What is IDM?

since only been aware of any electronica for about a year, i understand this could all be dreams-will not take offense at being skewered.

I always liked Jay Lesser's idea to call this stuff "supermusic"; you have to practice saying it in a German accent- "i don't make IDM, I make zupermusik" .

to me, idm basically starts with warp artificial intelligence thing, and, yes, originally i think that was basically 'home listening', 'armchair techno', marketed that way, at least. a lot of crossover with the ambient scene, but i guess somewhere between ambient and techno. this is what, 92-94/5ish? to me it then seemed that the squarepusher/aphex/mu-ziq thing then just became more popular and prominent than the black dog/b12 end of things, to such a point that idm basically meant "whatever aphex, squarepusher and paradinas are doing"

its arguable that from 96 on, with all the people that were coming in then, idm is a genre that sits outside dance music, and is parasitic on current dance trends at any time (not a criticism necessarily), so jungle, gabba, ragga, miami bass all coming into the mix, and moving away from that 'armchair techno' definition. (basically any number of punkrave type nights play bastardized takes on all those genres, then, increasingly, the 'real' stuff itself, which is why it sort of sits outside)

i dunno, basically i think idm is basically indie music with laptops, but, you know, theres nothing wrong with this!

haha, i'd take the villalobos and hawtin myself tho;)

I'll confess I musta caught onto it late, but initially I thought the whole Electroclash thing was meant to be about making dance musix with a new injection of 'fuck you!' and art-school art/punk-ness (Chick On Speed, Peaches, Adult., etc)... not the kind of semi-retro sex/sleaze cocaine electrodisco thing that it seemed to be on further investigation.

I think where Vahid's frustration comes in is this inclination of people trying to claim on one music or the other as 'intelligent' when it's all potentially aiming for the same glory, whether on a 'serious project' or a DJ tool 12"

And the tendency for "experimentation" to go so far that it's missed the point and become unpalatable. Yet then is claimed as being inevitably "advanced".

How come Post-rock can still rock, despite the implication in the language that it would be too good for that, and nobody gets a bee in their bonnet about it? Or maybe I just missed the bunfight w/r/t that one.

-- dog latin

I probably need examples to answer properly here, but campness = a good thing, if it means messing with gender/sexual boundaries in a way mainstream music (rock or dance) usually avoids doing. And when it does occur people get upset and it's funny/liberating.

that aloofness from homegrown rave culture, that differentiation from it, the disassociation, i think thats what directly leads to the ironic/distanced criticisms of dill'n'bass/splatterbreaks etc, at that point a scene removed from 'real' british dance music, removed from jungle, yet parasitical upon it

i think as times gone on, that ironic/distanced aping of dance musics mainstream moves has become less and less ironic, and has blurred (as have many of the dance distinctions, the homecoming of the diaspora, in a way)

I am SOOO confused. What just happened?

Random telesales lady just called me on my work phone, asking if I was interested in going to an "IDM Conference" at the Barbican.

Sat on the phone for about five minutes as she babbled on at me trying to work out what on earth she was on about without demanding "Who are you, how did you get this number??!!???!?!" trying to work out what an IDM conference was and why someone would ring up my work phone number to ask me if I wanted to go.

I mean, I was honestly trying to think ... "eh? did they get my number off the South Bank Centre, as in, hey, this person's been buying a lot of tickets for Chris Cunningham and other Warp artists' shows, put her on an IDM spam list."

Institute of Direct Marketing, I strongly suspect.

Richard D. James, keynote speaker

HAHAHA Paul, your nicknames are the best.

I wasn't going to use this one when I thought of it, but then it got stuck in my head...

Integrated Data Management, as it turns out. So it is actually related to my job in MI.

So disappointed. I mean, I was gonna skip the Autechre seminar, but really wanted to know if they could squeeze me in for the Venetian Snares spectrographic workshop, you know?

Unfortunately it's just about boring Data Protection shit.

What is ILM?

TS: IDM vs ILM <-- not an ILX thread

We had an "ILM as IDM" thread, back in the mists of time.

I remember getting annoyed because someone tried to make me be The Katephex Twin. Ha ha. Um.

(Oh, how times have changed. This was before I decided that Drukqs wasn't actually the worst album in the history of forever.)

"How do you pronounce Nedechre?"

if ILM were IDM

So a number of folks -- including me -- had a crack at this with a new Pitchfork Top 50 list:

http://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/10011-the-50-best-idm-albums-of-all-time/

I did four of the entries -- Clicks + Cuts, Matmos's A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure, Kid606's Down With the Scene and Pole's 1.

Normally I would hate to be the guy that's criticizing a list for excluding something, but I cannot in good conscience support an IDM list that leaves off the first Telefon Tel Aviv album.

And Jlin is a weird inclusion, like if you're going to go there, that opens it up to M.E.S.H. and sd Laika etc etc

IIRC said Telefon Tel Aviv album was on the ballot so blame us, the collective voters. (I am pretty sure I included it in mine but can't specifically recall.)

a runoff list of all the nominated albums would be nice!

Fair enough (pun intended).

Speaking of 'idm', I was just thinking about this album this morning, I always forget the name and have to dig it up but it's beautiful listening:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXw_dz1BRYY&list=PLDJsU_5F23c53SuzhGrHKh_9OLKhseDm2

It's pretty weird to see an "IDM" list where so many of the albums are not IDM but minimal or dub techno, even straight techno. I would never call Carl Craig or Isolée or bloody Drexciya IDM. That feels like broadening the genre definition to a point where it's meaningless.

imo defining "idm" as a genre was exclusionary and started out as people talking about "dance-derived music that's good for home listening" and eventually turned into "stuff to listen to on headphones in dark rooms that's good for posting on messageboards about"

if you think of Selected Ambient Works as a seminal album and the Artificial Intelligence comps as an entry point, things like that Carl Craig album fall right in there

It's pretty weird to see an "IDM" list where so many of the albums are not IDM but minimal or dub techno, even straight techno. I would never call Carl Craig or Isolée or bloody /Drexciya/ IDM. That feels like broadening the genre definition to a point where it's meaningless.

Cannot believe "intelligent dance music" has been broadened to meaninglessness

genre of exclusion

I get that there were the records that made people start calling things IDM, there were the ones made to be 'IDM' (or at least made after there was some vocabulary established), and there were the spiritual cousins and descendants. It seems a little weird to me include the latter on a list like this but whatevs.

why is it weird?

seems pretty straightforward to me that a genre-eclectic magazine would choose to publish a list based on the idea of "if you like aphex and autechre you'll probably like ..." rather than "here's 50 albums that sound like aphex and autechre"

That feels like broadening the genre definition to a point where it's meaningless.

this is also weird to me. what is the value of having tightly defined genres?

you get to snipe on the internet about how something isn't *really* idm

or be on a genre-defining listserv about it and complain a lot

I just would have done either a strict archival thing, or split it out to be able to be able to include more contemporary stuff. But nbd, it's just a list.

if I had to hazard a guess, they reached out to a pool of music writers, asked for albums to put on a ballot, then everyone voted on the list

so a fair number of people contributed with a narrow scope, and a handful contributed newer stuff?

Actually panel individual ballots writer massage editor votes tallied was emails discussion shortlist

video here too (LCJ starts about 1:50)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZ1iUdQDCMY

I love the idea of random bleed between parameters, and of course inverting the normal "MIDI triggers pretty lights" to make the visualization the control signal.