This August marks the 22nd anniversary of the online rave resource Hyperreal's “Intelligent Dance Music” listserv, an early Internet mailing list that gave birth to the term, and where many of the critical parameters of the electronic subgenre were hashed out in the mid 1990s. That also makes 22 years that fans and critics have been arguing over the name's negative implications: If the stuff covered by IDM's brainy umbrella is "intelligent," does that mean that other forms of dance music are somehow boneheaded? (In fact, the first message on the IDM list posed this very question.)

In retrospect, it's a shame that fans never came up with a better handle (the Rephlex label's proffered "braindance" never quite cut the mustard, for obvious reasons). As dumb as a lot of latter-day EDM can be, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone today who'd argue that dance music is inherently less legitimate than any other form of music. The very idea of dividing music between its "intelligent" and "unintelligent" forms seems, frankly, pretty backwards. But it becomes easier to swallow the goofy name if you consider Warp's pivotal Artificial Intelligence compilation, which the IDM list creator Brian Behlendorf cited as an inspiration for the forum. I've always liked to think of IDM along those lines—as an imaginary music of sentient machines.

The heady style is best known for its difficulty. Marked by tangled rhythms and twisted timbres, it grew out of the brow-furrowing, convoluted example set by artists like Aphex Twin and Autechre in the early '90s. It's ironic, then, that classic IDM is often so drenched in tear-jerking melodies. But it also makes sense that such aggressive crunch and soft-focus sentimentalism would go together so well; the silvery, sparkling leads are the spoonful of sugar that helps all that broken glass go down. These are the tracks tomorrow's androids may sing to themselves as they love, hurt, and reminisce.