I heard Discotheque last night and I realized that, although it is not
IDM, or even DM, it is definately electronic music. I'll bet the drum
track is a loop. I'll bet a lot of the guitar track is repeated samples.
It actually doesn't sound that much different from some Chemical
Brothers tracks.
Although there are still "blokes with guitars" involved, it's still
mostly synthesized/electronic music.
In fact, with very few exceptions almost anything you hear on the
radio/mtv is mostly electronic music.
When you hear mariah carey sing, painful as it is, you are actually
hearing a woman's singing voice which has been recorded a thousand
times, sampled into a computer, chopped up into little bits in a digital
editor, cut-n-pasted, tweaked, stretched, pitched, etc. to make what I
would call crap. But the process of making the record is almost
EXCLUSIVELY electronic.
There was a time in the early 80's when electronic funk/disco bands had
no problem using electronic equipment to make their voices sound better,
more on key. Many of them thought they were getting away with it while
others used the technology to create new, more purely electronic
effects. In light of the technology available to mariah at sony, those
early 80's stuff sounds cheap and obviously faked.
808's and 303's and vocorders and synthesizers were all invented to make
cheesy rawk and pop music, for wedding bands and stuff - they were soon
used by twisted disco and eventually idm types to do other things.
All pop music is fake! Only IDM dares to admit it!
-CF