response : 'downtempo' is not an umbrella term for music that is not
intended for dancing. your definition of downtempo is bang-on : it
is the jazzy breakbeat sound from bristol, that is referred to above
ground as 'trip hop' (on a side note, i would hardly call house,
techno, trance or d'n'b underground anymore!). so, no, 'downtempo'
is not the right word. whether or not music is 'to dance to' is up
to the crowd--funky people can dance to idm. you have to be *really*
funky, though. intent of danceability is irrelevant--it either moves
you or it doesn't ! i say 'experimental electronic', too, but it's
also a bad term (can be confused with the academic electroacoustic
music scene--wouldn't want to do that!), and plus, it sounds a bit
too, how do you say, 'counter-culture'.
so we're back to one of the commonest threads on the list :
dissatisfaction with the term 'idm'. if i may summarize its famous
history : it began to describe a few brits (notably afx--the original
subject of this list) who would make thumpy-thumpy dance music that
didn't have a comforting house feel, but felt a bit manic, twitchy,
yet very melodic. when these artists (e.g. warp crew) simultaneously
began exploring the deconstruction of jungle music with the same
weird vibe, the term 'idm' followed them, because there weren't a lot
of people doing this sort of thing to dance music, so very different
sounds were cast into the same genre. then it really becomes a mess.
a new wave of artists doing very simple, happy-bouncy synthesizer
music (e.g. solvent, plone) are decidedly 'idm' from the get-go, even
though this sort of music has been around for decades. squarepusher
starts doing jazzy stuff ; because of his name, THAT becomes idm.
minimal/ambient house emerges in germany, along with noise/unmusical
stuff (e.g. oval) and these progressively become assimilated into idm
culture. if we may say that common threads on the list make a type
of music into idm, then it also encompasses certain ambient artists
(e.g. vladislav delay), some techno, and some more experimental
stuff. now, the very loose application of the term 'idm' makes for a
very diverse idm community (just watch the stupid debates of opinion
for a sample) ; it effectively unites a number of small off-beat
genres into one, over-arching 'we don't like normal stuff' sort of
community. so the moral of the story is, just keep saying 'idm', and
don't tell people what it stands for (a stalinesque act of erasing
its history would be in order) ; the fact is, *we've got a name for
it*, it's too late to invent a new one and re-engineer our community,
but just recognize what a diversity of denotations the word carries.
(beware the connotations as well--people will probably think you're a
fancy, show-offy idm-l snob!)
.af.
quoted 39 lines Okay, this keeps bugging me and it has finally come to a head. I'm looking>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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