it seems to me that the timelessness of IDM is severly undermined by the fact that so much of the music is created in the context of everchanging technology, which doens't lead musicians to spend as much time perfecting their compostional skills. this isn't necessarily a bad thing (i often describe myself as being more interested in sound rather than music), but this does lead to a large percentage of music which is forgotten or outdated when the next set of plugins makes the rounds.
the only electronic music which i'm pretty convinced will be listened to far into the future is kraftwerk. they spawned so many different genres and are the earliest music i'm aware of that confronted the technology/humanity relationship in a fairly complex way. the music itself isn't timeless (it's easy to tie it to a specific period on music history) but the themes are. hmmm maybe timeless is too strong of a term to apply to kraftwerk, but i don't think they will be forgotten. i could almost believe brian eno also fits into this category - primarily because he's been involved in so many parts of music history. but his actual music (or at least the ambient works i've heard thus far) are not striking enough to make me believe people will bother with him 50 years after he's gone.
i also think that very little current electronic music will be listened to in the future because at some point within the next 20 years software will exist which will generate music based soley upon our moods and desires. at that point timelessness won't matter any more because every composed piece will be unique. then again, maybe this will force us to talk about timeless software rather than timeless music. :)
ethan
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