when did IDM become to dance what undie is to hip hop?

also,you're all ignoring the fact that you're complaining about idm in terms that would be far far more appropriate to complain about microhouse,if you do indeed care about how scenes perceive themselves,which seems like only part of the point to me anyway...
the "refined detroit" snobbery/idealism sterling is talking about is (or the idea of idm)is even more evident with microhouse,but a blind eye seems to be turned to this because everyone likes microhouse....
i mean i like all the types of music mentioned above to various degrees,but the ways you are thinking about them are largely an illusion

Microhouse can't be accused of that really. Disdain for audiences and the genre one is working within is pretty infuriating to me.

I guess I'd exclude microhouse for the same reason as Jess (rightly I suppose) suggested me including The Freaks and Herbert was unfair.

I think its more to do with the trajectory of mainstream dance music from about 1998-99 onwards, with the rise of trance and later UK garage. Possibly because for most of the 90s dance and electronica had wrapped itself in this 'future of music' rhetoric by which it defined itself against rock. It implied experimentation, mischief, boundary-breaking and was crystallised most obviously in the output of Aphex and Autechre and friends, even though it was quite often tremendous fun in the process (alright, maybe not Ae!). But garage just didn't fit in with this - house, techno, IDM and breaks alike were all viewed as safe, comfy furrows to plough and had been for years, while this new, aggressive sound was alienating to the dance geeks. There so many sonic characteristics shared by the above genres that are just absent in garage... not to mention the prominence of rap/rnb vocals, the return to more song-based structures etc.

Can you see I'm deliberately trying to edge around the whole race question here?

How on earth does that make it an indie aesthetic? Indie is generally speaking about songs, IDM is anything but < /Geirbot>. Possibly a prog aesthetic, though... (also, with regard to my above point, UK Garage is the only dance genre I can think of without a recognisable proggy element as yet).

I'm not saying they're bang on similar but house got away without "relating" to garage because there are already some similarites there surely.

Even the way IDM is consumed makes it difficult to be a part of dance, the album format being so strong in it surely alienates some people. That in itself may be a problem with the dance scene and you have to wonder is any amount of rationalisation enough for the fact that there are seldom any good house/techno albums.

But that would be rockist eh?

Disputed... I think Aphex and to a far lesser extent Paradinas and Squarepusher are the exceptions here. I mean, no one gives a flying shit about Boards of Canada or Autechre or Manitoba as people in the same way they do about Oasis, Jay-Z or Justin Timberlake, do they? This is another reason why I think the 'indie' comparison is a red-herring, the whole 'personality' thing could be applied to pretty much any genre EXCEPT dance - it's not unique to indie or rock.

This is going to go back to that old Massive Attack/DJ Shadow chesnut, I can see it, but this is like saying that In Sides or Sheet One can't be considered part of 'dance' because they are consumed primarily in album format in people's living rooms as opposed to in clubs. To me, and I suspect to loads of other people making this distinction, 'dance music' is music that is primarily based round beats and bleeps... so you don't really need to actually be able to actually DANCE to anything that fits into the broad dance music church, any more than rock music needs to actually ROCK in this day and age (which of course, a lot of it doesn't).

But don't you see the value of aesthetics in this? I mean I don't care about the label "dance music" greatly, but I do care about the aesthetics I believe in being totally ignored. Particularly if the stuff doing it is getting high critical acclaim, it's essentially a get out clause, like thank god those dance types have finally given up on that dancing nonsense and we can give them some respect.

This is a red herring in the context of this discussion though Matt, perhaps, I'm also fairly sure I'm one of the only people willing to argue this point, though not perhaps for any other reason than my feeling of involvement.

I feel like Mike Taylor a bit here, I'm not saying there's not a place for electronic music you don't dance to, I just feel its place isn't under the umbrella of dance music, how can you ever expect to break down barriers when you forfeit what you wanted to break them down with in the first place, or for in the first place.

The distinction is more complicated than that I think.

Disputed again - partly because once again I think Aphex here is the exception, and partly because I *do* think that this happens in other genres. Possibly Eminem is a better example here, or indeed any other tokenistic figure adopted by the NME et al (of which Aphex is certainly one), I just don't agree with this "cult of personality" thing as a signifier of 'indieness'.

Likewise, if you're getting defensive about a perceived bias in the music press in favour of "IDM" and against "proper dance music" its probably worth pointing out that (until recently when the rock press got to prematurely declare dance music 'over'), it was the more conventional electronic/dance acts or DJs who were getting the column inches and the fawning praise ahead of the IDM laptop bods (once again, I think Aphex is the exception here).

I don't really hold with the undie comparison, mostly because the difference between underground and mainstream hip-hop is primarily lyrical whereas with IDM/the rest of dance its largely sonical. But still, with hip-hop there's still the small factor of the actual RAPPING which is a far bigger unifying factor than anything that exists in the myriad strands of dance music.

Obviously there's a lot of overdetermination at work. But I think it's uncontroversial to say that "indie" electronic music is that electronic music which, say, Pitchfork covers in a largely non-disparaging manner (just so you don't think I mean Basement Jaxx or Fischerspooner), and that the writers of Pitchfork probably like this stuff for the reasons cited above among others - and they're not inherently bad reasons, though if you love dance music for other reasons they might appear to be quite wrongheaded or myopic (just as an outright distaste for albums would seem to everyone else). But what's interesting is that all of these traits recreate themselves when you look at all the refined versions of other dance genres - they apply to MJ Cole-in-refinement-mode as much as they do to Boards of Canada. And you can't boil it down by saying that these sorts of values make bad music, or that an adherence to "dance" values makes good music (when obviously a lot of "real" dance music is utter crap as well), but I think it's pretty clear that this tension has a huge effect on a style's development, and how it's received.

To pick up on Sterling's point about microhouse being a sorta-exception, what I think is notable is how it plays with this opposition - there's an emphasis on product as much as artistry, conformity as much as personal innovation, tracks as much albums. Other dance genres do this too obviously, but I think microhouse as a whole has a deliberate playfulness to it that is sort of distinct e.g. it's not as stylistically blinkered as prog, and doesn't have the fall-of-Eden mythology of Detroit Techno or the devotion to absolute reductionism of minimal techno to keep it on the musical straight and narrow.

"I don't really hold with the undie comparison, mostly because the difference between underground and mainstream hip-hop is primarily lyrical whereas with IDM/the rest of dance its largely sonical."

I disagree. The rapping/music relationship within hip hop is always a contested, dynamic and dialectical one; the shift in the nature of rapping in undie vs "generic" rap necessitates an equally strong shift in the nature of production --> my suspicion that there's a deliberate stylistic rigidity to much undie hip hop in sonic terms which incongruously creates the conditions of existence for self-consciously experimental rapping styles. The exception to this is the avant-fringe of Def Jux, Anticon etc - but all of these take their avant cues from IDM as much as hip hop itself, SURPRISE SURPRISE.

Heh... I was actually think thinking of Def Jux and Anticon in particular when I made that comment, so perhaps we might be talking at cross-purposes here. Likewise the recent appearance of hip-hop acts on the Warp roster is worthy of a mention here.

Indie's relationship with IDM is to do with the Aphex-cult-of-star thing Ronan talks about, but not solely determined by it. There's other forces at work: a fear of or distaste for or boredom with actual bodily groove; a desire for the artist to be musically distinct from other artists, to be 'progressing' in isolation to some extent; a focus on albums vs tracks; an appreciation of nice, thoughtful artwork; a sense that there is a theoretical framework behind the music's creation that goes beyond "it's bangin', innit?" etc. etc.

Now, at risk of labouring a point to much... THIS IS NOT UNIQUE TO INDIE! Now, I'm wary that this is on the verge of teetering into a tedious rockism debate, but with regard to the above quote, I pretty much disagree with almost all of that. Bear in mind that Gareth really wasn't referring to the first wave of what has now been conveniently lumped together as IDM regardless of stylistic differences, ie a lot of the stuff that sprung up in the early to mid 90s - we're talking about what actually followed it.

I think my basic problem with IDM is that nowadays it isn't doing the stuff you talk about ENOUGH - a lot of the artists namechecked above are perfectly happy to fanny around in the broad cultural furrows ploughed by that first wave - and in many ways that does reflect it's abdication of the responsibility of doing new and exciting things with music or indeed relating with what's going on elsewhere in electronic/dance music. If, indeed, you agree it has that responsiblity in the first place.

What I just don't get here, is the attitude that that actually seems to fear or distrust electronic album music, as if it's some sort of a betrayal that these guys are making music for sitting down and just listening to. I don't buy this "a fear of or distaste for or boredom with actual bodily groove" because it a - implies that everyone has the same perception of what they want to groove to, and b - that Autechre or Capitol K don't like a nice thick slice of beefy no-nonense techno when they hear it. It's just they don't particularly want to actually MAKE it, any more than Perry Farrell wants to make drill'n'bass whenever he namedrops Richard D James.

"It's just they don't particularly want to actually MAKE it"

I was talking about what the audience look for in the artists, not the artists themselves. And I think one can appreciate all of the things I mentioned while AT THE SAME TIME appreciating regular bangin' dance music.

"THIS IS NOT UNIQUE TO INDIE!"

Of course not - MJ Cole suffers the same traits as IDM but appeals to a very different audience on the whole - but I don't think it's controversial to say that there is an audience overlap b/w indie and IDM that's much stronger than any other audience overlap IDM enjoys apart from the dance audience itself. You don't tend to get nu-metal or country or hip hop or hard rock magazines covering Autechre on a regular basis. To talk about the relationship between IDM and indie, and to talk about the reasons behind this relationship, is not to say that these reasons represent something specifically "wrong" with indie or IDM that doesn't exist elsewhere (or, the short version: don't read so much into my comments).

if we're talking about 2nd gen artists like venetian snares who don't really seem connected to dance as ronan describes it, then saying that IDM does not belong under the 'dance umbrella' makes sense. this is why i don't find 2nd gen artists very interesting, though, because without an idiom to relate to, i think they become quite boring. garage, on the other hand, is pretty clearly derived from house/techno/etc, which i think explains why unlike IDM, garage doesn't see itself as anti-dance.

I think that was very true to begin with, but I'm not so sure about now. Helltime & Producer are, to some extent, IDM; they might be IDM at the point where the definition becomes meaningless, but clearly the emphasis on musical sophistication has become augmented by other, less clear cut distinctions that one can make between, say, H&P and gabba. Actually, with stuff happening like The Mover putting out an album on Tresor it's becoming harder and harder to make any of these sorts of distinctions except in a very vague macro-sense.

"garage, on the other hand, is pretty clearly derived from house/techno/etc, which i think explains why unlike IDM, garage doesn't see itself as anti-dance."

I think garage will increasingly see itself as separate from "Dance Music"; the twist is that the music it's drifting towards (US hip hop, dancehall) is just as much dance music as Dance Music is.

Whereas, whether it's danceable or not, I can't think of any IDM or IDM-related musics that haven't involved an at least partial shift away from the dancefloor compared to their mainstream dance equivalents. Gareth and Tom have told me that some drill'n'bass nights get a lot of people dancing really hard, which is at odds with what I've seen (mind you, none of the venues I've been to which play that stuff had much in the way of a dancefloor).

In general I think the common equation of 'progression' with a reduction in dancefloor energy has been a really limiting one, not in terms of the music which has been made using the equation (a good deal of which is awesome) but because of the music that hasn't been made. Conscious attempts to be innovative in the area of dance-focused groove construction always seem so fleeting, and the moment that they do become conscious of their own innovation the focus on groove itself seems to lessen, as if there's something inherent in the concept of "progress" that neccessitates a certain amount of missing-the-point. But if I was going to construct an IDM canon based on the name alone (intelligent *dance* music)it would include Frankie Knuckles, LFO, Phuture, Sven Vath, 2 Bad Mice, DJ Hype, Marc Acardipane, Dem 2, Timbaland, Mannie Fresh, The Neptunes, Wiley Kat, Lenky, Luomo, Thomas Fehlmann - people who have actually changed or are changing the operation of the groove itself on the body, changing the way we as physical beings react to dance music. Obviously then this music has been made, but only at radical junctures between one musical moment and the next where a gap has been opened... why aren't more musicians aspiring to do as these artists have done?

I'm surprised no one's mentioned sonic texture, which fits into the idea of indie, undie, IDM et al as we seem to be discussing it. Grainy, lo-fi, homemade, hand-tooled--these adjectives are all frequently used when describing these things (think of what gets praised about BoC, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Antipop), and they seem to unify the topics at hand more than anything else, even (haha) audience members' skin color. Or is that (texture, haha) a red herring? (This is a real question)

possbily slighly exaggerated,and im repeating myself,but stuff about "sophistication" is like judging mingus on who listens to him now,saying mingus/coltrane/whoever is music solely for wealthy white people to play at dinner parties,while completely ignoring the facts about how the music was actually produced/consumed by the majority of its enthusiasts

i mean loads of people here listen to jazz,myself included,and the fact that a lot of us are white,middle class people living in 2003 doesn't mean that jazz is only music for white middle class people from 2003

and while i know you can dance to it,i think microhouse is a clear move in dance music towards "sophistication" and nondancing,which,for all the dance purists,is surely far more worrying-i mean,idm was never meant to be danced to,it was music to put on,as i say,when everyone sitting around the next morning and no one is arsed mixing,or on a tuesday evening when you're not on for banging techno-thus it is no threat to dance music,it coexists peacefully-each has a time and place
but microhouse is moving dance music away from being all about dancing
(traitors!etcetc)

i am kind of playing devils advocate here,in that i like a lot of the music being discussed on this thread,including idm,"straight up" dance music,and microhouse,bu i think assumptions are being made that should be questioned

i wasnt wanting to say that it was for beardy indie heads or whatever, but that somehow there has been a decoupling from dance music as a whole, and when/how did this happen?

the mingus thing is a good point, but what that really means then is that if lfo/afx are mingus, but what does that make dntel/manitoba?

at one time there seemed to be no schism between idm and dance music. they were the same thing.

now there seems to me to be a gap between the 2. is this true? and if so why? and when?

he got into dub through doing drugs, maybe he thought it was like a combination of wu-tang clan and spacemen 3

it's funny listening to autechre these days, it sounds so "old school", the dance beat - kick, snare - is so audible, the genre hadn't moved into its "anything can be percussion" click-cutty phase yet

i'm thinkin, gareth

I mean I have to say after reading about it here for so long I was expecting microhouse to be like the way Robin puts it, without deciding whether I thought I'd like it or not, I did expect it to be quite difficult.

Now admittedly I've only heard Immer and Digital Disco, so feel free to say I've not heard enough, but I don't find enjoying it and liking it difficult in anyway, in fact it's quite effortless, and also I don't see it as a move away from dancing like Robin says. I was expecting something maybe radically different, and I guess I was pleased to find that all that was different is the groove, and the way you might react to it. In fact along with the likes of Metro Area (not microhouse maybe but anyway) it's made me realise just how danceable lighter house music can be. And the vibe is still totally house to me.

I think it's interesting. I'm not one of the main kompaktevangelist types, not heard a huge amount of the stuff, and so I was surprised to enjoy what I have heard of microhouse so much. Maybe I expected the "house" tag at the end of it to not be justified, and well I was wrong.

The thing about IDM not existing or being a relevent term is kind of interesting too, I mean sure lots of people don't recognise the term or use it, but that isn't really here nor there, lots of these same people probably never discuss anything at all to do with music, and that's neither here nor there either.

I think (to play a bit of devils advocate tennis with robin) if people aren't arsed with the term IDM or have never even heard of it then there's a good chance some of the stuff they're playing is pre the schism gareth refers to.

I don't think I'm really saying IDM is "white" and I guess I'm willing to drop the "indie" accusation (if it is an accusation heh) aswell. But what is the issue for me is the fear of the enemy within, that enemy being an electronic style which runs contrary to almost all the things I enjoy about the electronic music I like, while at the same time enjoys more critical acclaim and becomes the default option, an easier option for people.

I think alot of people around here, myself included, dislike the way the indie mindset often assumes the best music in a genre is the least popular, at least I suspect I'm not alone in this. Hence the sneaking feeling that if something like undie or IDM didn't exist, some fucker would invent it anyway, and a whole load of people would still buy it, whatever the hell it sounded like. Some genres don't work in terms of what is least popular being good, that's the facts.

It's just this old chestnut of "oh I like all genres, but you have to search hard in country/hiphop/dance to find the really precious metal". It's also one of my biggest problems with the fetishisation of the dilletante position in music fan circles.

I hope that explains my position a bit. phrases like "indie" maybe bog the whole argument down.

my main point: outside of Reynolds and ILM, where else has this view that 'IDM' is fundamentally problematic or in trouble in recent years been documented/suggested? how much is it REALLY a problem at all? really there is not much particularly worthwhile i can say on this thread as i find everything on an equal par at the moment in modern music - nothing seems particularly stronger than anything else. the majority of the recent 'gutter garridge' i've heard hasn't actually done that much for me (i'm talking about the general sub-genre here but obv there are always great examples and many of these seem to have come from Dizzy, Wiley etc. of late but i know there's a lot i havent heard) but its hard to gage how popular that stuff really is outside this ILM-based circle that has become my main source for things in music (possibly a problem) e.g. someone I know who prefers the UK garage that has a stronger US influence reckons a lot of punters have been saying Dizzy Rascal and co. are 'killing garage' - unfortunately i can't strengthen that allegation, but i'd like to know what the likes of MJ Cole, Matt Jam Lamont and even Wookie think about the recent success of the 'gutter' sound in the last 18 months...

as for microhouse, Luomo actually bores even me for the most part (and i actually quite like the first 16B album, go figure) and again i'm not sure how favoured this is outside ILM - certainly i think its closer to the 'Dadhouse' tag, akin to Hybrid and Sasha & Digweed style epic-prog (but still uniformly dance/club music) in terms of its 'safeness', cleanliness and anal retentiveness...Akufen possibly sits right on the line between whatever divide there is but i probably need to hear more...

so Archigram and Space Cowboy are making euphoric FUN club music, but they with the likes of Medicine 8 are actually making tunes that i'm sure Sasha, oakenfold and Ashley Beedle LOVE to play out - but those elder statesmen do not seem as interested/motivated to create tracks quite as powerful as 'Rock Music Pays Off' anymore, and given they're all well in their 30s now thats understandable really (other established acts like Orbital and the Chems have also mellowed, and even stagnated in a way) - Sasha actually stayed at the forefront of dance music sonically for years but his particular craft in the hi-fi end of dance production has acquired this 'dated' and 'boring' feel because the technology has not significantly advanced in the last 5 years, at least not noticeably to the average listener and clubber. in contrast, the lo-fi and minimalist side is what now appeal with its freshness and the thrill of immediacy and novel tricks based more on revivalism and old sounds rather than 'new' - again i am tempted to liken this to the period in the late 50s where glitzy 'art deco' fell out of fashion and taking its place was the functional dynamic modernist style.

sorry for going off on a bit of tangent - how that last bit relates to the plight of 'IDM' is unclear!

I mean, is art creation or filtration? Does it gain its power from what is made, or from what is left out?