The music of the Chemical Brothers, a pair of DJs who helped popularize the "Big Beat" electronic subgenre in the '90s, has the heft of rock, the groove of club music, and the spirit of experimentation that lifts all boats. Through their collaboratio…

Since Ministry and Nine Inch Nails hit it big in the early-'90s, no other electronic dance-rock band pushed the boundaries and rocked as viciously as The Prodigy did. Their 1997 worldwide breakthrough, FAT OF THE LAND, hatched a swarm of copy-cat act…

Norman Cook's first foray into the music biz came as the bass player for 1980s UK pop/rock band the Housemartins, but once he got into the DJ world, he hung up his bass for good. As Fatboy Slim, he was at the forefront of the mid-'90s "big beat" move…

Diminutive, bald-headed Richard Melville Hall, better known as Moby, achieved greater mainstream success than any other electronica artist by virtue of his willingness to adapt electronic dance music to a well formed pop sensibility. From the '90s on…

DJ, promoter, and recording artist, Paul Oakenfold is one of the most popular and successful DJ's in the history of dance music. As one of the chief purveyors of the late 1980s UK rave culture sound--a mix of techno, trance, and house--Oakenfold was …

Felix Burton and Simon Ratcliffe started out as two British DJ's enamored of the sounds of '70s funk and '80s house. By the mid-'90s, the pair were turning heads with singles and remixes that used house as a starting point for innovative explorations…

French 1990s neo-disco duo Daft Punk found stardom as a discovery of the Chemical Brothers. With an egalitarian approach to making people move, Daft Punk utilized everything from strict club beats to Beach Boys and Roxy Music samples when making its …

b. Brian Transeau, Maryland, USA. Arguably the most accomplished and recognizable of the largely anonymous trance set, Transeau made a huge mid-90s impact with releases such as "Loving You More" and "Embracing The Sunshine" for Perfecto Records. As w…

UK-based DJ Overseer made a name for himself with concoctions that married the pomposity of heavy metal riffing to the bombastic bottom end of big beat He first emerged on wax with the independent EPs Zeptastic 1996 and Hit the Tarmac 1998 Columbia R…

Before Nine Inch Nails, electronic-based rock was often considered devoid of feeling and danger. Leader Trent Reznor merged synths with tortured vocals/lyrics, distorted guitar, and repetitive, slamming rhythms into an unpredictable amalgam, helping …

Highly regarded by both DJ Magazine and ultra-loyal fans DJ Tisto due in part to his legendary six-hour energetic live sets has been elevated to mythical status as one of the worlds foremost trance DJs A native of Breda Netherlands born Tijs Verwest …

Alex Gifford played piano for Van Morrison, saxophone for the Stranglers and was a member of the Grid before he met Will White when the latter was drumming for Junkwaffle at a gig in Bath. In 1996, Wall Of Sound released their first recording, the Di…

The Bristol collective known as Massive Attack arose out of the acid house scene of late-1980s England to become one of the 1990s' greatest innovators. The group has literally changed the face of music every time out. They invented "trip-hop" on thei…

Underworld rose from the semi-successful '80s synth-pop outfit known as Freur to become one of the great innovators in electronica. While the group's sound can easily be whittled down to its core elements--trance, dub, ambient, and a certain punkish …

In the mid-1980s, the idea of white middle-class Jewish rappers may have provoked laughter or outright disdain, but the Beastie Boys' albums and singles have shown that they are anything but a joke. After hip-hop and rock fused into the music of choi…

The Gorillaz is Blur frontman Damon Albarn's hip-hop/electronica cartoon concept band. While real-life participants have included such luminaries as Dan the Automator, Danger Mouse, Del Tha Funkee Homosapien, De La Soul, and Shuan Ryder, the Gorillaz…

U2's Bono was one of the few real rock heroes of the 1980s, leading the Irish band to international recognition with a charged, political approach to music. The band's early efforts brought a stadium-size presence to alt-rock, with Bono's expressive …

Depeche Mode (French for "hurried fashion") was one of the first and best of the British synth-pop bands, combining breathless, melodic pop with perky electronics. With main songwriter Vince Clarke's departure for Yaz, Martin Gore took the reigns, an…

Taking their musical cue from their friends in Korn, Limp Bizkit bottled the rage of metal and merged it with vocalist's Fred Durst's white-boy rapping skills. With the kind of rock-star excess missed by some in the mid-late 1990s (due largely to Gun…