Originally posted by paulversuspaul
I had no idea this was IDM. Always assumed these types of early 90s british productions is where labelled as "electronica" because they werent necessarily easily describable dance music.
As far as I know the first term that was around was "electronic listening music" to distinguish the music from the masses of mindless dancefloor at the time. Then with Warp's "Artificial Intelligence" Series the term IDM came up. Only in the later 90's the music labeled as IDM started getting more abstract and into what people think of when they hear IDM nowadays. Autechre is a great example for this.
But honestly, if you look at it from nowadays' perspective the stuff from this era is just Techno.
sljiva
Not really. "Electronic listening music" is a label suggested by Warp (first Artificial Intelligence compilation is subtitled that way) that never really caught on. Instead, elitism and snobbism of people who established IDM mailing list won and suddenly a huge range of music from Aphex Twin and Autechre to FSOL and The Orb started to be called IDM from '93 onwards. Only couple of years later people realized that Detroit-inspired techno experimentalism of B12 is actually closer to its predecessor than to a newly born style it spawned - music shed of its Detroit past, focused on ambience of European ambient artists, new and unique sounds atypical for techno and rhythmic innovation. I'd actually say that this kind of music already appeared in '94 with tracks such as THIS, THIS, THIS and THIS, though it's true that only the second part of the 90s brought further abstraction we associate with IDM nowdays.
But back to so-called intelligent techno (extremely stupid term). One of my favourite producers from that era and one of the unsung heroes of techno is Nurmad Jusat aka Nuron aka Fugue. This is the guy who produced only 10 tracks from '93 to '96 and then disappeared forever. But the brilliance and diversity of those 10 tracks could easily put to shame around 95% of techno producers that ever appeared. It's funny to see so many many of them (especially these days) struggling to find their own sound and scoring a minor hit through numerous productions every week or so, when real talent such as this effortlessly made a name for himself with like 2-3 productions a year in such a short amount of time. Since his discography is basically dudless, I think all of his stuff deserves to be mentioned. Here it is, ordered from most to least awesome:
And THIS is the only remix he's ever done. Again awesome.
Other than that, Bytes by Black Dog Productions is absolutely sublime and for me the pinnacle of the AI series. Ed Handley aka Balil aka Close Up Over is the guy whose melodic sensibilities definitely excel him from the collective (Proof #1, Proof #2, Proof #3).
By now I think everyone is already familiar with the works of B12, but during their great archive unearth of 2009, they published couple of beautiful unreleased tracks from the golden era of this music that left everybody wondering why they didn't release them in the first place. THIS, THIS and THIS sounds better than majority of music they released in that period.
Steve Pickton aka Stasis aka Phenomyna is another important name, though his best stuff is usually more dancefloor friendly. Atmosphere is still there: Track #1, Track #2, Track #3. Kirk Degiorgio's finest stuff isn't even on YT.
Joey Beltram was one of the few people outside of the UK that indulged in this style and his ATTEMPT is on par with everything else made at the time.
Woony
I already posted Likemind a few posts ago. A shame that the stuff is so hard to track down :/
Luke Slater's 7th Plain is one of his more obscure aliases but "The 4 Cornered Room" is a stunning british techno/early IDM record.
Lilith
If you're not too hung up on the 'UK sound' (which I have to admit I like a lot growing up with it to some extent), the Front Line Assembly guys associated acts have a lot of diversity in them which covers the gamut of electronic genres. Bit of trance, breaks, ambient, trip-hop, industrial, techno, you name it, I think they covered it somewhere!
Delerium, Equinox, Intermix, Noise Unit, Pro-Tech and Synęsthesia are probably my favourite projects from them.
SYSTEM-J
quote:
Originally posted by Lilith
If you're not too hung up on the 'UK sound' (which I have to admit I like a lot growing up with it to some extent), the Front Line Assembly guys associated acts have a lot of diversity in them which covers the gamut of electronic genres. Bit of trance, breaks, ambient, trip-hop, industrial, techno, you name it, I think they covered it somewhere!
Delerium, Equinox, Intermix, Noise Unit, Pro-Tech and Synęsthesia are probably my favourite projects from them.
Erm... that really isn't relevant to the music in this thread. At all. Also, I think most of these side-projects are extremely lazy, and Bill Leeb is content to just use major samples from famous records in whatever genre he's operating in. The Synęsthesia album is awesome, though.
sljiva
quote:
Originally posted by Woony
I already posted Likemind a few posts ago. A shame that the stuff is so hard to track down :/
Luke Slater's 7th Plain is one of his more obscure aliases but "The 4 Cornered Room" is a stunning british techno/early IDM record.
Likemind is like The Holy Grail for this kind of music. Granted, all of the related labels of that era including B12, ART, Otherworld and Eevo Lute Muzique are obscure from today's point of view and their records are hard to find, but Likemind - with just 4 records that go for really big money these days and that extremely high quality-to- ratio (I'd actually say that they haven't released a single bad track) definitely tops them all. For someone who still doesn't collect vinyl, I had a ing hard time finding and buying all the various compilations just to have like 25% of their catalogue.
And yeah, 7th Plain is one of my favourite Slater aliases. Label on which he was releasing - GPR, is equally important and obscure as labels mentioned above, though they were pushing somewhat different sound - removed from strings and atmospherics of Detroit techno and oriented towards intertwined twinkling melodies and colder and more darker sound. They housed Beaumont Hannant, The Black Dog, Germ and Hi-Ryze, all forgotten (except TBD), but truly great and inspirational artists. Looking from today's perspective, they were almost equally important as Warp, Rephlex and Skam for transformation of techno to IDM and its subsequent proliferation.
djshire
Its all so deep.....ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ............
corjay9
Loving this slower atmospheric techno atm. Claro's new album is the .
Woony
quote:
Originally posted by corjay9
Loving this slower atmospheric techno atm. Claro's new album is the .
Did you even read the first sentence of the OP? These tracks have nothing to do with this thread.
corjay9
quote:
Originally posted by Woony
Did you even read the first sentence of the OP? These tracks have nothing to do with this thread.
