Intelligent dance music
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Intelligent dance music (commonly abbreviated as IDM) is a style of electronic music originating in the early 1990s, regarded as "cerebral" and better suited to home listening than dancing.
Emerging from electronic and rave music styles such as techno, acid house, ambient music, and breakbeat.
IDM tended to rely upon individualistic experimentation rather than adhering to characteristics associated with specific genres.
Prominent artists associated with the genre include Aphex Twin, μ-Ziq, the Black Dog, the Orb, the Future Sound of London, Autechre, Luke Vibert, Squarepusher, Venetian Snares and Boards of Canada.
The term "intelligent dance music" has been widely criticised and dismissed by most artists associated with the term, including Aphex Twin, Autechre, and μ-Ziq. The term was likely inspired by the 1992 Warp compilation Artificial Intelligence and is said to have originated in the US in 1993 with the formation of the "IDM list", an electronic mailing list originally chartered for the discussion of English artists appearing on compilation. In 2014, music critic Sasha Frere-Jones observed that the term "is widely reviled but still commonly used".
History
In the late 1980s, riding the wave of the acid house and early rave party scenes, UK-based groups such as The Orb and The KLF produced ambient house, a genre that fused house music (particularly acid house) with ambient music. By the early 1990s, the increasingly distinct music associated with dance music 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, The Black Dog, Aphex Twin and The Orb, under various aliases.
See also
- List of electronic music genres
- Techno
- Folktronica
- Glitch
- List of IDM artists
- Artificial Intelligence (1992)
