling from the simplest presentations. The pair’s dual vocal interplay is a major asset too, playing off each other with a whimsical spark and enticing frisson.
Vasicka must have known she’d struck gold with these two, scooping up several singles and a tape haphazardly dropped between 1983 and 1992 on the 2010 compilation Decadence, offering Minimal Wave with one of their most jovial and ardently fun catalogues of their canon.
Martin Dupont – ‘Hot Paradox’
Whether the Marseille trio Martin Dupont can be labelled coldwave is up for debate. While their debut Just Because… is coated in a tighter wash of chilly synths, frontman Alain Séghir, along with Beverley Jane Crew and Brigitte Balian, burst their canvas wide open on later EPs and tapes, jumping into palettes of richer textures and romantic vibrancy. This joyous rush is definitively captured in 1987’s Hot Paradox, the last LP before their decades-long hiatus, brimming with artfully weird pop charges such as ‘Inside Out’ and the divine stomper ‘He Saw the Light’.
Minimal Wave did release the comprehensive The Complete Collection 1980–1988 box set in 2018, which is well worth anyone’s time; however, Hot Paradox still endures as the perfect gateway into the piquant trio, documenting Martin Dupont operating with full creativity and unrestrained imagination.
