as whirlygirl says, the thing about the chems is that there pretty bloody unique, theyve been going soooo long and are so distinctive they've kind of transcended boundaries and genres.



the chems were about at the start of the big beat thang, but only block rockin beats is (to me) one of their 'big beat' tunes ie it had big beats, hip hop sample and a funky bassline. most of the rest of the big beat stuff that came out from other producers just sounded like fat boy slim soundalikes (after it got a bit popular) - badly produced lets steal a blatant sample, and some drums to it, maybe add some comedy to it hey ho lets go type thang. it was ok (for a while) but kind of lacked substance. a bit like a mcdonalds.



i think (and often hear quoted) that its the psychedelic aspect that makes the chems so good, combined with their top notch song writing ability and bone crushing rhythms. its dance music, but its more than that as well, if you know what i mean. it has emotion to it.



taking all that into account, heres some gubbins i recommend, which while not all of it is dance music, has a bit of that chems feel to it:



manitoba - up in flames

future sound of london - accelarator (with papa new guinea on it)

beatles - white album (you might recognise a couple of tunes off here)

fc kahuna - machine says yes (already recommended, but hey)

leftfield - leftism

orbital - brown album

primal scream - screamadelica

polyphonic spree - The polyphonic spree (bit saccharine, i have to be in the mood for it, but glistening melodies)



ive not heard the psychonauts stuff, but ive heard good things about them.



re the plumps - hate to be negative, but to me its pretty one dimensional stuff. the first few singles were pretty good, but theyve not done anything with it. i wouldnt even say they deserve the accolade of second-rate chems copyists (which it seems there trying to be) because all they do is breaks pretty much. not much variety there, not like tom n ed do.



Peace



Mips :D

Manitoba is great. He uses so many different samples in each song, its amazing.



Check out DOWNLOAD : EFFECTOR!

I forgot about Orbital's brown album somehow, that album is class. When you first hear it, it seems really kinda trancey, but the brilliance shines through. Classic, all the way through.

i am sure antype would agree. I haven't heard it :-// YET...so can't really say anything :'(

DELETED

The middle of nowere is their best. For sure.

yeeeeeah, middle of nowhere was ace. a lot of the die hards didnt like it, but i thought it was wicked. still not as good as the brown album though ;-)



has anyone seen them live? theyre about the only dance band i've seen who've come anywhere near the chems for that live visceral experience.



i saw them '99 at a small outdoor festival in the uk the night before we had a total eclipse. they were superb, it was just after the middle of nowhere had come out so they did loads of tracks off that (as well as the classics - chime, satan, halcyon with bon jovi/belinda carlisile ion the middle!), and the next day we got to see total eclipse after no sleep and loads of drugs! great!!



Mips

I was just listening to them live today. Dance valley 2001 anyone?

Yup

Come on they are a great band, when are they going to release another album :-?

Dont know. Last I heard they are experimenting with IDM :D

Really? I realy liked The Altogether, it had loads of variation, it felt cutting edge, they should build from there. Like IDM, but sort the beats out

DELETED

10 min meltdown is fine for me :D

What is intelligent dance music? Please explain using some examples of artists. Thanks.

For the individual looking for new music, I just recently purchased "Benny Banassi and I just have to say "Whoa". Most of the songs have the same elements but never redundant. Great cd, Hypnotica it's called and I disturbed my neighbours.

DELETED

Aphex twin isn't really dance, more industrial I think. Dance music now is shit, same stuff over and over where I live, but when your drunk you just dance, or try to :P



I need to start my own club! There's a new one opening next month in town called New York New York. FFS! Do we need more american shit over here! }:-@

This is very hard to explain, and trust me I know. Intelligent dance music, originally called Intelligent Techno, is just another subgenre that came about during the anti-Hardcore rebellion, hehehe - not to discredit genres here because they can be useful but the term itself can be very broad and adds to the confusion already surrounding electronic artists imo. It can be as confusing as lumping all electronic acts as dance acts, or trying to explain all the different House subgenres, and can be as nervewracking as that uber broad 'electronica' term.



Example, and I'm just embellishing on what iguanapunk said because he's right in some aspects, but Aphex Twin has been tagged with the idm, ambient, experimental and industrial labels. Richard D. James is considered a classic example of what is considered idm, but if you pick up his ambient works he fits the ambient bill, some of his stuff has a heavy industrial feel, some have a sort of free form experimental kinda feel and so on and so forth. IDM isn't stictly limited to certain bands even though there are electronic acts out there that fit the description of intelligent dance music. Some of it you can dance to, others can put you to sleep, some of it sounds like plain old experimental noise to some people, some if not most of it commands your full listening attention - it's a very hard category to describe because it is so broad and applies to different types of music like ambient and experimental. I've even heard the Chemical Brothers described as intelligent dance music, so what's that saying here? A whole lotta confusion (just like this post, haha) - In the end we hear different things when we listen to music, music is subjective to the listener. anType you are right that Warp Records is the mothership of bands who fit the IDM bill - they are the premier label that got IDM on the map.



I found a decent site (the first one that came up in a search) that does its best to describe what IDM is - it also lists some bands:



http://music.hyperre...s/idm/info.html



More bands included in the tag are: Plaid, Mu-Ziq, Auchtere, Boards of Canada (who are cool btw) and Future Sound of London, Photek, Matmos...



Another site worth checking out (kind of a fun self-navigational tour of dance music) that's a decent simple breakdown of the different genres out there is this one:



http://www.di.fm/edm...e/edmguide.html



^ not the best out there but simple to use, comprehensive and gives you an idea along with examples without being too wordy like I am. This one's very opinionated so I serve it to you with a few grains of salt. I don't think it has a breakdown of IDM but it does touch on other genres that are lumped into the IDM category - so see for yourself. And the intro is annoying so skip that part.

Whirly, thats alot of info on the subject :D

Aphex Twin is no were near industrial. He is the father of the IDM subgenre. Personally, I can dance to some aphex twin. Try dancing to autechre X-D