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

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!

Don't know about those figures but the proposition strikes me as correct. However I would go on to say that this "10 per cent" (or however much it actually is) also has a disproportionate influence on the music's perception of itself as well as the opinion of outsiders. It's not some random quirk that Manitoba's new album is being discussed within a context of Mercury Rev and The Flaming Lips; it due to the nature of IDM currently that such connections seem obvious and desirable. Likewise the interlinks between indie hip hop and IDM are as much a result of the possibility of critical and commercial acceptance (ie. the existence of an overlapping fanbase) as they are purely aesthetic motivations. In short, the type of music that is being made is being affected by the shift in fanbase. The same process happened in drum & bass (a shift towards techno) and UK Garage (a shift towards hip hop) - the sonics changed to reflect the general tastes of the changing audience. This is a totally natural and ever-present process within all forms of music.

" 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."

Ha ha Ronan you have summed up in one sentence my entire critical outlook on dance music!

"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 dislike that kind of dilettante too though - the one that justifies their limited exposure to an area by pretending they're only listening to the cream of the crop - but there's another type of dilettante that is much less foolish, thankfully.

"incidentally, the only times i have heard or seen the terms 'IDM', 'undie' and 'microhouse' EVER are on this board - for the people who use them, where are these terms occurring elsewhere?"

IDM is taken from the name of the internet mailing list that discusses, um, IDM. Microhouse is from Phillip Sherburne's article in The Wire. Undie is just a compound of underground and indie with humorous connotations.

I don't think people here are necessarily accusing IDM of being in dire straits, but rather the extent to which it and dance music are going their separate ways. Incidentally, I actually think that the two are probably more connected than they were, say, three years ago; the rise of microhouse, electroclash and glitch techno have all created interzones that encourage listeners to accept and appreciate the effects of groove-based musics on the body; possibly someone who doesn't like dance music getting into IDM now (unless they specifically limit themselves to eg. the Manitoba/Four Tet/Prefuse 73 strains) is more likely to end up liking dance music than if they had gotten into the music at any time in the last, oh, seven years.

I think that all the retro rockers and electroclash folx are part of the same dissatisfaction, regressing because the outer limits have been reached, or so we're given to suspect. I myself as I stated upthread have been really disappointed with new music for about two years now, at least in the arena under discussion.

I wonder whether it will all dissolve in favor of some better, purer pop sounds anytime soon. Maybe the long-imagined mishmash of everything from the last century will finally appear and no man will ever go hungry again, who knows. Can't get here soon enough for me, though, I can tell you that.

and I think that Reynolds may have already provided the answer to this problem didnt he? his biggest frustration it seems (when he was more of an evangelist, iguess), was that people were unwilling to accept dance on its own terms... the music itself doesnt really matter as much as whether it is received as "proper music, not dance shite for the proles", ya know? I mean, really, the key to Reynolds and maybe even to all of dance is the quote he put in the intro from Hoskyns (sp?) about losing "knowingness". wasnt the problem with indie always less the music itself, but more how it became so unimportant in the face of snobbery, tribalism, and the search for obscure knowledge for the sake of the egos of the searchers? I mean, superchunk is just a pop-rock band until the rhetoric is added...

my stake in all of this is really similar to what has been mentioned upthread by others... what Ronan said about "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"...
Ronan what do you think of the tapes? ;-)

Aaron I will mail you this afternoon about the tapes.

i dunno,i think that,whatever you think of it,and i love some of it and some of it just wrecks my head,but surely electroclash was dance music dissolving in favour of pure pop?

Can I add that maybe what worries me is that, well, the thing that always got be about rock was, at its worst, bad rock criticism seems to think that any schmuck playing a guitar is automatically more real, intelligent, authentic, etc., than anybody playing anything else (ie worst folk artist better than best rapper), and I worry that IDM/indieelectronic could repeat that scenario, simply replacing the guitar for laptop... and I think a lot of this has to do with being in America, where the scene is small and vulnerable and could easily fall prey... of course, maybe I am just feeling paranoid this morning ;-)

But even Chuck Berry, or the Blackhearts, had a rhetoric, even though maybe it's faded and hard to remember now. Folk singers in the 50s and 60s had one too, among other things in their implicit rejection of the things Chuck Berry could use to make you move. But rhetoric isn't added, like you'd add milk to coffee, it might have been what made them form the band in the first place. I don't see anything wrong with having a rhetoric.

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