Keep it simple. Minimal is a minimalist subgenre of techno. It is characterized by a stripped-down aesthetic that exploits the use of repetition and understated development. Minimal is thought to have been originally developed in the early 1990s by Detroit-based producers. In recent years, the genre has been heavily influenced by the microhouse genre, to the point of merging with it. It has also fragmented into a great number of difficult to categorize subgenres, equally claimed by the minimal techno and microhouse tags.