A movement in various forms of art and design, particularly in visual art and music, in which the work is stripped down to its most fundamental elements. The term is sometimes applied to music that displays some or all of these features: repetition (often of short musical phrases, with minimal variations over long periods of time), stasis (a lack of motion, often in the form of drones and long tones), consonant harmony, and an unchanging tempo and meter. Minimalist music and some genres of electronic music are very similar.
Philip Glass is considered one of the major minimalist composers (though he hated the term), although Steve Reich is perhaps better known. The Chicago House and Detroit Techno music scene in the early 1990s saw a major minimalist revolution with the emergence of artists such as Robert Hood, DJ Rush, and Richie Hawtin.