IDM (music)
| Intelligent dance music | |
|---|---|
| Stylistic origins | |
| Cultural origins | Early 1990s, United Kingdom and Japan |
| Typical instruments | |
| Derivative forms | Wonky, post-rock |
| Subgenres | |
| Fusion genres | |
Intelligent dance music (commonly IDM) is a genre of electronic music that emerged in the early 1990s and was characterized by an experimental or "cerebral" sound better suited for home listening than dancing. It originally grew out of a variety of sources, including Detroit techno, acid house, and UK breakbeat as well as ambient music and other forms of electronic music. Stylistically, 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, the Black Dog, the Orb, Autechre, Luke Vibert, Squarepusher, and Boards of Canada.
The term "intelligent dance music" has been widely criticised and rejected by so-labeled artists, including Aphex Twin and μ-Ziq, as elitist and derogatory towards other styles. The term 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 a number of prominent English artists appearing on the 1992 Warp compilation Artificial Intelligence. In 2014, music critic Sasha Frere-Jones observed that the term "is widely reviled but still commonly used".
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. The term ambient house was often indiscriminately applied to any of that era's electronic dance music regarded as suitable for listening, not just dancing, and the term soon fell out of favor as a plethora of new genre names arose.
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