in the december jockey slut piece on tech-house (a contentious tag if there ever was one... john tejada practically spits if you use the term around him), mr. c's description of the form struck my eye in the way that it could also be used to define IDM (in the old genre/not-a-genre argument), if you just substituted out some of the terms he used:
"It [tech-house] doesn't exist as a genre. Deep house, acid house, techno, breaks, electro... they can all be tech-house. It's a loose term for an open genre where the combinations are endless."
i like it.
phil