Intelligent dance music (IDM) is a loose label used to describe experimental forms of electronic music associated with early-1990s ambient techno, "electronic listening music" and related forms of electronica. Rather than being defined by a fixed set of genre conventions, IDM has generally been associated with individualistic experimentation."…the label 'IDM' (for avant-garde, 'intelligent dance music') seems to be based more on an association with individualistic experimentation than on a particular set of musical characteristics." Butler, M.J., Unlocking the Groove: Rhythm, Meter, and Musical Design in Electronic Dance Music, Indiana University Press, 2006, (p. 80). Music described with the term often drew on electronic dance music styles such as acid house, ambient techno, Detroit techno and breakbeat."The electronic listening music of the nineties is a prime example of an art form derived from and stimulated by countless influences. Partisan analyses of this music claim a baffling variety of prime sources (Detroit techno, New York electro + Chicago acid, Eno + Bowie, Cage + Reich, Gary Numan + Tangerine Dream) but this is beside the point. To claim ascendancy of one source over another is to deny the labyrinthine entwinements of culture: rooted in political history + the development of science + technology, yet tilting at the boundaries of society + language." Toop, David, in the Artificial Intelligence II sleeve notes .Toop, D. (1995),Ocean of Sound, Serpent's Tail, pp. 215-216. (). Music described as IDM was often promoted or regarded as suited to home listening, although artists associated with the label also produced dancefloor-oriented tracks. Prominent artists associated with the label include Aphex Twin, Autechre, Squarepusher, μ-Ziq, the Black Dog, the Future Sound of London, and Orbital.
The phrase "intelligent dance music" has been associated with the 1992 Warp compilation Artificial Intelligence."'No one really listens to IDM over here,' says Mike Paradinas from his home in Worchester, UK. 'You just say stuff like the Aphex Twin, and they might have heard of him.' It's a bold statement for Paradinas, who, along with friends and contemporaries like Richard James (Aphex Twin) and LFO, was one of that genre's defining artists in London's fertile dance music community of the early 1990s." "'No one says IDM in England? No, only on message boards when they're talking to Americans!" Ben Stirling (2003), Junkmedia.org , published 28 July 2003. The acronym "IDM" came into wider online use in 1993 with the formation of the "IDM list", an electronic mailing list chartered for discussion of English artists appearing on the compilation."the development of IDM (Intelligent Dance Music) is closely entwined with a mailing list established to discuss the work of seminal post-techno producers like Autechre and Aphex Twin; in fact, the name 'IDM' originated with the mailing list, but now is routinely applied by reviewers, labels and fans alike." Sherburne, P. (2001:172), Organised Sound (2001), 6 : 171-176 Cambridge University Press, 2002. The term has been widely criticised and dismissed by artists associated with it, particularly for the implication that other dance music is less "intelligent". Rephlex Records, co-founded by Aphex Twin, promoted "braindance" as an alternative term. In 2014, music critic Sasha Frere-Jones observed that the term IDM "is widely reviled but still commonly used".
Musical characteristics
Mark J. Butler characterises IDM less as a genre defined by particular musical traits than as a label associated with individualistic experimentation. Musicologist Anthony Papavassiliou describes IDM as combining familiar structures of popular music—predominantly binary rhythms, repetition and conventional forms—with rhythmic and timbral complexity.
Simon Reynolds distinguishes an early phase whose beats were modelled on house and techno from a later, jungle-influenced phase marked by more forceful and inventive drum programming. In analyses of works by Aphex Twin and Autechre, Papavassiliou identifies two kinds of "microrhythmic set"—groups of very rapid events: textural sets that contrast with the surrounding rhythmic material, and gestural sets that suggest rhythmic continuation.
Ben Ramsay links IDM's development to the increased availability of personal computers and affordable samplers, which enabled musicians to manipulate, process and sequence recorded sound as compositional material. Among the examples he discusses are works combining field recordings and sampled broadcasts with synthetic sounds, as well as Autechre's use of reverberation and echo to shape perceived space.
Papavassiliou also identifies sonic micromanipulation techniques including granular synthesis, slicing, automated repetition and mixing, time-stretching and sound "freezing". Reynolds characterises the early phase of IDM as emphasising melody, atmosphere and emotion. Ramsay describes timbral and structural exploration while noting that IDM may retain familiar pitched and metric materials such as beats, melodic phrases and recognisable machine timbres.
Although some early releases were promoted for post-club or home listening, the distinction from dancefloor music was not absolute. AllMusic describes IDM as encompassing music suited to both the dancefloor and the living room, while Andrew Blake noted that artists associated with the term could produce both ambient material and "brutal dancefloor tracks".
History
Antecedents
Some writers have retrospectively identified early-1980s work by the Japanese band Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO) and its member Ryuichi Sakamoto as antecedents to later IDM. Sakamoto's 1980 solo album B-2 Unit has been described as anticipating aspects of the sounds later associated with IDM. NME described the album as emphasizing "atmosphere and tone" over traditional song structures and as anticipating 1990s IDM a decade earlier. According to Vice, the B-2 Unit track "E-3A" offered "a hint of the decade to come" with "IDM-leaning cut-up complexities."
YMO's 1981 album BGM has also been discussed in relation to later IDM. According to Analog Planet, the BGM track "Ballet" has an IDM-like electronic soundscape that combines "electronic drums, persistent hi-hats, and sustained synths" with a "melancholic emptiness."
Early 1990s: ambient techno and home listening
In the late 1980s, ensuing from acid house and early rave party scenes, UK-based groups such as the Orb and the KLF produced ambient house, a genre that fused the pulses of house music, particularly acid house, with ambient music and sample-based soundscapes. By the early 1990s, the increasingly distinct music associated with dance music-oriented experimentation had gained prominence with releases on a variety of mostly UK-based record labels, including Warp (1989), Black Dog Productions (1989), R&S Records (1989), Carl Craig's Planet E, Rising High Records (1991), Richard James's Rephlex Records (1991), Kirk Degiorgio's Applied Rhythmic Technology (1991), Eevo Lute Muzique (1991), General Production Recordings (1989), Soma Quality Recordings (1991), Peacefrog Records (1991), and Metamorphic Recordings (1992).
In 1992, Warp released Artificial Intelligence, the first album in the Artificial Intelligence series. Subtitled "electronic listening music from Warp", the record was a collection of tracks from artists such as Autechre, B12, Black Dog Productions, Aphex Twin and the Orb, under various aliases.[ AllMusic Guide, Overview of Artificial Intelligence] This would help establish the ambient techno sound of the early 1990s. Steve Beckett, co-owner of Warp, has said the electronic music that the label was releasing then was targeting a post-club, home-listening audience.…the dance scene was changing and we were hearing B-sides that weren't dance but were interesting and fitted into experimental, progressive rock, so we decided to make the compilation 'Artificial Intelligence', which became a milestone… it felt like we were leading the market rather than it leading us, the music was aimed at home listening rather than clubs and dance floors: people coming home, off their nuts, and having the most interesting part of the night listening to totally tripped out music. The sound fed the scene. Birke S. (2007), "Label Profile: Warp Records", The Independent (UK), Music Magazine (supplement), newspaper article published 2/11/07Reynolds, S., (1999). Generation Ecstasy: Into the World of Techno and Rave Culture, Routledge, New York, (pp. 180-205) Following the success of the Artificial Intelligence series, "intelligent techno" became the favoured term, although ambient—without a qualifying house or techno suffix, but still referring to a hybrid form—was a common synonym.
In the same period (1992–93), other names were also used, such as "art techno", "armchair techno", and "electronica","Of all the terms devised for contemporary non-academic electronic music (the sense intended here), 'electronica' is one of the most loaded and controversial. While on the one hand it does seem the most convenient catch-all phrase, under any sort of scrutiny it begins to implode. In its original 1992-93 sense it was largely coterminous with the more explicitly elitist 'intelligent techno', a term used to establish distance from and imply distaste for, all other more dancefloor-oriented types of techno, ignoring the fact that many of its practitioners such as Richard James (Aphex Twin) were as adept at brutal dancefloor tracks as what its detractors present as self-indulgent ambient 'noodling'". Blake, Andrew, Living Through Pop, Routledge, 1999. p 155. but all were attempts to describe an emerging offshoot of electronic dance music that was being enjoyed by the "sedentary and stay at home".Reynolds (1998), p181. At the same time, the UK market was saturated with increasingly frenetic breakbeat and sample-laden hardcore techno records that quickly became formulaic. Rave had become a "dirty word", so as an alternative, it was common for London nightclubs to advertise that they were playing "intelligent" or "pure" techno, appealing to a "discerning" crowd that considered the hardcore sound to be too commercial.
Term and mailing list In November 1991, the phrase "intelligent techno" appeared on Usenet in reference to English experimental group Coil's The Snow EP. Off the Internet, the same phrase appeared in both the U.S. and UK music press in late 1992, in reference to Jam & Spoon's Tales from a Danceographic Ocean and the music of the Future Sound of London. Another instance of the phrase appeared on Usenet in April 1993 in reference to the Black Dog's album Bytes. And in July 1993, in his review of an ethno-dance compilation for NME, Ben Willmott replaced techno with dance music, writing "...current 'intelligent' dance music owes much more to Eastern mantra-like repetition and neo-ambient instrumentation than the disco era which preceded the advent of acid and techno."