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Techno

The Hartnoll brothers, Kent

Orbital

Orbital are Phil and Paul Hartnoll, brothers from Kent. The name comes from the M25, London's orbital motorway, which is how ravers got to the acid house parties of the late 1980s. They started recording in 1989 on a four-track at their parents' house. Their first two albums, from 1991 and 1993, are just called the Green Album and the Brown Album. The Glastonbury headline set of June 1994, shown on Channel 4, is one of the best-remembered live shows of the decade, and it finally got an official release in September 2026. Snivilisation came in 1994 and In Sides in 1996. They split in 2004, got back together in 2009, split again in 2014 and returned for good in 2017.

Belgium, Mental Radio, 1991

Phantasia

Phantasia was a Belgian studio project out of the early-1990s new beat and techno scene. Several unrelated bands have used the same name, so don't mix them up. Its one known release appeared in April 1991 on Mental Radio, a label distributed by Music Man: a 12-inch with a vocal version on one side and an instrumental on the other, plus a shorter 7-inch edit. It was written by Praga Khan, Nikkie Van Lierop and Oliver Adams, the same circle of Belgian producers behind Lords of Acid, and Discogs files it under techno and trance. Nobody has turned up an album, a chart placing or any later release, so what's left of Phantasia is one single from a busy time in Belgian dance music.

Cornwall, Rephlex, Warp

Aphex Twin

Aphex Twin is Richard D. James, born in Limerick in 1971 to Welsh parents and brought up in Cornwall. He co-founded Rephlex Records with Grant Wilson-Claridge in 1991, and in late 1992 he signed to Warp, which has released most of his work since. Selected Ambient Works 85–92 and its 1994 sequel set the template for a generation of electronic music made at home. The Richard D. James Album in 1996 and Drukqs in 2001 went further into hyperactive drum programming and prepared piano. He has used plenty of aliases, AFX, Polygon Window and Caustic Window among them. After a long silence he came back in 2014 with Syro, which won a Grammy, and he has kept putting out EPs and posting tracks online.

Stafford, masks and hazmat suits

Altern 8

Altern 8 were Mark Archer and Chris Peat from Stafford. They started the project in 1990 as a side line to their earlier act, Nexus 21, and released it through Network Records. The look stuck in the mind as much as the music: on stage and in videos they wore fluorescent dust masks and chemical-warfare suits. Between 1991 and 1992, with the rave boom at its height, they had a run of UK hit singles, three of them in the top thirty, and the album Full On... Mask Hysteria got to number eleven in 1992. Archer and Peat went separate ways in 1994. Since 1999 Archer has run Altern 8 with the original MCs and dancers, playing live regularly again from 2014 and headlining Bang Face in 2020.

UK breakbeat hardcore, 1990

Kicksquad

Kicksquad were a UK duo, listed on Discogs as Kevin Elliot Ford and Phivos Sebastiane, who also recorded as The Scientist. Their 1990 12-inch came out on Kickin Records in several mixes, the Hyper Mix among them, with a GTI Records pressing and a white label credited to The Kick Squad. It's an early piece of UK breakbeat hardcore, the sound that came out of acid house and led to jungle. A follow-up single came in 1991. There was no album, and not much else about them is documented. Don't confuse them with the later UK act of the same name, which released records between 2000 and 2017.

Liguria to Las Vegas

Digital Boy

Digital Boy is Luca Pretolesi, an Italian DJ and producer who grew up in Liguria. He came second in the 1989 Walky Cup DJ contest in Riccione, then paid to press a thousand copies of his first record himself. They sold out, and Flying Records of Naples signed him. His 1990 breakthrough was licensed to Music Man in Belgium, and two albums, Futuristik and Technologiko, came out in 1991. In 1994 he started his own label, D-Boy Records. Later he moved to Las Vegas and became a mix and mastering engineer for Steve Aoki, Diplo, Major Lazer and Skrillex. He opened Studio DMI there in 2013 and got a Grammy nomination in 2021.

Manchester, named for a drum machine

808 State

808 State formed in Manchester in 1987 and named themselves after Roland's TR-808 drum machine. The founders were Graham Massey, Martin Price and Gerald Simpson. Price's Eastern Bloc record shop and Creed label were their base, and Simpson soon left to work as A Guy Called Gerald. Darren Partington and Andy Barker joined in 1989. Newbuild came out in 1988 and 90 in 1989, and on ZTT they became one of the first British acid house acts to get into the top ten. Ex:el, in 1991, had guest vocals from Bernard Sumner and Björk, and Gorgeous followed in 1993. Partington left in 2015 and Andy Barker died in 2021, which left Massey carrying the name. Their 2019 album was Transmission Suite.

Rochdale, Warp since 1993

Autechre

Autechre are Rob Brown and Sean Booth, who met through the graffiti and breakdancing scene in Rochdale and started working together in 1987. Hip-hop and electro run through everything they have made, even as the music got more abstract. After a first release as Lego Feet on Skam, they signed to Warp, which has put out every album since Incunabula in 1993. Amber and Tri Repetae came next, and in 2001 the fractured Confield. They became core figures in what got called IDM, a label Booth calls silly. The later projects are huge: the five-part elseq in 2016, the eight hours of NTS Sessions in 2018, and an archive of live recordings that has kept growing since 2022.

1992 — a record, no band behind it

Abfahrt

Almost nothing is known about Abfahrt beyond what's printed on their 1992 record for the German label Abfahrt Records. It credits the music to Helmut Apel, the production to Torsten Fenslau and the words to Nosie Katzmann. There are no interviews and no biography, and no other trace of who they were outside the studio. The record got a second life anyway. The following year it was licensed to the UK's Guerilla Records, with new remixes by Belfast producer David Holmes. It was a small acid-trance release, and the people who passed it along never found out much more about it than that.

Before The Future Sound of London

Mental Cube

Mental Cube was one of the early aliases of Garry Cobain and Brian Dougans, who met in Manchester and soon became The Future Sound of London. Dougans already had a hit to his name, Stakker Humanoid in 1988. In 1990 the pair recorded a handful of tracks as Mental Cube, which came out on 12-inch singles in 1990 and 1991 and were later gathered, along with other early aliases, on the compilation Earthbeat. As The Future Sound of London they went on to make Accelerator and ISDN, and in 2020 they reissued the original recordings themselves as the Mental Cube EP.

The Collection