"Dance music gives a bad name to IDM, electronica,
whatever you want to call it. "
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There are those who argue that you would have no IDM without it - and rightly so, in my opinion. Even if you envision IDM as a kind of anti-dance music (and that would have to be a very narrow channel of it anyway), the reliance on "dance" for such a definition is clear.
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"I respect disco and house for its
gay history but my god, that died so long ago, but in many ways so did IDM."
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What do you do with microhouse, clickhouse, the Perlon, Playhouse and often the Kompakt label - which, in many minds, are far from dead and have certainly incorporated house into their mix? Or, say, The Three Chairs, Moodymann, Theo Parrish, Jackmate (aka Soulphiction/Michael Baumann), etc.? What do you mean by "dead"? If dead, how do you account for acts like Metro Area?
The rumors of Dance Music's death have been greatly exaggerated and unless you want to consider Musique Concret and the various experimentalists (Stockhausen, Cage, Ray Scott, etc.) as IDM, it has probably been around longer. Actually, it all depends on where you stand - what you consider "dance", what you even consider "music" as well as what you consider "intelligent". I would be loathe to give a eulogy for any genre so quickly, though. You might find your own threnody in that genre .
jeff