Icosagon marks 20 years of IDMforums, bringing together artists from across the community’s history in a two-volume release that reflects its collaborative spirit and evolving sound.
Continuity, lineage, and community culture
Project overview :: IDMforums launched in 2006 as an online space for electronic music producers to connect, share work, and exchange ideas, initially around IDM but with a broader openness to experimental electronic music. Over time, it developed into a self-organized community centered on collaboration, peer feedback, and experimentation.
Twenty years on, Glitchpulse Records is marking that continuity with Icosagon, a two-volume release spanning the full lifespan of the forum. The project brings together artists from the earliest netlabel releases through to current contributors, presenting a cross-section of a scene that has persisted and evolved while many similar platforms have quietly disappeared.
Rather than functioning as a “best of,” the release focuses on continuity, lineage, and community culture. The music reflects the breadth of sounds that have coexisted on IDMforums for two decades, from high-energy breakcore and glitch to more contemplative, emotionally driven IDM.
Format & structure :: Each volume will be released as a double LP, with a companion digital edition.
• Volume 1: DnB, breaks, dubstep, glitch, and uptempo material
• Volume 2: Downtempo IDM with a contemplative, emotional focus
By 2008, members of IDMforums established the IDMf netlabel as a way to release music collectively. The label operated on a non-commercial, artist-led basis, allowing contributors to retain control of their work while documenting the evolving sound of the community.
Over the years, IDMforums became a formative space for many producers who later went on to build wider careers within electronic music. For some, it was a first audience; for others, a place to refine ideas, test material, and receive detailed peer feedback. Its influence has often been quiet and decentralized, embedded in the trajectories of individual artists rather than attached to any single institution.
The forum itself has not been without disruption. A complete server hard drive failure resulted in the loss of roughly twelve years of accumulated discussions, releases, and history. What remained was fragmented, partially preserved through the Wayback Machine and Bandcamp but scattered and incomplete. The community rebuilt from scratch, re-establishing the forum and continuing forward despite the archival rupture.
By 2023, the forum and its affiliated label had entered a period of stagnation. Moderation and maintenance had lapsed, and the original focus had begun to blur, a familiar cycle for long-running online communities. As the 20-year mark approached, the moment felt less like an ending and more like a natural point of renewal.
In 2024 the platform was rehabilitated under new stewardship, guided by a clear vision to restore its original purpose while adapting it for the present. The forum was reorganized, moderation reinstated, and the label restructured and rebranded as Glitchpulse Records. Rather than erasing its past, the intention was to preserve its lineage while rebuilding a stable foundation for the next chapter.
Today, IDMforums operates once again as an active, community-driven space for sharing music, ideas, and collaboration. Icosagon emerges from that renewed footing, marking both two decades of history and the beginning of a new cycle.
IDMforums :: Glitchpulse :: Instagram :: Nick Manton (Director)
Icosagon is available on Glitchpulse March 29, 2026.
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