How should we name it now?

Here's the actual post I wrote in 2008 on the list - yeah, I have the IDM archives stored.

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  Hullo IDMites

  I'll weigh in here, since I haven't participated in ages. Reader beware=

Idm.Benjamin.hobson@sma11.com wrote:

> I personally have always told my friends that IDM stands for inteligent=
> dance music. This opens it up to what I think it is and moves a
> listenner into an easier position when defining it.
>
  What I nowadays find distasteful is the actual classification of IDM
as somehow "intelligent"; since as humans we tend to think of things
through dichotomies, and since every action has an equal, but opposite
reaction, there should be something called along the lines of Stupid
Dance Music, how would you characterise that without offending someone
and not being a blatantly elitist git?

  The list, as I recall, was set up to counter the surge of "brainless"
UK rave/hardcore onslaught, thump-thump-nosebleed stuff (to paraphrase a
classic post on the list that ended up on the sleeve of AiII). The same
thread/sleeve sports the question "why is so much attention given to
Warp's (recent) past?", and that was (before) 1995. So this sort of
navel-gazing has been going on since the beginning of the list.

  To me, IDM used to be a musical genre (somewhere before the turn of
the millennium), but throughout the years, it has become clear that
besides being this mailing list, it's simply a framework of
musical/cultural eclecticism allowing people to pick and choose
non-mainstream (mainly) electronic music they like, and use IDM as a
label to make it sound fancy and different. I used to be quite elitist
(and most probably I still am) about the music I love, so believe me, I
know what I'm talking about (if you'll check the IDM archives, you'll
probably find some of my first posts from around 1993 or so).

  But yes, there have been numerous discussions on the meaning of IDM,
its status as a genre, mailing-list etc., and there's no definitive
outcome, and probably will never be, so the subject should just be
dropped, there's no end to it.

  Personally, I think IDM should be used as a name as-is, not as an
acronym with an expansion; the expanded version has too many
interpretations and semantic/historic baggage.

On 9 Jul 2008, at 03:31, "Sim David" <pmxds@nottingham.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> So yeah, it seems kind of weird and a bit sad that the list is mostly
> stuck talking about one particular strand of nineties electronic music
> rather than discussing, embracing, arguing about, comparing or getting
> bored with any of the range of newer stuff that's out there.
>
  That's the I part for you. Since IDM is such a semantically loaded
moniker for these things, nowadays it's easier to discuss and argue
about the semantics rather than about the music, whether it matches the
expectations set by the earlier, canonicalised examples of the music
placed under the umbrella of IDM.

> (By the by, for more dubstep that might appeal to IDM fans, the Geiom
> album is well worth a look. Melodies and bleeps meet bass and
> atmospherics, quite chilled, very nice. And the Subtle Audio
> compilation is worth checking on the leftfield dnb front. DJ support
> from Richard D James, can't be bad...)

  I think that for any long-time IDM fan, *step (for dub-, break-,
chill- or whatever sub-genre of step you like to think of) is really a
good match. I was a bit of a latecomer to dubstep, but when I warmed up
to it, I did in a big way. There's tons of extremely interesting stuff
out there, from iTAL tEK's crisp, clear production to broody, menacing
mayhem by Scanone, with lots of crossover sound by Point B and the likes
to absolute burners by Noiz, Exicision, Innasekt etc.

From: thorsten@highpointlowlife.com

> i have to admit, i totally don't understand why people still cling to
> this idea of autechre/aphex/squarepusher/BoC era IDM.
>
> Sure, nostalgia is nice, we all have lots of good memories, but it=20
> seems kinda the anithesis of IDM which i was always interested in
> because it was pushing the boundaries of electronic music, doing
> something new and different, new textures, rhythms, structures. Well
> most of those releases are all like 14 years old now, and i feel its
> kinda dadtronica now.
>
  Although it's rather trite in this context, Those who cannot remember
the past are condemned to repeat it (Santayana); I have found that to
appreciate and understand anything with more depth, you'll need to be
familiar with it's history. There's no (quantifiable) progress unless
you have something to compare the new things to. Although I understand
that this is not what you mean, discussing the classics is as relevant
as discussing the avant-garde, because in-depth knowledge and the
ability to reflect upon the technological and musical progress is never
a bad thing. (I did warn you about the elitism, didn't I?)

> why aren't we talking about all the new exciting electronic music=20
> being produced these days? Theres a lot of different strands, from
> dubstep to the instrumental electronic hip hop stuff, 8bit, noise
> beats, 2step. It may not be IDM, but i think the idea behind them all
> is pretty much the same as people doing IDM in that early ninties era
> - pushing things out, trying new things.
>
  First of all, discussing music is discussing art; it's very hard to do
without resorting to wishy-washy allegories, stream-of-consciousness
blabbing, or comparisons, juxtapositions or oppositions. Then, there's
the problem of defining what is what; category theory is hard, prototype
theory just a bit easier. So staying within the boundaries of what we
know, e.g. classic, canonicalised examples of IDM, makes discussion
easier. I'm not saying that this is a good thing, it's just easier,
because most of us are not verbally equipped to go in to lengthy
conversations on the musicological merits of electronic music, melody,
rhythm, timbre, etc. (I'm really off-base here, so I'll refrain.)

  But I'd love to see fresh discussions instead of just new
release/event announcements.

  Like I stated above, I think that IDM is what you think it is. It's
very personal, like any individual taste, and with a lofty moniker to
boot, so it's appealing to us as a niche of freedom in a commercialised,
branded, increasingly monocultural world.

  And why are we having a meta-discussion about discussing new stuff
instead of actually doing it?

> at a glance through my music library, i would pick out stuff like:
>
  [list removed for brevity]

  Loads of good stuff there, very *step-oriented with some dubby techno
and neo-classical detroit thrown in. I've been into a lot of the same
sort of sound, with the addition of more wonky electro/breaks, hard but
subtle techno, plenty of classical music, etc. Here's a list of artists
included in my recent record orders (in no particular order):

  Exicision, Noiz, Rakoon, Komonazmuk, Blackmass Plastics, Vaccine,
Reso, Vincent de Wit, Bas Mooy, Matt Green, D Formed, Si Begg, Luka
Baumann, Function, Meat Beat Manifesto, iTAL tEK, Andrea Parker, Sync
24, Matt Whitehead, ADJ, Junq, Scanone, Al Tourettes, TRG, Zen Militia,
Bionics, Randomer, Go Hiyama, DJ Pepo, Joton, Dynamo, James Ruskin,
Cane, Exium, Aaron Spectre, mANASyT, B12, Claro Intelecto, Move D, Lone
Wolf, Reeko, Oscar Mulero, Dimitri Andreas...