>Sure, I love Autechre and the Schematic label, but I also like James Brown and Trouble Funk and Basement Jaxx and Daft Punk- does this make me unintelligent? The snooty attitude towards "real" dance music inherent in the term IDM fits all too easily with the stereotype of the bedroom collector geek who is hopelessly alienated from the bodily hedonism of a decent soundsystem/rave/club party and who thereby fashions a resentment based alibi for why he can't get down. >Furthermore, if you consider the sociological origins of contemporary electronic dance music in black and gay clubs in Chicago and New York and then consider the overall "whiteness" and "straightness" of the average IDM artist and fan it all starts to look kind of sinister, like people patting themselves on the back because they are so much more advanced than those savages who leap about to their wild drums or something. Sheesh. That said, 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. Like any other community, it allows for networking and exchange of information which is really useful and productive and powerful- but like any community, it always needs to define itself through exclusion, clique-ishness and the fashioning of some "other" excluded terms: rock music, women, noise, "real" dance music. >I've noticed that whenever discussions drift towards anything about gender or sexuality on that list the cluelessness factor jumps off the chart. 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.
- Drew Daniel (Matmos)
William Ross
He's right you know
Nathan Wilson
i just don't get how he can be so racist without realising >savages like where tf did that come from
Ian Anderson
All very reasonable, though he's just echoing what everyone thinks about the term
Jason Taylor
He's obviously using the term "savages" there because he's making a strawman of the white idm producer who thinks he's superior to dance music's black and gay origins. Which is a bit silly desu because no one like that has ever really existed
Ethan Morgan
ikr IDM list in 1999 (when this interview was published) had plenty of posts about Derrick May, Carl Craig, Rob Hood, UR etc as you say, massive strawman
Adam Wood
only takes 5 seconds to look up where the term IDM came from and realise it's not that pretentious at all, it's just a genre tag that stuck over time because it's helpful
it's more cringey to see people talk smack about the term it's just a term, get over it
Evan Turner
No one even listens to IDM anymore - OPN, Arca and various other tumblrtronica is trendy with the teens right now.
Criticising IDM today is like criticising prog rock, both cases are beating a dead horse.
Parker Gray
OPN and Arca are IDM though
Nathan Anderson
>thinks he's making a point by criticizing a genre term that has only ever been completely disavowed and openly hated by every major artist to whom it was ever applied >do i get extra points for muh feminism and muh black people are gr8? lol whyt peepo suck am i rite? Virtue signalling turd who's apparently mad about something (probably Trump if this is a recent quotation) and projecting it onto imaginary IDM nazis. LAME.
John Green
Post top 5 female idm artists
David Cox
I don't think "IDM" was ever meant to be taken seriously as a term.
Ryder Richardson
laurel halo mira calix leila arab holly herndon grimes
Jaxon Lewis
>laurel halo she's never made idm in her life
Ryder James
The real question is why do people listen to IDM.
Its the electronic equivalent to mallgoth poseur tryhard shit.
Henry Kelly
>IDM sorry, I want my dance music to be plain
Jason Perez
Sup Forumstants take the ''''intelligent'''' part literally and think that makes their taste better lls
Xavier Anderson
>chooses music by style associations >calls others posers nice try you projecting moron
Noah Long
>more complex != better
Dragonforce confirmed superior to Bob Dylan
Austin Mitchell
>complains about using the label IDM >in a thread about IDM
Zachary James
where did I do that?
William Collins
? I said I don't want intellectualism when I dance
Lincoln King
Well yeah. The term just became a marketing tag to appeal to the non-dance audience, rather than an actual genre label. I agree with the OP, and pretty much all of the "IDM" poster children like RDJ, ae, Squarepusher etc think the term is bollocks as well.
Kayden Morales
why do people say this stuff have they got no idea how racist it is to suggest all dance music has to be boneheaded
Dylan Peterson
assumed sarcasm, carry on Homer
Nicholas Nguyen
no, not boneheaded, there are graceful tunes that also are not intellectualised
Connor Cruz
you assume
Joseph Lopez
>racist oh boy here we go...
Oliver Sanchez
aphex twin doesn't like the name idm because he likes normal dance music too
Aiden Walker
how can you not understand anything this much he's referring to the attitude of the IDM bedroom producer who mocks the EDM club scene
Carson Gutierrez
it is though you only ever hear that shit from white music writers black music writers love aphex etc because they get it
Jaxon Bell
No dance music is ''boneheaded''
Owen Hernandez
but he just pulled that out of his ass, he literally just said some racist stuff and blamed some imaginary person for it
Leo Howard
Why does electronic music attract so many nu-male weaklings?
Austin Green
and neither is it anti-intellectual like, have you even heard drexciya
Xavier Russell
If they'd just used '''experimental'' instead of ''intelligent'' they could have save 20 years of dumb internet arguments.
Adam Baker
very little of opns stuff has anything to do with dance music.
Jose Foster
neither does SAWII but so what, IDM was a never literal description
Jayden Sanchez
no, he explained his point by saying that the majority of people that happily describe their music as "IDM" are white, and considering the history of "EDM" with black audiences, like in Detroit, a racial undertone of superiority becomes obvious
Joshua Green
Exactly. Theres dance music and theres other dance music. Then theres other electronic music not made for inna dance.
Isaiah Long
The rant might be justified but I honestly cannot think of a single artist who self-identifies as IDM.
Landon Wood
Neither did Grimes.
Because it's an album based genre unlike most other electronic music.
Ethan Collins
I don't believe thats the main reason on here because there are plenty of regular dance music albums. just because kiddies in /bleep/ like to act superior because of muh singles, I don't buy it.
Jeremiah Scott
but the IDM list used to discuss tons of detroit artists, it wasn't some whites only club, wtf he was actually on there and he's saying that shit which is even worse, selective blindness like you'd have to just ignore all the mills and drexciya threads to even go there, he chose to go there, idk why
Jeremiah Lopez
idk i think its less selective blindness and just selecting a new perspective on the thing so many ppl have said 'IDM is dumb tag' i think it's interesting avenue to look at issue from yes, definitely doesn't represent issue as a whole. but if we did that every time we made any point we'd never stop talking
Isaiah Morgan
THIS
could have avoided everything
Adrian Jenkins
i just don't understand americans, why does everything have to be about race
Logan Ortiz
because their entire culture is founded on racial issues.. e.g two holocausts hard to avoid it
Caleb Green
more like entire economics founded on slave labor
Lincoln Thompson
(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
Austin Fisher
>le straight white male boogeyman
Isaac Kelly
the ironic part is people over 18 who actually go clubbing, not underage pardners pretending to be brits on Sup Forums, actual clubbers would always choose mixes over singles anyway unless DJs
Daniel Wright
Yeah, there are, but the primary form of releasing music in electronic music is not the album, so the point remains.
Jaxson Thompson
because it's interesting
Aiden Barnes
>checks the Sup Forums essentials
Discovery, Cross, the list goes on...
Gabriel Bailey
Found the Sup Forumstard
Also, every item on the Sup Forums "essentials" is an album, so no surprise the electronic "essentials" are going to be albums as well. The Sup Forums "essentials" suck anyways.
Lincoln Lewis
yeah especially dance music doesn't really work with mu's obsession with albums it's more of a single / ep world
Wyatt Rivera
If anything IDM largely evolved as an extension of the Detroit stuff and was opposed to "dumb" Eurodance shit, which was mostly German or Dutch and overwhelmingly white.
Jaxon Reed
I think people do self-identify as IDM, but it's only out of convenience. No one really endorses it.