I
The history of electronic music within European pop
Part 8: "IDM" 
As many of you already have gathered by now the synthesizer as an instrument plays an important role in European popular music. It’s an instrument you will encounter in the European art scene, the (progressive rock scene) and entering the main stage in the eighties with the development of new wave and hi-nrg disco. But did this tradition came falling from the sky? In this last part we round up our little feuilleton when we end up on the threshold of the 21st century...here is part 8
We pick up the final part of our story in 1988, the second summer of love, as the British would name it. Music history stands on the verge of an explosive growth of synthesized computer music technology. Consequent reduction in the cost of equipment in the late 1990s, makes the number of artists and DJs working within electronic music overwhelming. With the advent of hard disk recording systems, it is possible for any home computer user to become a musician, and hence the rise in the number of "bedroom bands", often consisting of a single person. It is also the time when American and European popmusic take a complete different path. America makes a return to rock while Europe embraces electronic music fully.
Birth of House
Still it was America itself that gave the first injection. In the early 1980s upon the end of the disco era nightclubs as Chicago's Warehouse and New York's Loft and Paradise Garage created a new style. House dance takes from many different dance elements such as the Lindy era, African, Latin, Brazilian, jazz, tap, and even modern.
House also had an influence of relaying political messages to people who were considered to be outcast of society. It offered for those who didn't fit into mainstream American society, especially celebrated by the black and the gay community. Frankie Knuckles made a good comparison of house saying it was like "church for people who have fallen from grace". This position might explain why American radio and tv weren’t to keen on picking up on the genre.
(for an extensive historical review on house, click here) |
|
|
Ibiza
Quite different was it in Europe where house music first hit in on the small island of Ibiza for the Spanish coast. On the island an electronic scene was already existing since the end of the seventies where a mixture of Hi-NRG music made in countries like France and Germany and the Italo disco from Italy created Balearic Beat. A key role in the development of Balearic beat was the nightclub Amnesia on the island of Ibiza.
Being a hippie and counter culture hang out in the seventies it changed into a dance club at the start of the eighties picking up on the Italo and Hi NRG styles from other European countries. Mid eighties the club started spinning the first house records mixing them with the European scene. By late 1987, DJs like Paul Oakenfold and Danny Rampling were bringing the Ibiza sound to UK clubs like the Hacienda in Manchester, and in London clubs such as Shoom in Southwark, Heaven, Future and Spectrum. This resulted in 1988 and 1989 in the second summer of love
|
Second summer of love
The Second Summer of Love is a name given to the period in 1988-89 in Britain, during the rise of Acid House music and the euphoric explosion of unlicensed ecstasy-fuelled rave parties. Electronic dance music and the prevalence of the drug ecstasy fuelled an explosion in youth culture culminating in mass free parties and the era of the rave. The music of this era fused dance beats with a psychedelic, 1960s flavour, and the dance culture drew parallels with the hedonism and freedom of the Summer of Love in San Francisco two decades earlier. The smiley logo popped up everywhere. And also the bad press that cultivated the drug excesses on XTC (amongst others) and made governements worry about the rave - phenomena for years. Often forcing the scene to organise illegal parties in industrial settings or in the countryside. The scene blew over through Amsterdam (with the famous Roxy club) to the rest of Europe. But even regular popmusic got infected and soon music scenes like ‘Madchester’ (incorporating electronica with Britpop) and genres like triphop (mixing hiphop, reggae and psych-folk) fuelled up the musical spectrum in Europe.
But there was more. At the tail end of the British summer of love a number of UK based electronic musicians were inspired by the underground dance music of the time and started to explore experimental forms of EDM production.
|
|
|
IDM
By the early 1990s the music associated with this experimentation had gained prominence with releases on a variety of record labels including Warp Records and R & S Records. In November 1991, the phrase "intelligent techno" appeared on Usenet in reference to British act Coil and their ‘The Snow EP’. By 1992 Warp Records was marketing the musical output of the artists on its roster using the description electronic listening music. In the same period (1992–93), other names were also used, such as armchair techno or ambient techno. Anyway electronic music to enjoy at home instead of the clubs. Especially Warp jumped into this segement with their 1992 release ‘Artificial Intelligence’, subtitled "electronic listening music from Warp", the record was a collection of tracks from artists such as Autechre, B12, The Black Dog, Aphex Twin, and The Orb, under various aliases. These artists, among others like the Future Sound of London, Speedy J, Orbital, Biosphere and so on, would eventually become the main topics of conversation in the Intelligent Dance Music List, an electronic mailing list founded in August 1993 by Alan Parry.
The first message, sent on August 1, 1993, was entitled "Can Dumb People Enjoy IDM, Too?” . Alan picked the word "intelligent" because it had already appeared on Artificial Intelligence and because it connoted being something beyond just music for dancing, while still being open to interpretation. Artists featured on the list like Aphex twin loathed the name and to be dubbed in the genre but the name stuck with the press, the shops and the public. It didn’t stop there however because the genres created since then are numerous with one thing in common, they are all made by electronics. See for a full list the following page.
|
In a way by the end of the century the history of electronic music has become full circle. Let me take you back to part 1 where we read the vision of the Futurist Luigi Russolo written down in his manifest ‘L'arte dei Rumori’ (the art of noise) (1913). In it he states that “because the human ear will become accustomed to urban industrial soundscapes a new form of enjoying sound will emerge. Furthermore, this new sonic palette requires a new approach to musical instrumentation and composition”.
With the boom of electronic music in the nineties the field work of Pierre Schaeffer, Stockhausen & Xenakis, Raymond Scott, The Brussels world fair of 1958, Perrey & Kingsley….they all come together and can be heard in the bass-lines, the blieps and peeps, the industrial noises of the generation that pulled electronic music into the new century. What the future will bring is, as always, uncertain.
Fact is that a label like Warp is still around and celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. The Guardian made a very nice retrospective podcast about it which you can download here. And of course I have my own favourite Warp top 10 which I want to share with you below. Thank you for your attention the past months.
DOUBLE BASS
|
|
My favourite classic Warp releases (not in a specific order):
|
(fragments courtesy of muziek.nl) |
Go back to part 7: "where did it all go wrong ? "
Or all the way back to the beginning
|
|
|
