Balinese Gamelan

So what we think of as "electronic dance music" is roughly the convergence of a few different musical lineages. Of course there's the tribal rhythms found in many parts of the world; african drumming for example. There's Indian sitar music and the like, with the penetrating, trance-inducing harmonics. Chicago-style house music, at least, is heavily influenced by gospel singing. Those are probably pretty obvious. Another, less obvious but very central influence comes through the minimalist composer Steve Reich, who studied Balinese Gamelan music:

That is a pretty amazing band right there, if you ask me. Watch carefully what the player of the marimba-like instrument (actually a "metallophone") does with his other hand!

Anyway, there is a certain unique kind of rhythm to this music which you can still hear particularly in Detroit-style techno and its descendants. Reich was an explicit influence for a lot of the pioneers of electronic music. Wikipedia says:

In featuring a sample of Reich's Electric Counterpoint (1987) the British ambient techno act the Orb exposed a new generation of listeners to the composer's music with its 1990 production “Little Fluffy Clouds.” Further acknowledgment of Reich's influence on various electronic dance music producers came with the release in 1999 of the Reich Remixed tribute album which featured reinterpretations by artists such as DJ Spooky, Kurtis Mantronik, Ken Ishii, and Coldcut, among others.