IDM Fans? (The Orb, FSOL, Boards of Canada)

Post Reply New Topic

Sooo anyone into that sort of thing? Its my favorite type of music! I'm going to see The Orb live this year at Willowman festival

Orb & FSOL are IDM?

But yeah, I dig em - Actually I put Little Fluffy Clouds as my phones ringtone, still using it.
And FSOL's Dead Cities was one of the first electronic music albums I ever bought. I pulled 'em out of the Borders rack rather randomly, some 11 years ago, and just bought it - I knew I liked electronic music from what I'd heard, but didn't know anything about it, or who to get. Whats interesting is that I found FSOL to be a bit weird and not very accessible then. But now, 10 years later, I listen to that same album and think "...They were way ahead of their time..."

I'm pretty in-tune with the goings-on in electronic music, but the IDM label was something I never quite understood.
How would you define IDM? 'Intelligent Dance Music,' right? Sounds pretty stuck-up, if ya ask me.

Yes, I like that sort of thing. I like Higher Intelligence Agency, Autechre, Orbital, BoC, Global Communication, that sort of malarky. I won't quibble over genre names, I know what you're talking about. I always wanted to see the Orb, never got round to it. Their shows used to be legendary.

As far as the whole labels thing goes, IDM (in my opinion) really kinda has two branches. The first one is that whole "this is music for smart people" thing, or "it's too deep for the non-geeky simpletons out there." So basically just throw together a lot of synthesized sound or processed live sound in Reason and call it music.

The other branch has more to do with how the music is created, and for my master's thesis I attempted something like this (I used spreadsheets to help me do this as I wasn't familiar with available software at the time). Naturally, there's first the source material, whether it's processed recorded sound or synthesized sound (or computer-generated). The next step is creating some kind of organizational structure. This might be creating a series of loops and having a computer play back those loops in a quasi-random order or some other automated process of determinance: Writing automated scripts, writing and running code in real-time, or other related methods. Obviously the DJ has ultimate creative power and control throughout the process, but the main point is that the music is produced "intelligently," even if that intelligence is artificial.

I gotta say that, while the process fascinates me, I'm not generally a big fan--probably due to being steeped too long in classical music. "Serious" music composers have been using computers and software to do this kind of thing for a long time, since the late 60's/early 70's, and there are still some amazing tools for this kind of work, no matter whether you're on the artsy-fartsy side of this or the commercial or club side. Many of my acquaintances use Max/MSP. I've been eyeballing NI's Reaktor; I'm just very limited in what I can do with money right now, so at the moment I'm really more concerned with hardware and moving away from all the software I've used up to this point. Another sound design tool that's almost indispensable is NI's Absynth, which has become my sound-mangler of choice.

I do enjoy some IDM occasionally, but I don't view it as a genre per se, as it always seems to be combined with at least one other style of music (usually more), be it ambient, glitch, breakcore, synthpop, drum and bass, drone, noise and/or even classical. It coincides more with a certain approach, commonly emphasized by individualistic experimentation.

Although I appreciate most known artists, like Aphex Twin, Autechre, Future Sound of London, µ-Ziq, Squarepusher, Boards of Canada and arguably Venetian Snares, I'm prone to show more interest to obscure acts, including Datach'i, Alva Noto, Ryoji Ikeda, Aube, Felix Kubin and Infidel?/Castro!.

The topics kinda a mystery to me - A couple people described my music as sort of IDM, and I was like, "huh?" Still don't know what to make of it!

hey hey.

yeah, i dig IDM, whatever that is. whether that's a valid genre label still, i have no idea.

i think it's sad the genre's impetus and momentum disappeared up its own fundament in the early 2000s.

My faves:

geogaddi-period BoC
Mille Plateaux record label output like Clicks and Cuts,
Mego record label output
Vladeslav Delay
Aphex Twin, esp. ambient stuff (i really enjoy ambient works vol. 2, it's creepy in the dark)
Oval
To Rococo Rot
mu-ziq (a little bit anyway)
Pole
Pan Sonic
Ryoji Ikeda (whee, sinewaves)
Autechre. esp their songs with the nutty generative music videos.

probably quite a few others i'm forgetting.

thoughts?

-Luke

Datach'i = Fantastic.

Aphex Twin = Revolutionary. His stuff never dates.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U83TOFAOBIA[/youtube]

IDM is used to describe music that basically has programmed rhythms that are way too complicated for a human being to have actually played on an instrument live, so basically hyper drumnbass. It also seems to be characterized by severe sample mangling. Venetian Snares, Aphex Twin and the like.

My description of the first branch of IDM was an intentional oversimplification.

As for Reason and pushing the boundaries: Reason is NOT a DAW. It's a sequencer. And to say that it's limited completely ignores the capabilities of its instruments, especially Thor and NN-XT. Right now, just as an example, I'm writing patches for Thor that are patterned after the Yamaha DX7 FM synthesizer. Because the architectures of Thor and the DX7 are so radically different, attempting to force Thor to work like the DX7 goes much further than mimicking the sounds: The results can be very much glitchy, and it's a perfect source for some IDM synth elements. And I haven't even mentioned creating drum loops with ReDrum. NN-XT and ReDrum allow the user to load his/her own samples. So if you want to create loops using a circuit-bent speak and spell, Elmo, Furby, Macintalk, or whatever, Reason's got the perfect tools for that. I'm not a big Dr. Rex user, but no doubt an IDM artist could find good use for a loop player.

I don't mean to ignore Subtractor, either. It's among some of the fattest-sounding virtual-analog softsynths I've ever heard, and I even like it better than the native Apple subtactive plugins in Logic.

As far as quality IDM goes, you and I might agree that Reason isn't the best choice. There are some amazing things you can do with Reason, but I wouldn't advise relying on it alone for IDM-specific application. I'm sure you read the rest of my post and noticed that my opinion of exemplary IDM goes more the way of automated music-making, real-time coding, and other ways of either artificially intelligent or "deep" programming. This honestly isn't my area, but I suspect IDM artists might spend more time with Max/MSP, Reaktor (most Max and PD users I've ever met turn into snobs at the mere mention of Reaktor), and other performance software like Ableton Live.

IDM need not be rhytmically/melodically/harmonically/texturally complicated to be interesting. There is, however, an undeniable predilection towards quirky, glitchy timbres and textures that is the hallmark of IDM. There is also a cool sophistication you don't really get with any other type of techno-oriented music, almost as though you'd rather actively listen to it than dance to it.

It's fun listening, but just not my thing. And for the record, I sequence and record in Logic Pro 9 and use Mainstage 2 for any/all MIDI/signal routing, whether I'm using Reason behind it, processing live guitar sound, or running "real" keyboard instruments remotely (I play EWI, USB version, in addition to keyboards, and figured out that the Roland Alpha Juno 1 that's been gathering dust in my closet can double as a nice wind synth. The keyboard on that isn't velocity-sensitive, so it leans up against my keyboard amp during shows!). I grew up playing classical music, majored in music education, played in jazz band a few semesters, studied electronic composition for my master's degree, and ended up teaching piano lessons, playing in a classic rock band, and accompanying church choir rehearsals and Sunday worship services in order to support what I really want to do (make my own music. The church is a genuine thing--I offered to do it for free when the position came open). So for me, electronic music is a pretty deep focus and way of life!

Always good running into other musicians on here.

The topics kinda a mystery to me - A couple people described my music as sort of IDM, and I was like, "huh?" Still don't know what to make of it!

AngelRho wrote:

As far as the whole labels thing goes, IDM (in my opinion) really kinda has two branches. The first one is that whole "this is music for smart people" thing, or "it's too deep for the non-geeky simpletons out there." So basically just throw together a lot of synthesized sound or processed live sound in Reason and call it music.

Hate to be a critical nitpick, but this seems like a pretty terrible description. Over the past decade I've come to love just about all styles of electronic music, but a number of the aforementioned artists' songs don't especially seem more complicated in concept nor execution, either from a technical standpoint, or a musical standpoint.
In a modern context, at least.

And why Reason, of all programs? As a more simple, more limited DAW, it doesn't seem very conducive to pushing the technical boundaries of production.

BTW, if home based production is an interest of yours, please do chime in at my thread, >here.

Syvyys wrote:

It coincides more with a certain approach, commonly emphasized by individualistic experimentation.

Huh. From your description, seems like this concept of IDM is synonymous with the junk-drawer 'style' I'd simply thought of as 'experimental'. I was pretty big into that a few years back.

I had never heard of the name IDM.
Just looked it up on wikipedia and it said the term is used in /comes from the US, so that might explain...

I like the Orb and others (Autechre, Squarepusher (but that was listed as Drum 'n' Bass somewhere too, though I think it is a bit different, more funky/jazzy)
I like a lot of different music styles, also a lot of different electronic music styles.
Always nice to find others that like music I like

I love 'fluffly little clouds', but that came out in, what...'92?... (actually, the Orb got started by collaborating on that song)

Boards of Canada I've only been able to find a few things, but they're fairly interesting...

Absolutely love it, really liking the new Autechre and always listening to Venetian Snares