Exploring Intelligent Dance Music - the new kids on the block

'Such rarified experiments stand apart from the sonic meltdown'

Coined during online discussions in the early Nineties as a catch-all for the music of post-ambient electronic producers such as Autechre, The Black Dog and Aphex Twin, the term IDM, or Intelligent Dance Music, was intended to reference music which, as one writer put it, “moves the mind, not just the body”.

Yet most such highfalutin descriptions have since been treated with disdain by the music makers themselves – with Richard “Aphex Twin” James commenting in 1997, “It makes me laugh, things like that”. Still, James toyed with perceptions of his music’s intellectual status from the outset. Not only did the gauzy melodies and softly pulsing rhythms of his newly reissued 1992 album Selected Ambient Works 85-92 (R&S) suggest parallels with ambient godfather Brian Eno, tracks such as “Ptolemy” and “Actium” offered cryptic references to Classical myth.

In terms of academic education, James (who dropped out of a course in electronics at Kingston Polytechnic in the Nineties) lags behind Drew Daniel of US electronica duo Matmos. Having completed a PhD in English, Daniel has taken up a job as an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Achievements which surely make new Matmos album Supreme Balloon (Matador) one of the best-qualified techno recordings ever.

The title track is a 24-minute epic which gently inflates like a fairground take on Tangerine Dream while the comparatively bite-size “Mister Mouth” explodes in a tangle of melodic squiggles and bizarre, rubberised rhythm.

There’s a similarly playful quality to Parisian duo Nôze, whose third album Songs On The Rocks (Get Physical) wanders blithely from the electro chanson of “L’Inconnu Du Placard” to the percussive ethno-trance of “Ethiopo”.

In a similar spirit, New Jersey producer Professor Genius has constructed a strange and affecting tribute to visionary French comic book artist Moebius, A Jean Giraud (ThisIsNotAnExit), which echoes the cosmic electronic instrumentals of Seventies eccentrics such as sometime Eno collaborator Roedelius. And Avellaneda (Rune Grammofon), an airy geometry of acoustic/electronic interplay from Danish trio Skyphone, is named for a pseudonymous Spanish author who wrote a sequel to Don Quixote in 1614.

Such rarefied experiments stand apart from the sonic meltdown perpetrated by electro-punk favourites Crystal Castles, whose debut Crystal Castles (Different) is a collision of video game effects, juggernaut beats and the no-wave vocals of Alice Glass. The Toronto duo also represent a future for dance music beyond the cheesy, endlessly recycled myth of Saturday-night-at-the-disco good times.

The latter continues to be big business, thanks to TV-advertised compilations peddled by Ministry Of Sound and ageing club DJs such as Dimitri From Paris. Once an icon of Gallic cool, Dimitri is now little more than a cheerleader for Hugh Hefner’s soft porn empire, as witnessed on his latest formulaic disco mix Return To The Playboy Mansion (Defected).

Even mix-CDs by more heralded DJs can outstay their welcome. Carl Craig Sessions (K7) is a treasure-trove of the Detroit icon’s rarer tracks, but runs out of steam well before the end of the second disc; while Berlin DJ Ellen Allien’s Boogybytes Vol 04 (BPitch Control) seems to take an age getting to its most interesting moments – Sozadams’ hall-of-mirrors “Eyes Forlorn” and the juddering, Cabaret Voltaire-like complexities of Richard Seeley’s “Juicy Vermin”.

Veteran Italian Daniele Baldelli, who played his first DJ set in a club on the Adriatic Coast in 1969, shows how it should be done. Cosmic Disco? Cosmic Rock! (Eskimo), is a fascinating mix of neon Eurodisco and obscure Eighties electro- rock featuring such forgotten talents as Kevin Harrison, who prior to releasing Ink Man in 1982 worked for Jaguar Cars in Coventry. It’s also music chosen not just for its obscurity or retro cool (there’s a Thompson Twins track in there), but because it means something to Baldelli – an attitude all the best DJ sets are founded on.