Tape Saturation On Electronic Music?

I guess it depends on the dance music, and if you like the sound then go for it. Youtube ad popped up for Sonar yesterday, the promo video with some trance guy called Bluestone, sure he had the tape emulator on, it was showing on the Track Inspector, so I couldn't say it was the master bus, though it could have been.
 
I used to listen to a lot of Jazz bassed Drum and Bass on labels such as Moving Shadow and London Electricity. If I was to make now, I'd probably whack the Tape Em. on the master.
 
Regards the youtube ads, I seemed to get a whole stak of cakwalk yesterday popping up between every 2-3 songs on a playlist. I had Cinematic Orchestra playing as a I worked, but it's laid back vibe was killed by that Rapture Pro ad with it big dubstep bass from the outset.

Tape emulation is widely used for pop and rock because for decades pop and rock was recorded on tape, and we still unconsciously hear that sound in our collective head, along with harmonic distortion from tubes. We've come to expect that's what pop and rock music is supposed to sound like.
 
EDM, by contrast, exists in its current form because of digital technology. It was never widely recorded to tape. It is digital from beginning to end, never seeing a single analog component until the moment it's played back. 
 
But as they say, there are no rules. It's only a matter of time before folks get bored with the standard gimmicks and producers start straying from well-established practices. One day, they'll even discover that waveforms exist other than a sawtooth!

...wicked
I use it all the time. In fact I follow a pretty analog-sounding recipe for my electronic music. I find it just helps glue it together and gives it a cohesiveness that a regular ITB production lacks. 

 
the words "analog-sounding recipe" intrigued me! lol.   care to share?

bitflipper
EDM, by contrast, exists in its current form because of digital technology. It was never widely recorded to tape. It is digital from beginning to end, never seeing a single analog component until the moment it's played back. 

 
That's not entirely true, I think some of the early acid house 303 type stuff was recorded to tape, but that was quickly superseded by DAT. Nonetheless, early dance music has always had a strong analog element, whether it be the use of analog synths or analog effects, especially compressors. Remember it hasn't really been that long since totally ITB production became possible in the way it is today, with projects typically running hundreds of plugins. 
 
And of course you've always had some artists recording to tape for a deliberately lo-fi effect, an example being Boards of Canada who would rerecord parts on tape over and over to get that wobbly degraded sound. 

I guess you can just take the phrase Electronic Dance Music as descriptive and legitimately apply it to any electronic-based music that's produced with dancing in mind. Back in the early 90's I guess we mainly called it Dance Music as you say, but we also referred to genres like acid, acid trance, house, dub, jungle/D&B, Detroit etc. Although we certainly weren't as tediously anal about genre divisions like the kids are nowadays. Reading the YouTube comments for EDM songs is a very annoying experience as you have to wade through these endless mud-flinging debates about what particular sub-sub-sub-sub-genre the track is, with each kid insisting that their analysis is right based on the exact bpm and snare pattern of the track etc. You get the feeling the music isn't that important any more. 

I think it goes back a long way into the 70's with greats such as Edgar Froese from Tangerine Dream (RIP) and people like Klaus Schulze, Jarre, Kraftwerk, and many others.  The Moog modular was up and running in the mid 60's so it was well established by the early 70's.  Tape saturation and how tape interacts with analog synthesisers was definitely a situation that was around then.  It was the only situation at the time some very great albums were recorded.
 
Reel to reel machines don't record and playback square waves very well and they tend to generate lots of distortion that adds tone and colour and harmonics to our input signals and that can be analog synths too.
 
I am fortunate to have owned and used some high quality analog synths such as Moog, Oberheim, Sequential, Roland, Korg modular etc.. and how they sound when recorded into multitrack analog tape medium was an important consideration.  The tape changed the sound of the synth further again.  I had first hand experience with it.  You could either use it or compensate for it.  I often did both.
 
I still have some great sounding hardware now and believe me digital records and plays them back better now and more accurately than ever before.  But what do you do when you generating the sound from a VST and it may have quite a dry digital sound to it.  (especially when it is pretending to sound like an analog synth too!)  Then yes I say use all the plug-ins now which are available and sound rather excellent too without the hassle of the multitrack/stereo machine.
 
These days we have it good.  We can also send part of our mix too to the saturation farm and back for some semi saturated effects within a total mix.  I agree with sharke too about how great and amazing some very clean and dry sounds can be as well.  I love it.  It seems that to me the synths that are winning in these areas are the finest virtual devices we have now too.  And sometimes these things are just best left alone and hear them the way they are meant to sound.  For me I love the balance of great sounding hardware combined with the fine virtual instruments.
 
The genre arguments are a bit boring I think.  Everything has been done a long time before by great people such as Edgar Froese.  You hear elements of all modern dance tracks in his music.  He was setting up the same ideas using similar sounds decades before.  People like Edgar Froese just kept on going right up until the end still refining his own personal sounds and ideas and musical concepts.  But the EDM guys have zoomed in onto smaller parts of many a great electronic music pioneer's  ideas or sounds perhaps and seriously developed and turned it into a whole new culture all by itself.
 
I always felt the drum machine and sounds were weak/wimpy even back in the 70's for example but now we have the thundering grooves to go with the electronic ideas many of which are born out of ideas well before. I really like the way things develop musically.
 
A lot of EDM dance music is boring especially harmonically and it is actually not saying much at all.  It could be better.  But it has been developed for a different need and part of the music industry.  I would love to hear more complex harmony in the music perhaps combined with the power of the dance feel of EDM.  And throw in world rhythms too just for fun. It would then kick arse!

I'll check out floating point, sounds like it could interest me. Aphex, Plaid, and Autecre are a good shout along with Squarepusher, oh and Boards of Canada.
 
 

There is current EDM and there are its historical precedents, and they share little in common beyond the use of synthesizers and arpeggiators. Tangerine Dream, Larry Fast, Jean Micheal Jarre, Vangelis - the pioneers of the genre - all recorded to tape and without the aid of computers.
 
Today's scene is quite different. Every kid with a laptop is a "producer". There are literally millions of people in China making EDM right now. The attraction is the low cost of entry: a complete rig costs less than a guitar and an amplifier (and no tedious practice required). Nowadays, electronic music never touches a vacuum tube or magnetic tape or any other analog component. A song's entire lifespan is spent as a completely digital creation from start to finish.
 
There are exceptions, of course. Some of the (very) few EDM producers who actually make money at it prefer vintage analog synthesizers over software. But they are a tiny minority, and even they use samples as the rhythmic foundation.
 
Today's EDM is all about the beat, above all else. If it were my genre, I'd avoid tape emulation/saturation and anything else that dulls the punch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXU5Rxc3vBQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOu-dWhTTWw

Damn listening to Chime on Youtube led me to Snivilisation. I'm met to be going out, but headphones are sucing me into Forever. The stuff just flows
 

At Sharke, I'm enjoying Floating Points. Saw the guy mixes with Fortet. Shadows had some nice moments, some plasticmanesq elements. Listening to Wires now which shows me more range and reminding me of 4Hero and Ciematic Orchestra a lot and more up my street.

Regarding EDM - I can't ever remember wanting to dance to Rubycon, either part one or part two...