IDM, or Intelligent Dance Music, is a style in electronic music emerging in the early 90’s and characterized by unusual, weird, distorted sounds, and drum lines consisting of very short bleeps and glitches. It emerged from the culture and sound palette of electronic styles such as ambient techno, acid house, Detroit techno and breakbeat, it has been regarded as better suited to home listening than dancing.

Originally applied to musicians like Future Sound Of London, Orbital, Aphex Twin, Black Dog & B1. The term is now extended to a multitude of artists who produce experimental electronic music while keeping the influence of their dance-floor origins, often produced on simple laptops using only sequencer software. The word “intelligent” was chosen because it had already appeared on Artificial Intelligence and because it connoted being something beyond just music for dancing, while still being open to interpretation. The term IDM is now used almost exclusively in its acronym form, as the actual meaning came to be interpreted as implying that other styles of dance music are not intelligent.

The term has been widely criticised and dismissed by most artists associated with it, including Aphex Twin, Autechre, and μ-Ziq. Rephlex Records, a label co-created by Aphex Twin, coined the term “Braindance” as an alternative. In 2014, music critic Sasha Frere-Jones observed that the term “is widely reviled but still commonly used”.