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March 28, 2024, 10:46:27 PM

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Can someone explain what EDM means?

Started by Icehaven, March 17, 2019, 10:10:10 AM

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Icehaven

Yeah I'm a bit out of touch these days but I keep hearing this term EDM, which apparently means electronic dance music, as if it's a new genre. Where I'm a bit lost is...the term Dance music used to be a cover all term for almost entirely electronic stuff like techno, house, rave etc. and has been around since, I dunno the mid 80s or thereabouts, so what's the difference/need for this redefinition? Is it actually a specific genre or is it just the same thing with 'electronic' uneccessarily tacked on the front?

buttgammon

Isn't it just the American catch-all term for 'dance music'?  I've only ever heard it in an American context and despite being a huge fan of most of those genres, I don't know exactly what it means.

purlieu

It's an American term for it which was created because dance music, despite having been pretty much invented in the US, never had much chart presence until the '00s, when it suddenly became huge. The fact that the rest of the world seems to have adopted it shows how culturally subservient most of the world is to America.

It's also often used to describe a particular style of dance music which is absurdly aggressive sounding, lots of saw wave synth stabs, overly compressed, completely horrible brainless nonsense that seems to have come from a combination of the worst ends of late '90s hard house and eurotrance. Some examples, if you can put up with them:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdemFfbS5H0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCYcHz2k5x0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OrSxiUHk4E

It's a multi-million pound industry these days and is generally quite horrible. Although I've noticed a lot of the big names like Steve Aoki, David Guetta and The Chainsmokers are doing very r&b-based stuff these days, which strikes me as strange.

DrGreggles

Never heard it called EDM before, but I'm guessing that's what "the kids" are into these days.
Human League/OMD/Yazoo - all those other new bands too probably.

ToneLa

Only ever heard yanks call it that.

Makes me wonder what just dance music is to them. Organic dance music?

Proper drumkits, a double bass, flutes and strings playing goa trance and dubtronica. Fuck it, sign me up, as long as it's at least 140bpm

Phil_A

It was a bit weird when suddenly in the mid-nineties everyone started referring to "electronica" instead of "dance music". I have a feeling it originated from the US, I remember the Crystal Method being the first group I heard that term applied to.

Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth

Semantically it makes sense - you can dance to most forms of popular music.

Its a bit like how the yanks think that 'Britpop' refers to all British pop music.

Chriddof

I recall "Electronica" didn't really catch on, despite the efforts of MTV US. "EDM" has though, and it's extremely annoying given that it stands for "Electronic Dance Music", which is a potentially useful umbrella term rendered useless by the way that it solely refers to bollocks like that stuff posted upthread. Another thing is that Americans tend to use words like "rave" and "techno" interchangeably, and a lot of people appear not to have heard of the term "house". As has just been said, it's all very weird given that it was practically invented in places like Chicago and Detroit.

If you really want to raise your blood pressure, look at this pile of cack from The Fine Bros about Daft Punk:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-tWqdEcGN4

BlodwynPig

*IDM leaves thread to a different beat*

Norton Canes

I always confuse it with EBM (Electronic Body Music ) - electro-industrial dance music - Front 242, KMFDM an all that.

BlodwynPig

Quote from: Norton Canes on March 17, 2019, 03:51:35 PM
I always confuse it with EBM (Electronic Body Music ) - electro-industrial dance music - Front 242, KMFDM an all that.

Same here.


Rizla

It's only the genre techno could've been.

jobotic

Electronica makes me think of a certain period and music, your Isans, your Morr Music, Hermann and Kleines that sort of thing.

Some great moments but mostly a bit dull and you can't dance to it.

purlieu

Electronica was a term to describe electronic music that wasn't rooted in house/techno/rave - i.e. you couldn't dance to it. Obviously this had been around since the '60s, and the '70s as a commercially viable approach, but that won't stop the media coming up with daft terms. It's broader than IDM*, with less emphasis on cold, stark, rhythm-heavy - if not danceable - stuff. On the whole I don't mind the term, but it was never very inspiring.

Now EBM is a great name. It's not really my kind of thing, but the name is really evocative of the visceral nature of the music.


*IDM, of course, was a tongue-in-cheek term, coined by those who invented the 'IDM List', an email mailing list hosted by Hyperreal, to discuss Warp's Artificial Intelligence series and similar music. Inspired by the Artificial Intelligence name, they came up with the silly idea of this kind of dance music having its own artificial intelligence, hence Intelligent Dance Music. Then it became more widely used and has been continually jumped on as some kind of snobbery that classes all other types of dance music as stupid, because taking things out of context is what we do as a society (especially where the media is involved).

imitationleather

It's annoying when, say, Aphex Twin is described as "EDM" by people with very little idea of popular culture from before the year 2000*. EDM is, in my view, a particular genre of dance music, as purlieu described. Horrendous brostep-stuff by Skrillex and whatnot, mainly listened to by American teenagers in their candy outfits. When it was just describing that it was easily avoided because as far as I could tell that sort of music made virtually zero impact on the UK. Or maybe it did among children, I've really got no idea what they listen to apart from the drill stuff they like in London.

*Actually maybe Aphex Twin being lumped in with that is an EDM/IDM confusion. Could understand that happening.

hummingofevil

Quote from: jobotic on March 17, 2019, 04:13:03 PM
Electronica makes me think of a certain period and music, your Isans, your Morr Music, Hermann and Kleines that sort of thing.

Some great moments but mostly a bit dull and you can't dance to it.

Agreed. Electronica for me was everything from Autechre onwards including Aphex (early Aphex was techno), BoC, Warp, Rephlex (Braindance was a sub-genre of electronica) and particularly the stuff sold by Boomkat and Pelicanneck in Manchester. Some people called this stuff and its US equivalents IDM or "intelligent dance music" which a term I despised and ultimately put me off.

I always assumed that the EDM term was a reference to this name only and I don't think there is any cross-over. Musically I think of  EDM it as the worst type of skrillex dubstep elements but with 4/4 kick. Also, culturally it was the music of Las Vegas super clubs and DJs getting 500k a night paid for by pricks paying $1000 a for table service vodka. Big bass drops for dull fuckwits; music for people who don't like music.

Sebastian Cobb

To me electronica, like idm was meant to be listened to at home, but also I'd say it can be extended to include 'proper bands' that also make heavy use of samplers and syths and that.

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: hummingofevil

I always assumed that the EDM term was a reference to this name only and I don't think there is any cross-over. Musically I think of  EDM it as the worst type of skrillex dubstep elements but with 4/4 kick. Also, culturally it was the music of Las Vegas super clubs and DJs getting 500k a night paid for by pricks paying $1000 a for table service vodka. Big bass drops for dull fuckwits; music for people who don't like music.

That and stadiums chock full of American candy ravers.

Wouldn't be the first genre that was invented by black Americans but didn't become popular with white Americans until white Europeans had started copying it.

Bazooka

Stands for EastEnders Dramatic Music, ya know at the end of the episode when Peggy says "get out my pub" etc and the drums roll.

ToneLa


Twed

I was talking about Keith Flint to an (American) co-worker I know is a Prodigy fan and he said that The Prodigy was the band that got him into "trance music". Americans are generally very poor at categorising electronic music.

A few frat cunts started crying when they saw Daft Punk at Coachella because of the flashing lights and their lack of emotional development. Inept media saw it as the birth of a movement rather than an artless Jive Bunny betrayal of their entire discography.

THUS WAS BEGAT

E
D
M

Billy

Hadn't the words "dance music" become a bit taboo in America a decade or two ago, with those who considered it either old disco or cheesy Aqua/Ace of Base Europop? If you'd have asked a US rapper to guest on a "dance song" they'd have gone all hell no - but an "EDM song" and suddenly it's trendy and cool.

monkfromhavana

It's dance music for clubs with VIP seating near the stage and table service.

Captain Z

And for audiences who are more excited about getting hit in the face by a cake.

Sebastian Cobb

I liked it when A Guy Called Gerald slagged off 'EDM' and called Deadmau5 a 'greedy rat head fuck'.

https://thequietus.com/articles/09193-a-guy-called-gerald-blasts-deadmau5

McFlymo

I remember in the early 90s, I assumed "techno" meant all dance music. I never understood all the different categorisations and sub-genres. Probably because I had only heard terrible europop on the radio and then the horrible shit, people who bullied me in school, would listen to. Happy Hardcore and Trance etc. - I thought all of that was "techno". And shit.

I liked the term "electronica" when I was older, as it seemed to be everything from Autechre to Four Tet, and I liked that one genre could be so radically diverse. Although now I feel "trip hop" is maybe more accurate for a lot of the stuff I was listening to then, even though I remember Portishead and Massive Attack etc, hating that term.

Funcrusher

EDM is just cheesy shit like David Guetta isn't it?

Pauline Walnuts

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on March 18, 2019, 01:50:38 PM
I liked it when A Guy Called Gerald slagged off 'EDM' and called Deadmau5 a 'greedy rat head fuck'.

https://thequietus.com/articles/09193-a-guy-called-gerald-blasts-deadmau5


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