Microhouse: 21st Century Funk and Minimalism

///download///

It's hard to conceptualize a movement from within. Music brings us into the moment and once we're here, we enter into a unique artist-audience relationship. We begin to personalize the experience until we can no longer see the art from the outside.

I forget exactly how or when I discovered Microhouse music. I do know that it found me through an arbitrary flow of life experiences:

-I took a liking to German class in high school//developed a taste for the German cultural footprint.

-I attended Movement Fest (or tech-fest to the locals) in my hometown of Detroit. Saw Matthew Dear aka Audion and had a transcendent listening experience with my bandmates.

-I traced Dear back to Ghostly International, an electronic label based in Ann Arbor, Michigan -- the same town in which my brother ran a radio station called WCBN. There I browsed through records and ripped countless gigabytes of music for sport.

-I visited what may have been Metro Detroit's last and best independent record shop that existed called Neptune Records. I asked the owner what was playing. "This German producer, Isolee" he said and led me to the vast Microhouse corner of the store.

This is techno music with soul. House music infused with minimalism. The beats arestill muscular (as in house) but clever too. Dancy but funkier still. Trancy----well, maybe more psychedelic...

It's only been 5 years since this movement peaked. An extended visit to Germany coincided, but the experience has receded from the moment and into the past. I hear it now as a movement, a happening, an "I was there" moment for which I'm very grateful.


///Tracklist///

1. Estrella - DJ Koze
2. Enrico - Isolee
3. Abglanz - Pantha Du Prince
4. A Paw In My Face - The Field
5. Titty Fuck - Audion
6. Lindt - Thomas Fehlmann
7. Chromophobia - Gui Boratto
8. My Grandmotha - DJ Koze
9. Edelgrün - The Orb
10. Dinamo - Nathan Fake
11. Beau Mot Plage - Isolee
12. New Life - Matias Aguayo
13. Jet - Ellen Allien and Apparat
14. Come To Where I Go - Dirk Leyers
15. Action - Fields

///Notes on this compilation///

The content comes predominantly from German imprints: Kompakt (Cologne), Traum (Cologne), Playhouse (Frankfurt)----but there is an exception w/ the Audion selection released stateside on Ann Arbor's Spectral Sound, a subsidiary of Ghostly International.

This download is made available for the love of music. Please contact info@riouxnyc.com with any concerns.

Enjoy!