Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index In the early 1990s, American alternative rock bands became mainstream in the US and achieved great popularity in the UK as well. Grunge bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam helped inspire the British alternative rock scene. By the middle of the decade, the British charts were dominated by Britrock, a melding of British rock and roll forms from the last thirty years. Bands like Blur, Suede and Oasis helped lead this charge. As the audience for electronica, techno and other forms of electronic dance music matured, various acts topped the charts in the middle of the decade, especially artists like Leftfield, The Chemical Brothers, The Prodigy, Massive Attack and Paul Oakenfold. These forms combined and mutated into dozens of subgenres, including various combinations of drum and bass, trance, house and trip hop. This article is part of the Music of the United Kingdom series. English folk Irish folk Scottish folk Welsh folk Cornish and Manx folk Early British popular music 1950s and 60s 1970s 1980s 1990s: Britpop and techno Later in the 1990s and into the next millennium, melodic British rock groups like Radiohead and Coldplay achieved great critical and commercial success. Table of contents 1 Early 90s neo-soul 2 House and raves 2.1 Drum n Bass 3 Madchester, shoegazing and the Britpop boom 4 Jamaican music 5 Trip hop 6 Indian music Early 90s neo-soul In the early 90s, a new wave of soul acts emerged from the United Kingdom, drawing on 1980s pioneers like Sade. Soul II Soul, a long-running band, was especially popular, as well Lisa Stansfield's hip hop-influenced sound on Affection, Brand New Heavies' neo-classical soul, Mica Paris, Cathy Dennis and Caron Wheeler. Of these, the Brand New Heavies' return to the 1970s funk-soul of Chaka Khan, Tower of Power and Scotland's Average White Band was perhaps the most influential, paralleling and influencing the rise of American nu soul artists like Lauryn Hill, Mary J. Blige and D'Angelo. House and raves In the early 90s, many raves continued in spite of illegality, while legal dance gatherings were also occurring, and dance music saw more exposure at rock festivals in Glastonbury and Reading. The tension caused by the police and increasingly hardcore music caused many fans to return to the clubs, where rave music had given way to progressive house, a return to the original sounds of house music. Other clubs emerged to play the ever-splintering genres associated with the house and rave scene, including hardcore techno, downtempo and trance. Recorded artists further split the scene into subgenres, taking influences from across the musical spectrum. In the course of a few years, genres like hardcore arose, only to diverge into subgenres like drum n bass and happy hardcore. In the middle of the 90s, Britpop was dominating the charts but British youths were still attending the huge dance clubs, where internationally-renowned DJs spun diverse records. Drum n Bass Until the 90s, the British dance scene included countless variations on American forms of acid house, techno, rare groove and other electronic music, but there was no distinctively British dance genre. The 90s, however, saw the development of drum n bass (or jungle) out of the genres mentioned above as well as ragga, hip hop, jazz and dub. Originally developing in London's East End and the Eastern coast of the Britain, drum n bass is an extension of rock and roll's breakbeat heritage. It is often compared to hip hop, and both genres use pre-recorded beats as the basis for an electrifying dance music. Unlike hip hop, however, drum n bass uses beats in a much looser, more malleable fashion, creating sometimes polyrhythmic compositions that are eminently dance-able. Drum n bass has incorporated beats and rhythms from calypso, dub and ragga almost from its birth, and into the music's first wave of mainstream success in the form of ragga jungle. From these roots came new subgenres of drum n bass, including darkside and hardstep, both of which attempted to maintain a more passionate and intense sound than the pop gimmicks of pop-drum n bass. Madchester, shoegazing and the Britpop boom Early in the 1990s, shoegazing was the most popular genre of British alternative rock. Innovated by My Bloody Valentine, shoegazing spawned a legion of devoted fans that injected much energy, and attention from major labels, into the scene. My Bloody Valentine's 1991 Loveless is still typically considered the pinnacle of shoegazing. That same year, Primal Scream released [[Screamadelica], combining rock inspired by the Rolling Stones with dance and house production techniques. Screamadelica was both a critical and commercial success, opening the way for the legion of 90s house-rock-hip hop-techno fusion scenes, and bands like Aphex Twin, Portishead and Massive Attack. Madchester and shoegazing had a wide enough audience that the British music trade magazines focused on them, even as both scenes were having trouble keeping their energy and innovation. In the States, grunge bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam were bringing a distinctly American alternative rock scene from Seattle to mainstream audiences across the country. The new American anti-fashion pop of Nirvana helped to inspire more mainstream popularity for British alternative rock. Suede appeared in 1992, playing a guitar-based pop that drew on both The Smiths and 70s glam performers like David Bowie. Suede was relentlessly hyped by the tabloid music press, and the band was able to fill the reporters' predictions with a series of singles and then Suede, the fastest-selling recording in British history. Suede's guitar-pop replaced shoegazing as the press' new next big thing, but the band itself was torn apart and unable to compete in the next revolution, to begin in 1994. Blur was the most popular band to emerge in the wake of Suede's self-destruction. The band already had found an audience with 1993's Modern Life Is Rubbish, but were unprepared for the commercial and critical breakthrough of 1994's Parklife. Parklife featured influences from New Wave and synth and jangle pop, psychedelic and glam rock, and American grunge, and launched alternative rock as the dominant sound in British popular music. 1994 also saw a Manchester-based band named Oasis begin to receive some attention in the British press. Skyrocketing from some critical excitement to mainstream superstardom in a matter of months, Oasis' Definitely Maybe unseated Suede as the fastest-selling debut in history. Oasis rivalled Blur and defined what came to be known as Britpop. Many of the previous decades biggest cult bands found mainstream success in the wake of Oasis and Blur, and bands like Boo Radleys, Pulp, Elastica and Supergrass were pop hits. Jamaican music The 80s and 90s also saw the rise of Saxon DJs from Wood Green, north London, including Peter King and Smiley Culture. Later, fusions with hip hop became popular, led by London Posse and the crossover star Apache Indian, and a techno fusion with reggae called jungle also became popular among a new generations of Jamaican-Brits. Trip hop Trip hop is a fusion of breakbeat with jazz, funk, downtempo, soul and hip hop that arose around 1992 (Massive Attack's Blue Lines). Trip hop used sampled drum breaks with psychotropic soundscapes and tyically few or no vocals. Artists like Massive Attack, Portishead, DJ Shadow and Tricky quickly broke into mainstream audiences, topping the indie charts. Indian music The 90s saw fusions with Jamaican music, especially Apache Indian's bhangramuffin fusion of bhangra and raggamuffin. Mainstream success continued to build as prominent clubs, record labels and the British pop charts saw major South Asian influence, culminating in Apache Indian's 1994 presentation on BBC Radio One. That same year, Outcaste Records released Migration by Nitin Sawhney fused flamenco and other genres with bhangra. By 1997, artists like Talvin Singh had become mainstream stars. This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.