Intelligent dance music

Intelligent dance music (IDM) is a style of electronic music originating in the early 1990s, defined by idiosyncratic experimentation rather than specific genre constraints.^[3] The music often described with the term originally emerged in the early 1990s from the culture and sound palette of styles of electronic dance music such as acid house, ambient techno, Detroit techno and breakbeat;^[4][5] it has been regarded as better suited to home listening than dancing.^[6][7][8] Prominent artists in the style include Aphex Twin, Autechre, Squarepusher, μ-Ziq, the Black Dog and the later duo Plaid, as well as earlier acts such as the Future Sound of London and Orbital.^[6][7]

The use of the term "intelligent dance music" was likely inspired by the 1992 Warp compilation Artificial Intelligence^[9][10] in 1993 with the formation of the "IDM list", an electronic mailing list which was chartered for the discussion of English artists appearing on the compilation.^[11] The term has been widely criticised and dismissed by most artists associated with it, including Aphex Twin, Autechre, and μ-Ziq. Rephlex Records, a label co-created by Aphex Twin, coined the term "Braindance" as an alternative. In 2014, music critic Sasha Frere-Jones observed that the term "is widely reviled but still commonly used".^[12]

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.^[13] 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.^[14] This would help establish the ambient techno sound of the early 1990s.^[15] 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.^[16][17] 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.^[17]

In the same period (1992–93), other names were also used, such as "art techno",^[18] "armchair techno", and "electronica",^[19] but all were attempts to describe an emerging offshoot of electronic dance music that was being enjoyed by the "sedentary and stay at home".^[20] 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.^[17]

In November 1991, the phrase "intelligent techno" appeared on Usenet in reference to English experimental group Coil's The Snow EP.^[21] 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.^[22][23] Another instance of the phrase appeared on Usenet in April 1993 in reference to the Black Dog's album Bytes.^[24] 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."^[25]

Wider public use of such terms on the Internet came in August 1993, when Alan Parry announced the existence of a new electronic mailing list for discussion of "intelligent" dance music: the "Intelligent Dance Music list", or "IDM List" for short.^[26][27] The first message, sent on 1 August 1993, was entitled "Can Dumb People Enjoy IDM, Too?".^[28] A reply from the list server's system administrator and founder of Hyperreal.org Brian Behlendorf, revealed that Parry originally wanted to create a list devoted to discussion of the music on the Rephlex label, but they decided together to expand its charter to include music similar to what was on Rephlex or that was in different genres but which had been made with similar approaches. They picked the word "intelligent" because it had already appeared on Artificial Intelligence and because it connoted being something beyond just music for dancing, while still being open to interpretation.^[29]

Warp's second Artificial Intelligence compilation was released in 1994. The album featured fragments of posts from the IDM mailing list incorporated into typographic artwork by the Designers Republic. Sleeve notes by David Toop acknowledged the genre's multitude of musical and cultural influences and suggested none should be considered more important than any other.^[4]

During this period, the electronic music produced by Warp Records artists such as Aphex Twin (an alias of Richard D. James), Autechre, LFO, B12, Seefeel and the Black Dog, gained popularity among electronic music fans, as did music by artists on the Rephlex and Skam labels. Laurent Fintoni, writing for Fact magazine, emphasized Miami as a central importer and exporter of IDM in the United States, including the likes of Richard Devine (Schematic/Warp), Alpha 606, Prefuse-73 (Schematic/Warp), Push Button Objects, Otto von Schirach (Schematic) and many more.^[30]

Bigger-name, cross-genre artists like Björk and Radiohead, who had become inspired by artists categorized as IDM and utilized elements of the style on multiple songs on their 2000 album Kid A,^[31] also acquired popularity and associations with IDM in various ways.

American audiences in underground music subcultures welcomed IDM, and by the late 1990s many IDM record labels had been founded in the United States, including Drop Beat, Isophlux, Suction, Schematic and Cytrax.^[32]

In 2007, Igloo Magazine observed that "IDM as we knew it is a distant memory, with reminders from the big names now depressingly infrequent, however IDM as we now know it is very much alive, albeit in a less influential and popular, but still respectable form", with a third wave of artists having become active beginning in the mid-2000s.^[33]

British electronic music and techno artists typically categorized as IDM, including Aphex Twin, Cylob, and Mike Paradinas (A.K.A. μ-Ziq), have variously criticised the term. Paradinas has stated that the term was only used in North America; criticism has often been dominated by the use of the term "intelligent" in the genre name, and also often calls attention to the fact that artists working under this name often produce music that is contrarily not easy to dance to.

AllMusic Guide describes the IDM name as

A loaded term meant to distinguish electronic music of the '90s and later that's equally comfortable on the dancefloor as in the living room, IDM (Intelligent Dance Music) eventually acquired a good deal of negative publicity, not least among the legion of dance producers and fans whose exclusion from the community prompted the question of whether they produced "Stupid" dance music.^[34]

In a September 1997 interview, Aphex Twin commented on the 'Intelligent Dance Music' label:

I just think it's really funny to have terms like that. It's basically saying 'this is intelligent and everything else is stupid.' It's really nasty to everyone else's music. (laughs) It makes me laugh, things like that. I don't use names. I just say that I like something or I don't.^[35]

Aphex Twin's Rephlex records official overarching genre name is Braindance, of which Dave Segal of Stylus Magazine asked whether it was a "snide dig at IDM's mockworthy Intelligent Dance Music tag?"^[36]

In 2003, Kid 606 said that

It's a label invented by PR companies who need catchphrases. I like sounds, but hate what people attach to sounds.^[37]

Matmos remarked in Perfect Sound Forever that

I belong to the weblist called "IDM" and occasionally enjoy the discussions there, because I like some of the artists who get lassoed into that category (not to mention that we, occasionally, are lumped into that category too), and because you can occasionally find out about interesting records on that list... Matmos is IDM if that only means "might be talked about on the IDM list"- but I don't endorse that term "intelligent dance music" because it's laughable.^[38]

In a 2016 interview with Resident Advisor, Sean Booth of Autechre said:

All these things about us being "intelligent" and the term "IDM" are just silly. I'm not a particularly intelligent person, me. I'm diligent, I'm pretty hardworking, but I'm not that clever. I ain't got any qualifications, I just pick up stuff that I think is interesting at the time...There was also the "Artificial Intelligence" tag that Warp coined, but to me as a listener that never seemed to be saying "this is more intelligent." It was just a signifier of it being sci-fi music...Thing is, almost all the artists on that first AI compilation are just like us, they were regular kids, they're not intelligent people particularly. Richard [D. James] is a fucking blagger, Richie Hawtin too... I don't know how the fuck he gets away with the things he does!^[39]

Responding to some of these criticisms, Mike Brown of Hyperreal.org commented in 2018,

Even in '93 to 4' the word "IDM" wasn't something any of us took seriously. It was just three letters with no particular meaning beyond our little nerdy community's way of referring to whatever music we liked from the fringes of electronic dance music. No one was intending to coin a genre name or to imply the artists and fans were geniuses.^[40]

• Folktronica
• Glitch
• List of electronic music genres
• List of IDM artists

• Ramsay, Ben. "Tools, Techniques and Composition: Bridging Acousmatic and IDM." eContact! 14.4 – TES 2011: Toronto Electroacoustic Symposium / Symposium électroacoustique de Toronto (March 2013). Montréal: CEC.
• Reynolds, S., Energy Flash: a Journey Through Rave Music and Dance Culture, Pan Macmillan, 1998 [also published in abridged form as Generation Ecstasy: Into the World of Techno and Rave Culture, Routledge, New York 1999] (ISBN 978-0-330-35056-3).

• The Intelligent Dance Music Mailing List – list info
• Archive of posts to The IDM Mailing List (1993–2008)
• original list announcement^{[permanent dead link]} on alt.rave, 8 August 1993
• Last.fm group for IDM artist discussion Archived 21 February 2013 at the Wayback Machine