Okay, this keeps bugging me and it has finally come to a head. I'm looking
for comments from the list, especially from people who get a chance to
spin records in public...
How do you differentiate what you play (if it is what we commonly refer to
as IDM) from what most people commonly refer to as downtempo? Let me
backup and say that for the sake of this question, downtempo is music
that's classically dubby, jazzy, or hip hopish in feel accompanied by
jazzy or ethnic melodic or harmonic content - which is to say that it is
NOT the product of computer/DSP driven sounds/environments/techniques.
yadda yadda...
So I was at an xmas party the other night (and this happens to me a lot:)
where lots of music discussion abounded. Everyone was talking about the
major types of underground dance music, house, techno, trance, and d'n'b.
of course the thread of who's a dj, what do you play, where do you play
comes up. Depending on my mood and crowd I answer things differently. For
less knowledgeable people I have to say I spin downtempo, b/c if the music
you play is NOT to dance to, then it's downtempo <g>.
Recently tho' I've started to say that I spin experimental electronic,
which we all know is not technically true, but to orient people to the
fact that I spin music that's NOT strict downtempo, but still not created
with the dancefloor in mind, and the fact that i'm sure if people heard
glitchy stuff they'd be like WTF, sort of justifies this term.
Anyway, I'm sure a lot of the readers on this list don't give a rat's ass
what other non-IDM-listening people think. Fair enough, but it would be
nice to think that this music doesn't have to exist so independently of
everyone outside of its following. I've just always wondered about how you
approach it casually without saying it's like the aphex twin :)
-Gil
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