Calum Gunn

Algorave is a form of dance music culture where the music is created and manipulated live through code, with the performer writing algorithms on stage that generate rhythm, melody, and timbre in real time. The audience typically sees the code projected, turning the act of programming into an expressive, improvisatory performance. Sonically, algorave draws on club styles like techno, house, acid, and rave, while embracing experimental tactics from glitch, IDM, and live algorithmic composition. Expect driving tempos (often 120–160 BPM), polyrhythms, euclidean patterns, evolving loops, and raw, percussive sound design that foregrounds process, pattern, and transformation.

IDM (often expanded as "Intelligent Dance Music") is a strand of experimental electronic music that applies the sound palette and production methods of club genres to listening-focused, often home-oriented works. It favors intricate rhythm programming, unusual time signatures, and richly textured sound design, blending ambient atmospheres with techno’s pulse, electro’s syncopation, and breakbeat’s fragmentation. The music often de-emphasizes the dancefloor in favor of headphone detail, algorithmic structure, and timbral exploration. The term itself is contentious—many artists rejected the "intelligent" label—yet it became a convenient tag for the early- to mid‑1990s cluster of Warp, Rephlex, and related scenes that foregrounded complexity, abstraction, and emotional ambiguity.