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u/bumthundir 3d ago
I think it's generally accepted that IDM started with Warp and the first Artificial Intelligence compilation. There had been a few releases before this such as The Black Dog (Virtual) and Aphex Twin (Analogue Bubblebath) that are IDM but at that time I don't think we were using the term IDM. Warp popularised the term so I guess you can look at the question in two ways:
- which was the first album to be described as IDM at the time
- which album, with the benefit of hindsight, was IDM
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u/JesseAmpersands 🎰🆚🗾 3d ago
Moreso looking for the second one
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u/Gullible_Tie_4399 3d ago
- Probably aphex twin
- I’d say Giorgio moroder 1977 single I feel love extended single version
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u/Constant_Text_2551 2d ago
What would’ve Bubblebath been called surrounding the time of its release?
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u/bumthundir 2d ago
I can only speak for myself but amongst my friends at the time we called it ambient techno or experimental techno I think.
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u/catladywitch 3d ago
AFAIK the term "intelligent" first appeared in UK parlance when "rave music" broadly speaking became saturated with cookie cutter tracks aimed at "being fun" and no real "underground" ethos. So "intelligent" techno or "intelligent" jungle etc was the "trve" stuff with better street cred. On the other hand, the idea of pushing the term "intelligent" towards ambient techno was entirely on Warp Records if I'm not mistaken (for instance if you look at Autechre's pre-Warp work and how only the most ambient tracks were chosen for Incunabula). And then IDM moved towards increasingly experimental sounds, so there's probably 3 points in time at which there could be a "first IDM" record.
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u/blissadmin 3d ago
"Intelligent Dance Music" was coined by the founders of the IDM List majordomo email service.
Yes, they were inspired by the Artificial Intelligence compilation. However Aphex Twin's Analogue Bubblebath 1 & 2, Digeridoo, and Xylem Tube were all released before Artificial Intelligence.
That makes my vote Analogue Bubblebath.
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u/ElliotNess 3d ago
Was Richard calling it braindance already with analogue bubble bath?
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u/blissadmin 3d ago
Probably so. Still, if we identifying the earliest release date for something discussed in the earliest days of the IDM List, it would be Analogue Bubblebath.
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u/ElliotNess 3d ago
Just wondering if that naming influenced the IDM choice
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u/ElliotNess 3d ago
Or, say if it was the other way around-- braindance because he didn't like IDM
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u/BeautifulAd9826 3d ago edited 3d ago
Agreed the Arificial Inelligence compilations were the start of what is now known as IDM. However, as much as those albums were aimed at the head rather than the feet, they were very musical, as were the individual artist albums that comprised those comps. IDM then went on to become a harsher more experimental genre. Nothing wrong with that at all, but not my cup of tea personally.
I now use the term electronic listening music instead. And the genre boundaries for this are far more blurred and have a crossover in feel, if not style. I love the music of Modell, Hitchell and other dub techno pioneers and have every Blsck Dog album plus FSOL, Biosphere B12, early Autechre, Beuanent Hannant, early Aphex and many other early IDM pioneers. I also have a host of purely ambient and dark ambient artists eg Atrium Carcer, Lustmord, A Winged Victory for the Sullen, as well as system composers such as Steve Reich and Philip Glass They are technically all working in different genres but its music aimed at the ears rather than the feet. Not that dance music is less intelligent. It serves a different purpose.
However, if you want to dig deeper into the gene pool of electronic music, you have to go back to early 70s pioneers such as Tangerine Dream, Mobelius, Rodelius, Connie Plank, Harmonia etc.
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u/amaquinadeuoberro 3d ago
Silver Apples in NYC, 1968... were extraordinary... people often talk about kraut but those guys were breaking every rule...
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u/BeautifulAd9826 3d ago
Yes ive heard OF them but not actually heard them. I will check them out. Good call.
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u/-SleepyLeaf- 3d ago
Check out black devil disco club, 1978, afx was a fan of this release and had it reissued on rephlex. I say it counts as a very early release of note
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u/Full_Selection_1667 3d ago
Morton Subotnick - Silver Apples of the Moon/The Wild Bull.
I have a lot of old records and there's plenty of nosy music out there, but it's not electronic.
Listen to The Wild Bull, it's so close to EP7 by autechre but 40 years earlier.
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u/Puzzled-Bonus-3456 3d ago
perhaps it's Stockhausen Studies I & II / Gesang Der Jünglinge
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u/Full_Selection_1667 3d ago
A good one for sure. I think the cut off here is how electronic it was, so we're skipping xenakis and many composers from 200 years ago.
Once upon a time I was involved in a performance of Stockhausen's Kontakte. My role? To set up the speakers.
It's an interesting question, where the line starts. There's a lot of wild music out there from 1930-1950, but I would not call Charles Ives IDM.
In my opinion, I think there needs to be an electronic element that isn't connected to tape loops or using air raid sirens -- that a different strand.
What most people would call IDM now likely started in the late 70s and early 80s.
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u/ash_tar 3d ago
Sorry but no, for all my love of contemporary classical, the entire point of IDM is people coming from the club and rave scene and rivaling the old elite in experimentalism and innovation.
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u/Full_Selection_1667 3d ago
Sure, in the 90's. There is music out there that came out decades earlier and was really close to the same sound.
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u/ash_tar 3d ago
Yeah but it's not the same lineage. You can go experimental in rock and end up in fusion jazz or get a nice crossover. Point remains that what resulted in IDM was popular electronic music with certain typical aspects like beats and bass lines, which were never a staple in contemporary classical.
The famous interview with Stockhausen about IDM "advice for clever children" also demonstrates the pretentiousness of that scene while the real innovation was with ordinary people experimenting AND getting more interesting results. Of course there are also people in the academic scene that were doing great stuff, in a humble way, but the freshness of IDM and how it changed things was really something.
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u/Full_Selection_1667 3d ago
I said exactly that. There is tons of modular synth music from the 70's that sounds like early 2000s stuff. Where does IDM really start? Is it drum machines? Is it computers?
I'm not arguing with you, but I'm curious where other people draw the line.
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u/ash_tar 3d ago
Well that's what I'm trying to say. It may start to sound like IDM, but it isn't. Free jazz may sound like serialism, but it's a different cultural strand. It starts when people who were previously doing rave and ambient music tried something weird which isn't quite dance and which isn't quite anything else.
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u/Full_Selection_1667 3d ago
Fine, without telling you who I am I still hear early precursors of "IDM" and was involved in that mailing list in the 90s. It's a dumb name but I think it depends on there being a focus on electronic elements and people who were bored of trance.
Underworld isn't IDM, Autechre is. But are there examples of people doing that before? Yes.
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u/ash_tar 3d ago
Yeah sure, I agree with that. I also agree the tools push you in a direction. A 909 is going to produce techno naturally, just like Max and modulars will do more organic structures.
There's also a cycle on music from more typically "musically structured" to more freeform. 70s modular stuff and 90s max stuff has a lot in common.
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u/spikeclipper 3d ago
Finally, a dance music that isn't dumb.
Answers below are thoughtful. I'd add the Warp 10 series of three compilations to get a sense of how they got going and where they went.
Important to remember that the "intelligence" comes from a web comment and that the impied "dumb" was more likely to be euro-dance holiday hits than anything, say, the Belleville Three were doing.
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u/JesseAmpersands 🎰🆚🗾 3d ago
I hate telling people I like IDM cuz then I have to explain what it is and I sound like a pretentious fuck. Thats why I usually just tell people I listen to electronic music nowadays
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u/spikeclipper 3d ago
There's a whole interesting to explain history though, for those with the patience. All those jazz albums with "the intelligent / the articulate / the dynamic sounds of"
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u/moseley101 2d ago
I suspect my first IDM album was Orbital green album (realise that might be contentious). That was quickly followed by Ambient works vol 1 and the rest is history
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u/saultethewombat 3d ago
Perhaps Biosphere - Microgravity? At the very least, it’s the start of a long inspiration tree that’s very important to IDM history (first true ambient techno, before even SAW 85-92, which then went on to influence the Artificial Intelligence sound)
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u/ausserirdischer_ 3d ago edited 3d ago
Skrillex - Monsters and Sprites, obviously
Edit: no jokes allowed here, I guess
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u/sloppyjohnny 3d ago
Tubular bells
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u/Pragnari0n 3d ago
In my opinion, Tubular Bells is halfway between Progressive Rock and New Age but it is not at all IDM
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u/FauxVelour 3d ago
Silver apples of the moon? Idfk
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u/JesseAmpersands 🎰🆚🗾 3d ago
then why comment
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u/FauxVelour 3d ago
Nobody knows. What was the first anything? Creativity is iterative , there is no first
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u/NothingIsReal6 3d ago
I would say warps compilation “Artificial Intelligence” is culturally where it began