Proof that IDM is officially dead.

I am definitely not saying the genre is not in the toilet at the moment, but I don't think it is dead just quite yet. One of the reasons I stopped doing my radio show was because I could not find new records that were actually worth playing. Give it some time, it will bounce back.

Exhibit B: Mainstream co-option of all the genre's best bits, only this time with actual TUNES!

Exhibit C: All the "best" IDM from the past 18 months either being unabashedly hybridized (Prefuse 73, Bjork, Fennesz) or some form of redux (Boards Of Canada, Manitoba)

Exhibit D: what jim said about Vincent Gallo.

(unless you really like that spastic breaks stuff. and if so, may god have mercy on yr soul.)

Exhibit E: Drukqs

personally, between recent VW, Nissan, Nike ads & electroclash, there's very little room for purist IDM. Most fans have moved on, and the genre itself (if you're the type that gives IDM its own space in between trip-hop, electropunk and techno) has gradually gotten more and more derivative/weak.

Ae, BoC & AFX completely blowing mules lately doesn't help either.
Geogaddi/drukqs/Ganz Graf are great? Great like an overweight truck driver's ass.

Thoroughly disappointed,

eh. mouse on mars doing anything at the moment?

how i even know what warp released this year is kind of a mystery.

Yeah, don't worry, you didn't seem to be busting with excitement.

Do you mean Modest Mouse on Mars?

Uh no. Who are you, man???

(As far as I'm aware - and yes, I realise that isn't very - a year or two ago, not only were Kompakt generally called IDM [or at least got most of their attention as the new trend of such], but that style was what most IDM fans were all over, so I don't know if it's fair to call it a completely separate thing that they should have been listening to and making except they were all too spastic.)

(Plus I'd be inclined to put big name double albums that were allegedly deliberately tedious, or at least intentionally rushed and not up to usual standards, as contract breakers from Warp under reasons why Warp might not be the best place to look, but I suppose that depends on what the MEN stuff turns out like.)

You may now return to pointing, laughing and calling me rockist / spastic / just so five-to-ten years ago, if you'd stopped. Sorry for being inarticulate, that's because I am and it's 6am. Why am I attempting to defend something when I know everyone here will both sneer at me for liking it and decide that people like me liking it is conclusive proof that it's worthless?

IDM is like the most dubious label ever. It is Warp. It is all things micro. It is Milleu Plateaux glitch. It is all things utilizing DSP. It is the breakdown in the Holly Vallance single. I mean, I've never thought of IDM as anything *but* hybridization and something for co-opting.... so Morr doing Slowdiveish stuff and Chocolate Industries splicing up hip hop and Kompakt and whatever are not so much under its umbrella (does one exist?) but just drawing from a rather broad palette of sounds/dynamics which may have once constituted a genre but now feel more like free-for-all colors ready for application. I can understand the claim that certain tropes are tired and dead... spastic drillnbass or idyllic floaty postcards or clinical minimalist glitchcore and so on and so on, but to me at least, the breadth of all-things-possibly+unfortunately-called-IDM is something I a)don't see a reason to dislike (blame sewing machine over fabrics), and b)don't see dying or going away. Anyhow, despite how it sounds, I agree w/ most things said on this thread.

That being said, I have been spending most of my record money on music that came out of the American South 30-50 years ago. Electronic music is seeming very 90's to me at the moment.

i mean, when does intelligence die? the abstractions and experiments
have barely begun.

m.

idm is a crappy name, which perhaps suited a particular sound 96-99? the name is best off dropped (especially as it conjures up visions of iain duncan smith)

please please please please please can someone take this awful venetian snares album off my hands? (exhibit a-z)

Apologies for crankiness earlier, I should have gone to bed four hours before I did.

(MarkR's post captures what I meant about Kompakt above, in case I wasn't clear; there's still good stuff that would previously have been labelled as idm around, and it seems a bit unfair to say, "right, now the definition's changed to mean the subset that is stuck in the past and arguably dying, and you're all out of touch.")

Here's a question: which strikes you as closer to the central definition or spirit of IDM -- Morr or Tigerbeat6?

1) Morr - The ambient techno/trip-hop side of things, which developed from the Aphex Twin's early ambient stuff & then was perfected by Boards of Canada; and

2) Tigerbeat 6 - The spazzy sound processing side developed by Autechre and (some) Squarpusher (I know T6 is moving away from this, but it's still there to a degree.)

I haven't heard K606's mashups (other than NWA, and wait, one of the Missy ones, I think, both of which I liked) but I don't think he walks it likes he talks it AT ALL. Like Matos says, his own music, what I've heard of it, isn't pushing things forward EXCEPT in terms of presentation (which is kind of important, but still.) I actually prefer to have music like that couched in theory & science rather than presented as the shit-smeared wall of a toddler. I think there is a good reason to put a lot of thought into music that abstract.

The Max Tundra record, on the other hand, points to a better future for T6. That actually seems to embody some of the shit the Kid has been talking the last few years.

Wow.

Speaking of which, I guess I can see where y'all are coming from re: TigerBeat6 and shit-smearing, but I find it to be mostly just "shit" and less spontaneous/wacky/infantile, but that's just me.

Honestly, the first Cex record isn't so bad (aside from that Dismemberment Plan remix, ugh, what is the point?). But really, the only thing I truly enjoy on the label is the Pimmon CD (haven't heard the Max Tundra thingy yet, although I quite like his stuff).

If you ascribe to the old-schoolish notion of IDM being sparked from the whole Artificial Intelligence subset, then I'd have to say Morr, by far.

With Miguel taking the lead, Tigerbeat6 have very actively positioned themselves as anti-IDM; irrespective of the fact that a lot of their music DOES owe directly and unmistakably to the Warp canon, I wonder if their blustery down with the sceneisms didn't ultimately have a significant impact on debasing IDM's insularity and chin-stroking...

Hey, even if most of the music sucks, that's a pretty noble goal.

But on that note, WTF would be the point of most anything, though? There's room for this to be its own established subculture, just like all the rest.

Up above, Rebecca mentioned Planet Mu, Merck, Morr, Defocus and Benbecula as still releasing "good stuff", and I agree, but that still doesn't mean that almost all of it wasn't either a) hybridized or b) classic IDM redux. Machine Drum = Prefuse 73, Christ = Boards Of Canada, etc.

Decent as they were, Drukqs and Gantz Graf and most of I Am Squarepusher hinted at a giant dead end, a hovering resignation. Maybe the Old Guard is officially out of new tricks, and short of taking things down a completely different path (hello Red Hot Cock), all they have left are subtle variations on the old ones.

The more I think about it, the more I think this is a great thing.

This, BTW, was just as much about Warp's decidedly non-IDMish releases as it was about the subpar ones. Req, Antipop, Merzbow, now Morvern Callar - this is called 'diversifying your portfolio'.

The title track of Gantz Graf sounds totally fresh to me, I haven't heard any other IDM that is that 'fucked up' while keeping the groove so solid.

I don't want to define IDM, but you could say that glitch is a subset of it, I guess.

OK, but 'indie rock' is an acceptable term for things, because it's been around longer or something.

One is a catch-all for music released on small labels, with cult followings and whatever, that doesn't show up on MTV etc. The other is a catch-all for music released on small labels, with cult followings and whatever, that shows up on MTV during advertisements and cutaways between videos.

One is more likely to have guitars and live drums in it, the other is more likely to involve Macintosh Powerbooks.

Neither term describes the 'sound' of the music because both encompass a huge range of styles. The terms are meant to describe a scene and denote that ticket prices are likely to be less than for, say, Phil Collins.

There ya go.

Bbbbbut No Doctors just put out a record! No time like the present!

actually, that would be jimi tenor.

"Craaaig David all over your "

personally, i don't think IDM is a cul-de-sac at all. just because the people who made the big leap that created it were unable to make another leap of the same magnitude within a couple of years doesn't mean nobody will ever do anything interesting with fucked-up breakbeats. i'm *glad* that the tide has turned against it, now all the autechre-imitators have to move on to pilfer other musical genres and/or get straight jobs and those 'stoner white kids' can get back to making fucked up noises in their basements for their own amusement.

i'm gonna go get a copy of fruity loops.

That's pretty much what I thought when I heard they'd signed dj/rupture, because his stuff seems to do what all that NWA-DSP/MP3 Killed/Violent Turd crap wants to do but fails miserably at; it actually succeeds at what I think Cex/k606 always talk about but for my money never do, which is capture the excitement of the best bits of pop, jungle, dancehall and IDM and mash them together in a fresh and interesting way without seeming too sneery or puerile.

(I like Max Tundra a lot too and bits of the above are true of MBGATE in particular but I hadn't really thought of his approach as having much in common with the tb6 style/agenda. And yeah, I think MBGATE was on Tigerbeat6 in the US and Domino elsewhere.)

Another person who is loosely connected with TB6, having turned up on compilations but not elsewhere, and I find a lot more interesting than the core artists = Hrvatski / Keith Fullerton Whitman. Swarm and Dither isn't quite as good as I was hoping but that's only because the other stuff I'd heard was so great - uh, if you like those spastic breaks - I had impossibly high expectations.

2. i heard a track from the astrobotnia album out out tonite, and its really good! yes, its the spatterbreaks thing, but with cool electro sheen. i shall buy this record

Big fat quote. Short answer.

I LOVED IDM. If by that you mean Paperclip People, AFX, Susumu Yokota, and all that lies in between. I really liked Autechre for about two albums. That's about the only hole in my revelry for the genre (subtext: REAL IDM fans like ALL of Autechre's crap).

But it's gone downhill of late. Kid606 was doing better stuff before T6 became almost a genre unto itself, the flagship labels are changing pace to break newer indie HH or post-rock bands, and the flagship artists are releasing subpar BS to finish out contract reqs.

It's a bad time for IDM. But it's not dead. I think the electroclash scene is an illustration of what life IDM has left in it- IDM people just need to recognize that their style has room for popists too, as it always has.

Just because one started liking IDM from a rockist album-oriented indie fanboy perspective doesn't mean one has to abandon it now that popist single-oriented williamsburgers are grooving to nu-electro. Last time I checked Mr. Velcro Fastener was still hip on both sides.

Also, second enthusiasm for Hrvatski.

Me neither. The middle initial of IDM is probably the biggest factor in this for me.

this thread made me put on mouse on mars. the fact that it now sounds like overly busy jurgen paape to me sez something about my changed tastes.

Oh, and yeah, can someone tell me where 'indie' rock got its name? I'd really like to see the documentation on that. It would help a lot, since I'm such a little stupid bitch that I need somebody to explain all the nomenclature for me all the fucking time whenever something is brought up that I don't comprehend.

Or, summarized:

UHH I'M JUST A LITTLE TIRED OF THESE ARGUMENTS UHH IF I WANTED THEM I'D HAVE STUCK TO THE IDM MAILING LIST WITH ALL THE TRANCE UHH LOSERS THANK YOU VERY MUCH

In other words, fuck off if all you care/know about is AFX/BoC/Ae. Quite frankly. Or else I'll start posting to your little indie rocker threads with equally absurd and redundant commentary about the state of your secondmost favorite genre (after inconsequential shit pop). You won't like it. Trust me.

Angry and drunk,

I hate the term IDM - it doesn't even exist in the UK, but since I'm currently in Australia I have to put up with basically everything electronic that isn't shitshitshit funky house tripe being chucked into the IDM bargain bin. It's no less meaningless than Intelligent Drum'n'Bass, which was fatuous to the extreme at best and just plain offensive at worst.

But - working within the really vague confines most people seem to mean when using IDM in casual conversation - I'd say a fair chunk of my favourite 2002 releases would fit in quite nicely thankyou.

As mentioned by someone else up there somewhere, the new Capitol K album is magfuckingnificent. Also mentioned in passing, Max Tundra's newie is bloody good (he'll always be on Domino in my head). Does Luke Slater count? Probably not to the pedantic purist prigs out there, but Alright On Top is brilliant.

I now decree that everyone shut up their fucking whingeing and enjoy one of your favourite nebulous types of music being effortlessly assimilated into popular consciousness, without most of its listeners even realising they're hearing PROGRESS in action. C'mon now, it's the weekend!

Quite inconceivable that I would lose my composure over a minore thing such as a genre of music whilst discussing anything on a web-based nUSENET interface.

In finality: Mr. jess, please increase the previous recommended dosage and begin fucking your own mother twice a month. Inform us of any other complications if your crotch continues to burn/develop lesions/melt.

Oh, and Rjd2? he's IDM too. Best yet in my book.

how can you be two genres at once when you're nowhere at all?

and, um, idm is indie rock. the idea tha boc/cylob/schlammpeitziger/goon/manual etc are not indie is bizarre in the extreme

as mt says upthread, its a form of populist music subverted/sanitized (mean the same thing in this context) for college boys.

and, uh, whats wrong with trance exactly?

I don't know about "IDM" not existing in the UK, I agree that most shops call the section something different but the term's still around, and while IDM is indeed an obnoxious name (don't worry, JD, you are by no means the first to think so) it is at least more precise than terms like "leftfield electronica" or whatever, which sound fairly nasty themselves and mostly sound like they include all manner of unbearable Gilles-Peterson-friendly coffee-table downtempo.

I have a feeling that all my inanity and Tom's ranting are doing is making everyone else even more convinced about the inaccuracy of the genre name. Has this thread doubled my number of ILM posts since the move yet?

What was the difference? I never heard the first one.

I only have the mini-LP vinyl version of Swarm & Dither, which is great, I'm completely addicted to "Marbles", I'm sure that every sample in there is from old Williams arcade games, which always had much better sound effects than Atari. I suspect the CD might be bloated, I don't know how much of it I could take in one sitting. I got Playthroughs, the Keith Fullerton Whitman LP, on the back of that and a couple of incredibly positive reviews, and it really is outstanding. It's difficult to explain why, though, which means those reviews read suspiciously like they're listening to a John Lennon test-pressing.

I hate the term IDM, too, what's so intelligent about making unlistenable dance music that no one can dance to?