Music of the United Kingdom (1990s)

Happy Mondays in concert in 2006

The independent rock scene that had developed in Manchester in the second half of the 1980s, based in The Haçienda nightclub and around Factory Records, dubbed Madchester, came to national prominence at the end of the decade, with the Happy Mondays, the Inspiral Carpets, and Stone Roses charting late in 1989.[1] The scene became the centre of media attention for independent rock in the early 1990s, with bands like World of Twist, New Fast Automatic Daffodils, The High, Northside, Paris Angels, and Intastella also gaining national attention.[1] The period of dominance was relatively short lived with The Stone Roses beginning to retreat from public performance while engaged in contractual disputes, the Happy Mondays having difficulty in producing a second album and Factory Records going bankrupt in 1992.[1] Local bands catching the tail-end of Madchester, such as The Mock Turtles, became part of a wider baggy scene. The music press in the UK began to place more focus on shoegazing bands from the south of England and bands emerging through US grunge.[1]

Dream pop had developed out of the indie rock scene of the 1980s, when bands like Cocteau Twins, The Chameleons, The Passions, Dif Juz, Lowlife and A.R. Kane began fusing post-punk and ethereal experiments with bittersweet pop melodies into sensual, sonically ambitious soundscapes.[2] The 4AD record label is the one most associated with dream pop, though others such as Creation, Projekt, Fontana, Bedazzled, Vernon Yard, and Slumberland also released significant records in the genre. A louder, more aggressive strain of dream pop came to be known as shoegazing; key bands of this style were Lush, Slowdive, My Bloody Valentine, Alison's Halo, Chapterhouse, Curve and Levitation. These bands kept the atmospheric qualities of dream pop, but added the intensity of post-punk-influenced bands such as The Chameleons and Sonic Youth.[3]

Belle & Sebastian

Initially dubbed 'C86' after the 1986 NME tape, and also known as "cutie", "shambling bands" and later as "twee pop",[4] indie pop was characterised by jangling guitars, a love of sixties pop and often fey, innocent lyrics.[5] It was inspired by the DIY scene of punk, with a thriving fanzine, label and club and gig circuit, but tended to eschew punk's nihilism and aggression.[5] Early bands included The Pastels, Talulah Gosh and Primal Scream, and among the most commercially successful were Belle and Sebastian.[4]

Post rock originated in the release of Talk Talk's album Laughing Stock and US band Slint's Spiderland, both in 1991, which produced experimental work influenced by sources as varied as electronica, jazz, and minimalist classical music, often abandoning the traditional song format in favour of instrumental and ambient music.[6] The term was first used to describe the band Bark Psychosis and their album Hex (1994), but was soon employed for bands such as Stereolab, Laika, Disco Inferno and Pram and other acts in America and Canada.[6] Scottish group Mogwai were among some of the influential post-rock groups to arise at the turn of the 21st century.[7]

Oasis is considered to be the most commercially successful British rock act of the decade.

Britpop emerged from the British indie scene of the early 1990s and was characterised by bands influenced by British guitar pop music of the 1960s and 1970s.[1] The movement developed as a reaction against various musical and cultural trends in the late 1980s and early 1990s, particularly the grunge phenomenon from the United States.[1] New British groups such as Suede and Blur launched the movement by positioning themselves as opposing musical forces, referencing British guitar music of the past and writing about uniquely British topics and concerns. These bands were soon joined by others including Oasis, Pulp, Supergrass and Elastica.[1] Britpop groups brought British indie rock into the mainstream and formed the backbone of a larger British cultural movement called Cool Britannia.[8] Although its more popular bands were able to spread their commercial success overseas, especially to the United States, the movement largely fell apart by the end of the decade.[1]

By 1999, as dissatisfaction grew with the concept of Cool Britannia, and Britpop as a movement began to dissolve, emerging bands began to avoid the Britpop label while still producing music derived from it.[9][10] Many of these bands tended to mix elements of British traditional rock (or British trad rock),[11] particularly the Beatles, Rolling Stones and Small Faces,[12] with American influences, including post-grunge.[13][14] Post-Britpop bands like The Verve, Radiohead, Travis, Stereophonics and Feeder, achieved much wider international success than most of the Britpop groups that had preceded them, and were some of the most commercially successful acts of the late 1990s.[14][15][16][17]

UK garage originated from England, particularly in London in the early 1990s and emerged from styles such as garage house, R&B, jungle, and dance-pop, and usually features a distinctive 4/4 percussive rhythm with syncopated hi-hats, cymbals and snares, and sometimes includes irregular kick drum patterns. Garage tracks also commonly feature 'chopped up' and time-stretched or pitch-shifted vocal samples complementing the underlying rhythmic structure at a tempo usually around 130 BPM. UK garage gave rise to subgenres such as speed garage and 2-step, and was then largely subsumed into other styles of music and production in the mid-2000s, including grime, bassline and dubstep. The decline of UK garage during the mid-2000s saw the birth of UK funky, which is closely related.

Drum and bass emerged from the London breakbeat hardcore and rave scene of the late 1980s.[21][22] Originally known as jungle, it was a pop-created fusion of hardcore, house and techno which was usually instrumental, using extremely fast polyrhythms and breakbeats and incorporating elements from dancehall, electro, funk, hip hop, house, jazz, heavy metal.[21] Pioneered by figures like Club Rage DJs Fabio and Grooverider,[23] in the mid-1990s the genre expanded from an underground and pirate radio scene to form subgenres including the intelligent drum and bass pioneered by LTJ Bukem,[23] and the ambient jungle[23] of Goldie's crossover debut Timeless (1995) and the jazzstep of Roni Size's Mercury Award-winning New Forms (1997).[21] Subsequent artists included Shy FX, Ed Rush, 4 Hero and DJ Rap, some fusing drum and bass with influences from jazz, film music, ambient and trip-hop.[21][23][24]

The Chemical Brothers performing live, 2005.

In the early 1990s, dance music saw more exposure at rock music festivals like Glastonbury and Reading. Raves, many illegal, continued to be organised and the tension caused by police attention, new putative legislation aimed at organisers, and the increase of harder music, led many dance music fans to return to legal night clubs, where rave music had given way to progressive house.[25] Other clubs emerged to play the ever-splintering genres associated with the house music and rave scene, including hardcore techno, downtempo and trance, drum and bass and happy hardcore.[26] The Bristol scene saw the development of trip hop, which mixed house and hip hop producing successful bands such as Massive Attack and Portishead.[27] The 1990s also saw the development and refinement of IDM (Intelligent Dance Music), which borrowed from forms such as techno, drum and bass, and acid house music and introduced more abstract elements, including heavy use of digital signal processing.[28] Among the most commercially successful products of these scenes were acts like The Prodigy, Chemical Brothers and Fat Boy Slim.[29]

• Kahn-Harris, Keith (2007). Extreme Metal: Music and Culture on the Edge. Berg. ISBN 978-1845203993.