FROM THE CHAIRCRUSHER
What is interesting to me, and why I’m somewhat interested in the
academic study of IDM — other than the fact that I’ve participated in
the phenomenon since very close to the founding of the mailing list —
is that Techno and House and Hip Hop arose, contemporaneously, before
the Internet, and IDM happened after.
It wouldn’t exist except for the Internet. It wouldn’t exist except
for this mailing list. IDM was ground zero for the international
closed-loop feedback between artists and listeners. Before the
Internet, you had to read magazines and hang around in record stores,
and the music you were exposed to was effectively mediated in many
ways. IDM is the first musical genre that happened as the direct
result of people using the Internet in new ways to spread information.
— Kent Williams, yesterday on the idm-l
I learned about IDM-l from hanging around a record store.. but I was only in that shop because I had learned about Aphex on a dial-up BBS.
