Waxonia
Filters

The 8 best IDM tracks of all time

IDM

Techno rebuilt for headphones. British producers in the early nineties kept the machines and abandoned the dancefloor's obligations, treating rhythm as a place to put ideas rather than as a service to a room.

Autoplay · All 8 play here · plays through and starts again

  1. Aphex Twin / Didgeridoo

    1992 · R&S

    Made, by his account, to clear a rave floor of people who would not go home. It is far too fast and far too hostile, and it announced that this music was going to be about one person's judgement.

  2. Autechre / Flutter

    1994 · Warp

    Written so that no two bars repeat, in order to be legal under a British law that had just banned gatherings around repetitive beats. A protest record whose method became the duo's entire career.

  3. Boards of Canada / Roygbiv

    1998 · Warp

    Two minutes of detuned warmth that has been imitated for twenty-five years without once being equalled. The whole nostalgic strand of electronic music descends from this specific tape hiss.

  4. Aphex Twin / Windowlicker

    1999 · Warp

    An R&B pastiche with the vocal processed into something inhuman, sold as a pop single. James proves he can do the thing he is refusing to do, which is the only way that refusal is worth anything.

  5. Squarepusher / Come On My Selector

    1997 · Warp

    Tom Jenkinson plays a jazz bass over drum programming that has visibly lost its mind. Ridiculous, virtuosic, and the funniest record in a genre not otherwise known for jokes.

  6. Autechre / Gantz Graf

    2002 · Warp

    Rhythm dissolved into texture and then reassembled, at a level of detail that only makes sense on headphones. The furthest this music travelled from the drum machine it started on.

  7. Oval / Do While

    1995 · Mille Plateaux

    Twenty-four minutes built out of the errors made by damaged CDs, and originally written for a 128-speaker installation. The first convincing argument that a malfunction is a legitimate source of musical material, and glitch begins here.

  8. µ-Ziq / Hasty Boom Alert

    1997 · Planet Mu

    Mike Paradinas puts a genuinely beautiful melody over drum programming designed to trip over itself. The tension between the two is the whole appeal, and few people have managed it since.