Intelligent dance music (commonly IDM) is an electronic music genre that emerged in the early 1990s. The genre was originally influenced by developments in electronic dance music (EDM) such as Detroit Techno and various breakbeat styles that were emerging in the UK at that time. Stylistically, IDM tended to rely upon individualistic experimentation rather than adhering to musical characteristics associated with specific styles of EDM. The range of post-techno styles to emerge in the early 1990s were described variously as art techno, ambient techno, intelligent techno, and electronica. In the United States, the latter term is now used by the music industry as a catchall to describe EDM and its many derivatives.
The term IDM is said to have originated in the United States in 1993 with the formation of the IDM list, an electronic mailing list originally chartered for the discussion of music by (but not limited to) a number of prominent English artists, especially those appearing on a 1992 Warp Records compilation called Artificial Intelligence.
Usage of the term "Intelligent Dance Music" has been criticised by electronic musicians such as Aphex Twin and is seen by artists such as Mike Paradinas as being peculiar to the U.S.
Famous quotes containing the words intelligent, dance and/or music:
“If twins are believed to be less intelligent as a class than single-born children, it is not surprising that many times they are also seen as ripe for social and academic problems in school. No one knows the extent to which these kind of attitudes affect the behavior of multiples in school, and virtually nothing is known from a research point of view about social behavior of twins over the age of six or seven, because this hasn’t been studied either.”
—Pamela Patrick Novotny (20th century)
“I try to make a rough music, a dance of the mind, a calculus of the emotions, a driving beat of praise out of the pain and mystery that surround me and become me. My poems are meant to make your mind get up and shout.”
—Judith Johnson Sherwin (b. 1936)
“Always, however brutal an age may actually have been, its style transmits its music only.”
—André Malraux (1901–1976)