Clicks & Cuts
Minimal · 1998 · 115 to 128 BPM · also known as Clicks and Cuts
A laboratory of micro sound applied to rhythm, built around Mille Plateaux's Clicks and Cuts label at the turn of the 2000s. The glitch became raw material: digital clicks, CD reading errors, silences cut with a scalpel, assembled into spectral grooves. More radical than the microhouse it later fed, it marks a pivotal moment when German electronic music turned to examine its own raw material and process.
6 reference tracks
- Pole: Tanzen (1998)
- Vladislav Delay: Huone (2000)
- Jan Jelinek: Tendency (2001)
- Akufen: Deck The House (2002)
- Ricardo Villalobos: Dexter (2003)
- Alva Noto: Xerrox Voyage (2020)
At a glance
- Tempo: 115 to 128 BPM
- First appeared: around 1998
- Machines: Max/MSP, Native Instruments Reaktor, Ordinateur, Steinberg Cubase
- The sound: Erreurs numériques samplées, Éditions au sample près, DSP expérimental
- Labels: Mille Plateaux, Raster-Noton, 12k, Raster
- Key artists: Oval, Alva Noto, SND, Frank Bretschneider, Vladislav Delay
Producing Clicks & Cuts
Tempo swings further than in microhouse, from around 100 BPM for Pole's dub pieces up to 130 for Akufen. The feel is often deliberately irregular: a grid exists, but some clicks fall off it, shifted by a few milliseconds like reading errors. Use moderate swing, or none at all with everything placed by hand, and treat silence as a rhythmic element. Build the kick from a short sine or a raw digital pop, and the snare from a fragment of error, a skipping CD or a dropout, cut with no fade so the click becomes the material. Keep the loop at four beats but fragmented, kick only on one and three, irregular clicks, an empty eighth in the middle. The bass stays sparse, a round sine sub, or a barely present low drone.
The full production course, in French: tempo, drums, bass, sounds, arrangement, mix, plugins and machines, and a step by step start.
Frequently asked
What is Clicks & Cuts?
A laboratory of micro sound applied to rhythm, built around Mille Plateaux's Clicks and Cuts label at the turn of the 2000s. The glitch became raw material: digital clicks, CD reading errors, silences cut with a scalpel, assembled into spectral grooves. More radical than the microhouse it later…
What tempo is Clicks & Cuts played at?
Between 115 and 128 BPM.
Who are the key Clicks & Cuts artists?
Oval, Alva Noto, SND, Frank Bretschneider, Vladislav Delay.
In the same family
- Minimal Techno
- Tech House
- Microhouse
- Minimal Tech
- Minimal Prog
- Ro-Minimal
- Minimal Wave
- Deep Tech
- Fidget House
- Micro Techno
Listen to Clicks & Cuts in the atlas · Cette page en français
