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Brian Eno once said, “Avant-garde music is a sort of research music. You’re glad someone’s done it, but you don’t necessarily want to listen to it.” The ambient innovator and master producer certainly had a point, but there is no reason why experimental music can’t also be broadly accessible. Just look at what John Lennon did with ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ in 1966.

The emergence of artists like Autechre and Aphex Twin at the end of the 1980s coincided with the rise of rave culture. While The Happy Mondays hosted mega nights at The Haçienda, electro pioneers like Richard D. James, Rob Brown and Sean Booth isolated themselves behind a barrage of samplers, sequencers, synthesisers and drum machines to create weird and wonderful sounds virgin to the human ear.

Although genres like ambient electro and techno had existed since the 1970s and early ’80s, respectively, intelligent dance music (IDM) first emerged in the early 1990s, heavily influenced by the work of Brian Eno and Krautrock artists like Tangerine Dream and Neu! If you are new to IDM, you may be thinking, “What a pompous tag”. Join the club. However, I would like to note that the tag was coined by fans and critics, not these so-called production geniuses.

Despite the term’s pomposity, IDM is a pretty accurate description of the genre’s typical produce. Though it is derived from electronic dance music (EDM), you wouldn’t necessarily dance to IDM music. Frankly, if you tried to dance to most of Squarepusher’s music, you’d risk cardiac arrest or find yourself in a straitjacket. Instead, IDM artists invite the listener to sit pensively at home in front of an expensive Hi-Fi, drooling over the intricacies of their productional masterpieces.

Below, I introduce you to the wonders of IDM with five masterpiece albums from five titanic artists. Each album is a seminal work in its field; although each LP chips away at the musical vanguard, I am convinced these selections aren’t as esoteric as Mr. Eno might have conveyed in the above quote.

Five essential IDM albums:

Aphex Twin – Selected Ambient Works 85-92 (1992)

If someone sought just one IDM record to diversify their otherwise preoccupied collection, I would always recommend Aphex Twin’s debut album. Selected Ambient Works 85-92 is the cornerstone of the genre as we know it today and is as accessible as it is intrepid. When listening to its energetic techno pulses and ambient textures, it is always advisable to transport your mind back to the early 1990s. This way, you will understand just how influential the record and its producer were and continue to be.

Thanks to Richard D. James’s techno sensibilities, the album redefines ambient music, which Brian Eno previously championed as a mostly beatless genre. Thanks to James’ innovation, the sounds of his 1990s albums, ranging from ambient to intense drum and bass, are commonplace in electronic music today. At the time, however, his work was truly groundbreaking owing to his propensity to modify his own hardware and devise unique sampling techniques.

Boards of Canada – Music Has the Right to Children (1998)

Despite their deceptive name, Boards of Canada is a duo hailing from Scotland. In 1995, brothers Michael Sandison and Marcus Eoin released their debut EP, Twoism, which made small ripples in the British electronic music scene. Pivotally, the release attracted the attention of Autechre’s Sean Booth, who helped the pair sign with the English label Skam Records.

Boards of Canada’s first release with Skam was the 1996 EP Hi Scores, which did just what it said on the tin. Alongside the Aquarius EP, it corralled a cult fandom prior to the arrival of their masterpiece debut LP, Music Has the Right to Children. Flitting between ethereal vignettes and kaleidoscopic beats, the 60-minute album introduced some of the duo’s most enduring tracks, from ‘Wildlife Analysis’ to ‘Roygbiv’. It also earned Boards of Canada a crucial deal with the prestigious Warp Records.

Autechre – Tri Repetae (1995)

Autechre, like Aphex Twin, is a longstanding project boasting a prolific catalogue of impressive scope. It was easy to select Aphex Twin’s debut as a cornerstone release in IDM. However, Autechre’s catalogue is a little more difficult to dissect. The English duo, consisting of Rob Brown and Sean Booth, released some of their most accessible tracks, such as ‘Bike’ and ‘Slip’ in their first two albums but reached a point of balance and refinement in their mid-1990s masterpiece Tri Repetae.

As the IDM bracket demands, Autechre operate in the experimental ground between techno and ambient. Their inconsistent beats rarely approach drum and bass territory, instead earning the Rochdale duo a status as pioneers of the glitch subgenre. Tri Repetae should be enjoyed as a singular entity, but ‘Clipper’ and ‘Eutow’ are highlight moments.

Four Tet – Rounds (2003)

In 1995, Putney teenager Kieran Hebden formed a post-rock group called Fridge with a couple of school friends. Heavily inspired by the rhythmic Krautrock stylings of CAN and Neu!, the band gained a cult following in London and released four enjoyable yet commercially unsuccessful albums, finishing with the brilliant Happiness in 2001. By this point, Hebden had begun a solo side project under the Four Tet alias as he shifted his focus to experimental electronic production.

Rounds, Four Tet’s third studio album, is his most accomplished, from start to finish. It leads in a mostly downtempo guise, perfecting Hebden’s prior work in folktronica using between 200 and 300 samples, many of which are warped beyond recognition. Alongside folk influences, Hebden exhibits his affections for hip-hop and jazz in a series of transportive gems, including the upbeat highlight ‘She Moves Me’ and the perfect dreamscape ‘My Angel Rocks Back and Forth’.

Squarepusher – Go Plastic (2001)

Squarepusher, the celebrated alias of Thomas Russell Jenkinson, is commonly associated with Aphex Twin’s Richard D. James. The pair produced the most influential material in experimental drum and bass (or drill ‘n’ bass) throughout the mid-to-late-1990s, and as Warp Records neighbours, have collaborated on several occasions. Radiohead’s Thom Yorke cites their collaborative track ‘Freeman Hardy & Willis Acid’ as a pivotal moment in his decision to embrace IDM in Kid A.

By 2001, Squarepusher was a household name, with a handful of seminal records under his belt, including the brilliant Hard Normal Daddy. In Go Plastic, Jenkinson took stock of his recent successes and pulled out a consummate masterpiece without fault. The album glitches its way through discerning high-velocity break-beats, vocal samples and unprecedented sound effects. One moment, you’re floating on a pillow of ‘Tombib’; the next, you’re navigating the frenetic meat grinder that is ‘Go! Spastic’.