Why IDM died

  On 10/6/2016 at 6:10 AM, usagi said:

remember complextro? lol.

 

Heard the name, but don't recall anything about it.

that's perfect then.

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  On 10/7/2016 at 1:10 AM, Leon Sumbitches said:

bumdance

Cumdance

 

Strictly cumdancing

intelligent bleep bloops

It's probably because it was kind of hard to intelligently dance to it.

lol

  On 10/5/2016 at 3:05 PM, triachus said:

 

  On 10/5/2016 at 2:55 PM, darreichungsform said:

Yeah, "IDM" sounds stupid.

 

 

  Quote

Why not "Electronica"?

just fyi this made me spit take at work this morning

 

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  On 10/5/2016 at 1:23 AM, Brisbot said:

What is IDM anyway? I haven't figured out what it is. It isn't a specific sound, that's for sure. These days it's real analord-ish, but it used to be kinda breatbeat-y? How in the world does the same genre change entirely.

 

Serious answer: IDM is a genre you know when you hear it. Likewise if I read a review about how something has "IDM influence" or aesthetics I can imagine what they mean. A lot of what defines IDM is what it is not - 4/4 house and techno beats, typical presets, meters, tempos, etc. That makes it and Braindance hard to pigeonhole sound wise - it can be anything from leftfield ambient house and techno from the early 90s,  "drill n' bass" breakbeat of the late 90s/early 00s, VGM and chiptune informed melodic electronica, very experimental and sterile stuff like AE, or sample heavy downtempo stuff like BoC and Bola. (Personally I think BoC as "IDM" is quite debatable.)

 

Krautrock is similar in terms of having a vaguely defined diverse sound yet fairly easy to identify. It also has similar silliness in it's name origin.

IDM for a long time was an outsiders take on/kind a of dialog with whatever the mainstream dance music was at the given time. Whether it was acid house, jungle or hip hop/electro, IDM was a introverted look at that music. I think a big part of why it 'died' was that a 2nd or 3rd wave of idm artists came along who's primary point of reference was IDM. It became kind of an echo chamber of these existing concepts and not really a reflection/abstraction of what was going on in the larger dance music culture. 

 

Also,  the trajectory of the music paralleled the technological advances of computer based music at the time. The artists who we all know are the ones who managed to ride the crest of that wave right up until ~2001 when there was a paradigm shift in the ubiquity of high speed computers, cheap/pirated software and sudden infinite distribution of music.  For a decade+ it seemed like each new album was utilizing the latest technology and doing things that couldn't even have been accomplished the previous year. 

The music plateaued at the same time the consumer technology did. 

 

None of this is to say that there isn't interesting idm-esque music going on now but I think the goals are different. A lot of the 'push the technology as hard as possible' music just seems boring and it's really more of a challenge to do something personal or musically interesting with all of these techniques that are in the wild now. 

It died after the analord series and ultravisitor. It is completely impossible for idm after this point to be anything other than a disappointment.

But then there is Syro which kinda destroys my argument but it's mostly true.

  On 10/12/2016 at 5:45 PM, nikisoko said:

IDM for a long time was an outsiders take on/kind a of dialog with whatever the mainstream dance music was at the given time. Whether it was acid house, jungle or hip hop/electro, IDM was a introverted look at that music. I think a big part of why it 'died' was that a 2nd or 3rd wave of idm artists came along who's primary point of reference was IDM. It became kind of an echo chamber of these existing concepts and not really a reflection/abstraction of what was going on in the larger dance music culture.

 

Also, the trajectory of the music paralleled the technological advances of computer based music at the time. The artists who we all know are the ones who managed to ride the crest of that wave right up until ~2001 when there was a paradigm shift in the ubiquity of high speed computers, cheap/pirated software and sudden infinite distribution of music. For a decade+ it seemed like each new album was utilizing the latest technology and doing things that couldn't even have been accomplished the previous year.

The music plateaued at the same time the consumer technology did.

 

None of this is to say that there isn't interesting idm-esque music going on now but I think the goals are different. A lot of the 'push the technology as hard as possible' music just seems boring and it's really more of a challenge to do something personal or musically interesting with all of these techniques that are in the wild now.

Excellent post - pretty much sums it up. Although if you think IDM is truly dead you're just not looking hard enough.

 

(Edit: Not 'you' specifically)

Edited October 12, 2016 by NI64

It's about time for Neo-Nu-metal imo ymca o.p.p pen15

  On 10/4/2016 at 7:31 PM, cloud capture said:

ha, it is present in all things

 

These types of answers are the real Best Answers.

 

Because IDM is still alive.  It might die off one day, but we're not close to that time.  Before electronic music, IDM was called "jazz".