What is IDM?

textura
http://www.textura.org/

Short carefully selected reviews but generally OTM. Used to be absorb.org who coined the phrase "dad techno" too hehe.

Genre Name:
IDM
Root Genre
Electronica

Years
1990-present

Description
IDM, or Intelligent Dance Music was a term first coined from an internet mailing list in the mid-90s to describe a style of Techno music that concentrates on experimentation and an emphasis on home-listening rather than the dancefloor.

Whilst many of it's detractors and fans criticise the term - the argument being that it is hard to dance to and it implies that other dance genres are "stupid" - the term IDM has stuck fast and is now widely recognised.

Probably the first true IDM music to be released were the Artificial Intelligence compilations from the early nineties on Warp Records. Taking the minimalist sounds of Detroit House and Sheffield "Bleep" Techno, the compilation featured the now legendary acts Black Dog, Speedy J and of course, Aphex Twin (under the alias of "Dice Man").

Throughout the early nineties, IDM became the soundtrack to every post-rave comedown - something to put on after a night of hard revelling. But rather than becoming mere chillout music to mong about to, artists like Andrew Wetherall, Richard D James and Autechre began experimenting with their equipment, trying to push their machines to the limit. In many cases artists would often completely rewire their synths and mixers in order to create even more outlandish sounds. Certain techniques such as "snare rushes" (the rapid triggering of a percussive noise) led to micro-genres like Drill'n'Bass and Glitch.

The scene climaxed around the early 00's, after which IDM had either splintered into so many different subgenres that it became lost in a sea of never-ending headuparsery. Geekinness took over where originality once was and Aphex Twin's disappointing yet long-awaited Druqks album heralded the death knell of IDM. The Warp record label all but stopped signing new electronic acts in favour of post-rock bands, while other labels floundered or faded away.

The development of better and better computer software and music hardware also meant that it was easy for producers to recreate a lot of the once inexecutable sounds of earlier pioneers, making these commonplace in other kinds of music from House to R'n'B, thus making IDM an increasingly out-dated genre.

IDM as we know it may be dead, but it was always seen by it's fans as the sound of the future and if this is true then they were correct. Many techniques and sounds which debuted on Autechre and Aphex albums can be heard in genres as diverse as Grime, Electro, Dancehall, Post-Rock, Noise and even in the charts today.

The genre continues in some form or another but very few artists and labels continue succesfully in making pure-IDM. Newer artists such as Khonnor, Digitonal and Venetian Snares prefer to add guitars, vocals, orchestras or elements from other genres to spice up this now defunct style. Veteran acts like Two Lone Swordsmen seem to have gone the same way.

Artists
Aphex Twin, Autechre, Venetian Snares, Plaid, Boards of Canada, µ-ziq, Squarepusher, Bola, Two Lone Swordsmen, Autofire*, MDK, Metamatics, CiM

Essential Tracks
Aphex Twin: Bouncing Bucephalus Ball
Squarepusher: Cooper's World
Boards of Canada: In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country
Joseph Nothing: Disc O'Nostalagia
Chris Clark: Diesel Raven
Autechre: Arch Carrier
Coba: After Dinner (Plaid Mix)

Essential Albums
Autechre: LP5
Boards of Canada: Geogaddi
Aphex Twin: I Care Because You Do
Plaid: Restproof Clockwork
µ-ziq: Royal Astronomy
Digitonal: 23thingsfallapart

i so stupid!!

susan and dominique are sort of getting to the root of it ... and dog latin's post (i am pretty sure it's not his writing?) is absolutely worthless.

doesn't every armand van helden album do this? concentrate on experimentation + home listening, relative to his 12" releases? so IDM is every dance album released on CD instead of 12"?

Probably the first true IDM music to be released were the Artificial Intelligence compilations from the early nineties on Warp Records.

the first "true IDM"?? before that it was all "fake IDM"?? WTF, unfortunate.

Throughout the early nineties, IDM became the soundtrack to every post-rave comedown - something to put on after a night of hard revelling.

so that's sueno latino, morcheeba, the verve, primal scream, etc...

But rather than becoming mere chillout music to mong about to

wait! but this is the same author who is recommending geogaddi and restproof clockwork?

trying to push their machines to the limit

worst cliche ever. what exactly does it mean? early chicago house, early jungle, early gabba, etc all have worse distortion / bigger hardware fuckery than pretty much every aphex / autechre album ever.

In many cases artists would often completely rewire their synths and mixers in order to create even more outlandish sounds

deeper and deeper into nonsense ...

Certain techniques such as "snare rushes" (the rapid triggering of a percussive noise) led to micro-genres like Drill'n'Bass and Glitch

OMG "richard d james album" invented jungle!

Geekinness took over where originality once was and Aphex Twin's disappointing yet long-awaited Druqks album heralded the death knell of IDM

haha ouch. who wrote this crap?? anyway, did anyone tell prefuse 73 that druqks killed IDM?

The development of better and better computer software and music hardware also meant that it was easy for producers to recreate a lot of the once inexecutable sounds of earlier pioneers

uh ... maybe we are talking about the analord series ripping off dj pierre? luke vibert's amen andrews / "acid house" albums? squarepusher's half-assedly aping teo macero? "rephlex presents grime"??

Many techniques and sounds which debuted on Autechre and Aphex albums can be heard in genres as diverse as Grime, Electro, Dancehall, Post-Rock, Noise and even in the charts today.

whereas the vice-versa can't?

The genre continues in some form or another but very few artists and labels continue succesfully in making pure-IDM

"we tried to make pure-IDM but our IDM came out tainted! impure!"

according to most people on ILM, IDM is

the same as techno but with a little brian eno thrown in too.
the same as jungle but with a little merzbow thrown in too.
the same as electro but with a little ryuichi sakamoto thrown in too.
the same as 2step but with a little cabarert voltaire thrown in too.

so how is my formulation any worse?

maybe you take some house, and throw in some disco, and throw in a little more, and throw in some emo-leaning new wave pop too, and suddenly it's no longer so acceptable to house DJs or house fans but suddenly it's so much more appealing to margin walkers (ie you know arthur russell but not rene+angela), to people who can't get over body music (same people who think japan's "ghosts" is better than animotion's "obsession"), to people who swing the big wood for meaningless phrases like "interesting textures" or "complex structures" or "well-developed songs".

or disco fans or new wave fans, crucially...

you've outdone yourself. sorry i brought you into this.

but seriously, wtf? people are abusing these genres for good and evil.. i just got conned into seeing Trey Anastatio tonight for $30 USD, have forgiveness... what hippy genre doth he fall into?

Also, will all those making the revelatory argument that "IDM is a stupid term" please shush because all genre names are stupid terms.

hahaha right 'meaningless'.

I'd happily call it home-listening techno and be done with it. Frankly 'electronica' I think is the real-world term for most casual fans of 'IDM' and much more preferable & practical.

Stefan Koopmanschap (Electronic Music World) attempts to assimilate the definition of "IDM," an acronym initially coined as a mailing list via Hyperreal.org in the early 90s.
http://igloomag.com/doc.php?task=view&id=1155&category=features

It would be just subtleties in the production really. I'm sure for instance I heard a Backstreet Boys song with glitch-beats at the end. I'm sure the experimentation in riddims during the height of dancehall in 2003 is similar to what the IDM producers were doing a little earlier - stuttering beats, syncopated rhythms etc.

Yeh but Electronica can be applied to Chemical Brothers, Orbital, Sneaker Pimps etc. At the end of the day, the term IDM has stuck and people (well people on the net) tend to know what you mean by IDM. People talk about "indie music" all the time, regardless of whether the band is on an independent record label or not. Anyway, IDM has become "snobby" music. A lot of producers these days do take themselves very seriously and their fans do laugh at so-called "stupid techno". It's not a good thing, but then I'd say "home-listening techno" isn't a very good term either because I listen to IDM on my walkman and I've even been to see it live. I don't see why people should be so offended by the term "intelligent techno", people know what to expect from this term.

wikipedia on IDM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_dance_music

on preview -- Sociah T Azzahole OTM!

Wasn't "intelligent techno" more used in R&S days?

I dunno, that's fine too but I still think "electronica" is better suited to describing a wide net of music, that tends to lean in the direction of the arrythmic-to-less-danceable, less 4/4 based, and more diffuse/freeform/experimental.

A term I quite like that I heard was "elec" which is good!

True story.

Has anyone ever made Nirvana 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;)

That's why I thought it was weird to crack the lid of that box just a little, there is soooo much that could be a whole separate list.

I'm putting on a night of classic electronica, IDM, glitch, breaks, drill'n'bass etc tomorrow. Got a fair bit of music lined up, but what would you include (preferably stuff that has aged okay and is generally upbeat enough to dance to, or at least tap your toes)?

Quinoline Yellow - see 14 across
Isan - amber button (i prefer the "live" one if you can find it. ah, it's on bandcamp)

Carl Craig, LFO, Kenny Larkin, early mike paradinas, ken ishii, two lone swordsmen, cristian vogel. cylob if you want to fuck with people.

Buckfunk 3000.

i might play Rewind! by Cylob. A lot of these tracks are really lo-fi sounding by today's comparison. Also I realised how many of these old tunes I painstakingly ripped from CD to 128kbps back in the mid-2000s. Well done me.

'Flutter'!

One of my personal all-time jams
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sh-UY_JKS8w

Ambient News - Zweite Sendung
Cylob - The Quantum Loonyverse

these are post-2000 but both are arguably classics

DJ Pierre - Box Energy (AFX Remix)

Not sure if this is too obvious? Probably. But greatest ever anyway.

If I were putting on an “electronica” night as dog latin describes, I would intentionally eschew anything involving richard d james, except MAYBE Alberto Balsam as the very last track of the set.

or (last resort) play XMAS_EVET10, cuz it could possibly be transcendental "af"

It'd be cool to go from Derrick May to Speedy J (De-Orbit?) to something off Bytes

Something off Bricolage or Permutation

At least one Björk remix, maybe the Underworld mix of Human Behaviour

As you know, and as I can never resist pointing out, lots of SAW I bumps on a good system

drill n bass classix ... Brace Yourself Jason, Red Hot Car

The Björk remix you need is Alec Empire’s take on State of Emergency

to give everyone a break after Eddie “flashin’” Fowlkes’ “Lodge Freeway”

I forgot to mention I have a strict remit of falling between the years 1992-2002. that's the rules and I'm sticking by them

FSOL is your nu-god

Don’t forget spacetime continuum & spring heel jack

Some of the more hip-hop influenced Autechre tracks - "Lowride", "Eutow", "Draun Quarter", "Pen Expers"

Eutow YES everything else MEH

I have made a minor alteration to my Richard d James ban

The very first track of the set should be Funny Little Man

The track played at the exact median of the set should be AFX 114

As above re: last track

Those are the only rdj things allowed and they can only occur as directed above

FSOL is your nu-god

i dunno that seems to open the floodgates to the Orb, Orbital etc

Basic Channel - Q1.1/I

I will probably end up playing a bit more pop-oriented stuff by the end to keep the throngs happy, so Orbital and Orb etc could well happen

"Frosch" by Mouse on Mars always seems to go over well. Particularly the edited version

dunno if any Autechre would fit, maybe "Slip" ?

I'm definitely playing Arch Carrier. Possibly Slip

'Flutter'!

― change display name (Jordan), Friday, October 12, 2018 10:14 AM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Actually I'm listening to the rest of the Anti EP now and it holds up suuuper well.

tbh I have never witnessed anyone trying to dance to IDM. It’s not like I’m going to dance parties all the time (or ever) so I believe that it happens. But I’m having difficulty imagining it!

I would totally go to this to hear the classics on a sound system btw, sounds like a fun challenge to make a real dance set out of it.

Oh yeah we all demand a recording of this right?

Lego Feet?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wraDrKHP0tE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZFmZ0gZNZI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EDJmoGzYdc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCUN46Rb3Q4
End with this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UunWQAAVJBM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uwz7tvcYM10

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LemWp3jIDlg

I recorded the whole set. It was rather low-key, thanks to a last minute venue change - just a small room in a pub. Still my friends and I had fun revisiting some of the classics and pissing off the locals.

This is a long mix, with three DJs basically swapping in and out from each other all the way through, so I don't have a tracklisting... but, enjoy!

https://www.mixcloud.com/doglatin/science-time-machine-edition-at-the-farm-pub-bristol-with-feedle-silverhaze/

I was super surprised to see Leafcutter John show up on FACT's "Against the Clock" series. The track he comes up with is really nice, but I'm even more gobsmacked by how dude is making music:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1cmWFP3f8o

i saw him using that light sensitive box at cafe oto in 2014. he was using blinking christmas lights as a trigger.

(actually, it was 2012 - BEAM night, full of people using odd things as inputs. https://www.flickr.com/photos/marikakochi/6947759946/in/photostream/ )

sure but Leafcutter J is no dillettante, he STUCK WITH IT

yes, and he's made a nice box for it (it was just wires in 2012). the idea / performance has stuck with me all these years too.

the other people were using things like iphone accelerometers and those elasticated bands they use for medical sensors, attached to his arms and legs so his movements were translated into music.

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.