Oh noes! IDM is not an acronym for a super secret government agency, disease or drugs!  Or, maybe it is one or another kind of brian drug; just like playing cards, games, reading and listening music are brain drugs too! IDM is the acronym for Intelligent Dance Music; in short, the new rage curring up samples, repeats, distortions and glitches in the music. A style emerged in the early nineties which was described as electro, electronica and ambient techno. It gets you not only moving by your feet but also with your brain!

Kraftwerk, Depeche Mode, Leftfield, Aphex Twin and many more are known for their creations with glitches and sample-juggling to add colour to their productions. It makes music sound much more and detailed than it actually is.

Software VST plugins are currently the rage, a few examples:

• Free Sequencer: Glitch Sequencer
• Free plug-ins: dBlue Glitch for PC, Glitched for Apple, Livecut and Supatrigga for PC and Apple.
• Audio Damage Replicant & DestroyFX plugins like Scrubby, Skidder, Transverb and others.
• For Reaktor users: Toxonic
• For Ableton Live: Major Malfunction
• Abandoned: Papergoose, Glitch Jockey

CD-skipping glitches could be done by using a magic marker on a CD, recording that defected ceedee. IDM glitches can best be done manually, by searching the best possible sweet-spots for the wanted IDM effect.

I’ve not found any good “true” hardware IDM device yet, with exception of the out-of-production Frostwave Sonic Alienator, Geiger Counter, the SP-555 with loop sampling functions and the MachineDrum which is quite expensive but also a super-sequencer.

Interesting links:

• Wikipedia
• IDM Musicians at Wikipedia
• Music taking over the body (Youtube clip)
• IntelligentDanceMusic
• Ishkur’s guide to Electronic Music
• Kid606 – Tussen puberaal noise en Intelligent Dance (Dutch article)
• Slider’s Encyclopedia about IDM
• Everything2 IDM
• Aural Contraception from Simbolin, free IDM album from Synthopia
• IDM on Last.FM

More information and groups about IDM are at Wikipedia, Soundcloud, Indabamusic

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