IDM

1992

The term "Intelligent Dance Music" or IDM is despised by both its practitioners as its opponents. This makes sense, as what exactly does make music intelligent? There certainly never was any intention to do so. Early IDM composers just wanted to create electronic music with analogue instruments and samples. The songs have a complicated, unexpected structure and are compiled of a variety of analogue effects, acid bleeps, washes, breaks and scratches. There's often more than one bassline, as deep as possible. IDM is sometimes hard to separate from more downtempo forms of Breakbeat, because the classic four-to-the-floor Techno beat is often abandoned. After the rise of Jungle, IDM starts to use Drum & Bass rhythms as well, which makes the genre almost impossible to categorise within a single supergenre. IDM can also be regarded as one with Ambient Techno, as they share a great deal of overlapping. Like Rave, IDM was born in a series of illegal parties across the UK, but where they preferred the opposite type of music. At first the music was rather minimal and less downtempo.

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