Wheres the IDM thread

[Noah Perez]

Wheres the IDM thread

I've listened to all the major stuff where do I go now?

[Samuel Harris]

do you like the early stuff or the late 90s stuff

[Owen Anderson]

>techno is EDM!!!!!! xD
>I'll call it IDM!!!
>that'll make me feel superior to normies

[Jaxson Turner]

Lifeforms is great but i always thought it was like tribal ambient or whatever

World of Sleepers is really similar and really good, although it is a lot more structured and conventional while Lifeforms has more fun with samples. If you like synths i recommend checking it out

[Logan Carter]

How about this Black Dog EP tho? Criminally overlooked tbqh.

youtube.com/watch?v=OYusX7V1SaI

[Evan Roberts]

My favourites are:
Global Communication - 76:14
Autechre - Garbage EP, Tri Repetae, Incunabula
AFX - SAW 1

[David Gomez]

discogs.com/Black-Dog-Productions-Bytes/master/29979
discogs.com/Bedouin-Ascent-Science-Art-And-Ritual/master/7337
discogs.com/Tournesol-Kokotsu/master/23587
discogs.com/John-Beltran-Ten-Days-Of-Blue/master/26665
discogs.com/Sun-Electric-Present/master/23486

Try those maybe.

[Lucas Green]

cheers lad

do you literally just label dig to find this stuff?

[Nolan Morgan]

Not him, but that Bedouin Ascent album is so fucking good. Definitely is Incunabula-esque at points - mostly the more "tribal" aspects.

[Brody Nguyen]

what

[Luis Gutierrez]

FSOL are ambient techno. No need to call them IDM. Techno is not a dirty word.

[Evan Wilson]

Ambient techno is IDM

[Blake White]

I've already dug through all the relevant labels. At this point I just run into it by chance... honestly feels like I've already ran across all relevant releases from the golden era (~1993-2003).

Oh yeah, also Bola's Soup is a must listen for you. It's pretty much the best "IDM" release ever put out. discogs.com/Bola-Soup/master/13535

It is, one of my favorite albums. It really nicely mirrors some of Jon Hassells work (one of my favorite artists).

A few hidden gems:
>discogs.com/Living-Room-Roomservice/master/93960
discogs.com/Tupilaq-Alaskanlab-Sweden-1995/master/87403 (just listen to Pilaque, fuck...)
discogs.com/Velocette-Sonorities-By-Starlight/master/75230
discogs.com/Future-Beat-Alliance-Hidden-Emotion/master/195637 (masterpiece, one of the best ever in the "genre")
discogs.com/MD-Appelsap/master/12090

[Mason Reyes]

anybody off of Rephlex, Planet Mu, SKAM, Merck, etc
I personally really like Clark, Ilkae, and Bogdan Raczynski

[Gavin Fisher]

Wrong way round.

[Parker Brooks]

not that guy, but
>not all ambient techno is idm
>not all idm is ambient techno

[Kevin Richardson]

youtube.com/watch?v=xtXyTAKuqPg

Listening to this while I download the stuff you rec'd it's pretty legit. Will also check out Bola's Soup

[Jacob Myers]

These are all worthy labels, to various extents, but be aware they're also quite different
>Rephlex
Mostly acid and everything related to it
>Planet Mu
Usually quite harsh, industrial leaning as well as Grime and stuff like that
>SKAM
Skam was fucking excellent in their early days but I honestly don't know what they're doing now
>Merck
One of the cornerstones, leaning a bit towards glitch hop type of stuff, which is not my style usually, but the releases that break off from it are top notch. Essential Merck releases below:

>discogs.com/Ilkae-Pistachio-Island/release/23266
>discogs.com/Kristuit-Salu-vs-Morris-Nightingale-My-Mines-I/master/197787 (!!)
>discogs.com/Mr-Projectile-Sinking/master/866396 (quite poppy, works surprisingly well)
>discogs.com/Machine-Drum-Now-You-Know/master/9836 (early glitch hop)
>Md - Appelsap (already above)

Bedouin Ascent might be a bit difficult to get into, just so you know, but if it sounds interesting to you then by all means. Might have been a bit hasty recommending it. Along with Soup another one I hold in the highest regard is Brothomstates' Claro: discogs.com/Brothomstates-Claro/master/12272

As far as diversity and inventiveness goes, it's very high up there. Most will say Autechre ripoff, but the spectrum is much broader than just their particular style. Claro embodies everything the genre stands for, seems people are only now waking up to it.

[Lincoln Howard]

>Bedouin Ascent might be a bit difficult to get into, just so you know, but if it sounds interesting to you then by all means. Might have been a bit hasty recommending it.

what are you attempting to imply here mate

[Lucas Lopez]

you seem to know your shit when it comes to this stuff, so I'll ask you. what are some hidden, truly unique sounding idm releases/artists? every time I look into shit other than big names it feels like it's 90% derivative garbage that does nothing new, and I just want some interesting stuff (preferably something a bit further from older ambient techno stuff and more mid-late 90s sounding.)

[Jack Rivera]

skam doesn't put out a lot of stuff and there were some incredibly weak years but vhs head and fear ratio are good.

[Anthony Barnes]

I just meant that on second thought I wouldn't recommend it to someone who was just getting into the "genre", because it's not exactly conventional. I know I wouldn't have liked it had I heard it years ago. But if you're liking it, great!

That's a hard question honestly because I'm at this point so far into it (IDM is by far my most used genre tag, close to 1000 releases or something) that I don't know what other people might consider "truly unique". The Bedouin Ascent and Brothomstates albums I mentioned are probably prime examples though. I don't have anything against genericity either though, as long as it's competently produced. The problem with IDM is that it never really developed into anything, but rather just fizzled out all of a sudden. Claro for that reason is sort of the climax of the genre because it represented such a diverse palette of sounds and subtle fusion between styles. It had all the ingredients to push the style forwards but nobody took up the task.

Here's one album that comes to mind though: discogs.com/Alex-Cortex-Inward-CTRL/master/1034

Definitely one of the highlights as well. Clear motif with the bitcrusher processing, and hints of house, a very curious mix overall.

Another album I could mention is: discogs.com/Vir-Unis-Saul-Stokes-Thermal-Transfer/release/223021

Not really intended to be "IDM" I think, but it's so similar it might as well be. Essentially an ambient album with very characteristic percussions. Sort of the album that you think is the quintessential "IDM" album (or I do anyway), except it actually exists and is really good, and not even generic sounding really. Weird.

Don't know if that's what you were after but that's the best I could think off the top of my head.

Yeah I know about VHS Head, listened to it/them a bit when it blew up but that's about it. I remember liking it though.

[Liam Harris]

I found FSOL and biosphere to be a little more hard to get into and this doesn't sound too far from those, which I like, so yeah.

[Leo Murphy]

Ok one more...

The Detroit Escalator Company - Black Buildings: discogs.com/Detroit-Escalator-Co-The-Black-Buildings/master/2735

Every track on the album sounds the same, but no song from any other artist sounds like any of these tracks. I really like how he recycles certain elements from track to track, but wraps them always in a slightly different context. Especially those echoing percussions and fifth harmonic pads that repeat in varying octaves are this guy's signature sound. If you ever wondered what the Detroit Techno interpretation of IDM would be like, this is it (well, this an Neil Ollivierra's other work too).

[Jacob Cook]

both of those seem pretty good from what I'm hearing on the discogs page, so I'll definitely have to check them out.
any other stuff you consider hidden gems? preferably something overtly complex while not falling into breakcore/drill n bass type stuff. I'd say Autechreian, but I'm not really looking specifically for AE-esque artists (which Brothomstates is probably the best of anyway.)
and while I was typing you posted this, which sounds pretty good as well. thanks fampai.

[Elijah Nelson]

I only just came into this thread, but, you're the man. Thanks for all your shares and insight. People like you save this board, dude.

IDM was the first genre I truly fell in love with, and you've inspired me to revisit it after all this time. Thanks!

[Aaron Diaz]

This maybe? discogs.com/Beefcake-Drei/release/161849

I'm definitely more into the minimal, ambient, techno oriented side, I have little to no drill'n'bass stuff in my library apart from Squarepusher I think. That Beefcake album though is quite an excellent mix various styles ranging from very industrial leaning sound to straight up ambient. Not one of my personal favorites but a lot of people really like it and I can definitely see the appeal.

Similarly also the Ilkae album mentioned earlier, consisting of quite short tracks that are quite distinct. Relatively jazz oriented, I'd even say somewhat of a precursor to Flying Lotus (his early work anyway), though obviously still of a different genre.

In general the "autechrian" IDM artists like I guess Funckarma and Funkstörung (how did that happen?), maybe throw in Richard Devine too, have some good output, but it's mostly really just a showcase for how you need to be Autechre to attempt anything like Autechre. I'm not saying they're a ripoff, but the music just isn't very interesting. Devine especially carries the label of a guy who just toys with a shit ton of gear and software, but the results are lacking (not bad though). On a related note though, Michael Fakesch's (half of Fuckstörung) did put out a very interesting album in the late 90s, among my favorites: discogs.com/Michael-Fakesch-Marion/master/73156

Perhaps you could try this: discogs.com/Lazyfish-Mewark-Lazyfish-Mewark/master/125597

Somewhat Autechrien from the mid-late 90s era, if you throw in #LushAsFuck pads into the mix. Certainly not high energy though, but "complex" enough for me.

>People like you save this board, dude.
Yeah I come here nowadays maybe every few months, it's a hellhole at this point. It's threads like this though that do still pull me back in though.

[Isaac Jenkins]

discogs.com/lists/Esoteric-IDM/158473

Oh yeah I do have also this list. It's quite out of date though, 2-3 years or so I think. I'd say I don't anymore consider a lot of it all that good, maybe only the ones I've rated four "stars", though I'd mainly recommend to stay at the 4.5-5 range. Still a decent collection of some overlooked stuff that deserved a lot more recognition.

[Logan Cruz]

shit man, most of this is pretty great. I was even considering for asking for a list of everything in your library tagged as IDM if that was at all possible, but you've already done a list that fits what I'm looking for pretty perfectly. thanks for all this stuff man, I really like this type of stuff but get put off by just how hard it can be to find decent shit sometimes, and this has helped a good bit.

[Ethan Roberts]

29th for shit genre name

[Jonathan Kelly]

pastebin.com/raw/CT9dTt05

Have fun. Expect messiness, had to format some of it by hand. Ordered chronologically.

[Gavin Russell]

pastebin.com/raw/4Takuf75

Have fun. Expect messiness, had to format some of it by hand. Ordered chronologically.

(Fixed a few more compilation fuckups)

[Dominic Wright]

well shit, I didn't expect you to do it after already sharing a list of stuff with me, but it's still definitely appreciated. I'll have to go through it and see what stuff I like.
>900+ lines
jesus fuck, that's a lot. thanks again man.

[Gavin Lopez]

Aoki Takamasa is glitchy + melodic
youtube.com/watch?v=92S-oIMXCSE

If you like Draft-era Ae you might like
youtube.com/watch?v=FfXb1TkMNS0

[Connor Green]

both of those are fantastic. it probably helps that Draft 7.30 is probably my favorite ae album.

[Gabriel Ward]

Takamasa is fucking excellent yeah. Never heard of the latter one. Seeing it's Raster-Noton, eugh... but still not bad, not too generic and homogenous like 90% of the stuff they put out.

[Liam Jenkins]

This is basically me, except take out Burial and add OPN and maybe Tim Hecker, Eric Prydz, and Mr Oizo.

[Austin Flores]

That's pretty sad, mate.

[Dominic Diaz]

Eh, I'd agree about them being homogenous in terms of early to mid r-n (when a lot of it was just variations of Noto/Ikeda/Bretschneider glitch) but they've been putting out clubbier/dancier type stuff in addition to the ambient + glitch releases for a while now. Diamond Version is really ace and Lippok is lush. There was one Senking experimental dubstep ep that was surprisingly amazing too.

[Owen White]

Yeah to be fair I haven't been following them in quite a while. Just every once in a while when something from them comes to my ears I'm pretty much always equally unimpressed. Maybe I should take another look at some of their recent releases then.

[Elijah Hernandez]

I mean, there's a lot of mediocre and dull stuff too for sure, lol. A lot of people seem to like Kangding Ray but eh...dunno. Haven't liked much of his stuff since 2011/2012 I reckon. Same with Emptyset.

[Carson Lee]

I actually really like Emptyset, well the first couple releases anyway, somewhat a spiritual successor to Pan Sonic. Kangding Ray is garb though.

[Blake Bailey]

(Of course the early Emptyset releases weren't under Raster-Noton though, I haven't heard any that are I don't think).

[Oliver Thomas]

Yeah, their releases on Subtext (and Caravan iirc) were good, but their stuff on r-n is way too dry for me. I didn't like Recur much at all. Of course it could just be that the "scene" is just hopelessly inundated with that stuff right now and has been for a while now.