Rock Music: The Definitive History continued

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Noisier than rock
The decade at a glance

The 1990s started in 1989, when the Berlin Wall came down. That event marked the end of the Cold War that had marked 50 years of worldwide proxy wars and a nuclear arms race. Coincidentally, four months earlier the very same city, Berlin, had held the first "Love Parade", a festival of electronic dance music attended by one million people. Two years later the Soviet Union would collapse altogether. In 1992 the treaty of Maastricht created the European Union, that spent the next two decades expanding and absorbing former satellites of the Soviet Union. During that decade the whole world (with the exceptions of a few small countries) converted to capitalism (even Russia and China) and most of the world also converted to democracy. The USA system had won the Cold War, the USA was left the only superpower, and all the countries were struggling to emulate its winning system. The number of wars around the world decreased rapidly, as dictators were forced to retire. The new world order yielded an era of global growth on a scale that had never been witnessed in the world. Asia, in particular, staged one of the most spectacular economic booms in history, with China leading the way (China had been one of the most isolated communist countries until the early 1980s). Many in the West fell to the illusion of perennial prosperity. Many in the developing world sensed the end to poverty and starvation.
The USA was rocked by one of the most influential inventions of all time, the Internet. Throughout the decade, more and more innovative software changed the way people lived their lives. In 1991 the World-Wide Web invented by Tim Berners-Lee in Geneve debuted on the Internet. From that moment on, an endless stream of new companies progressively demolished the "American way of life": Marc Andreesen's Netscape in 1994 to browse the World-Wide Web; Jerry Yang's Yahoo in 1994 to search the Web; Craig Newmark's Craigslist in 1995 to serve the community; Amazon.com in 1997 to sell books over the Internet; Al Lieb's and Selina Tobaccowala's Evite in 1997; Larry Page's and Sergey Brin's Google in 1998; Pierre Omidyar's Ebay in 1998; Shawn Fanning's Napster in 1999 (a system to share music files); Jimmy Wales' Wikipedia in 2001, a collaborative encyclopedia edited by the whole Internet community. A new economy appeared in the USA, the "net" economy, whose drivers were the "dot.com" companies. By 1999, the US had 250 billionaires, and thousands of new millionaires were created every year by an ebullient stock market. By 2000 e-mail had become pervasive, replacing traditional ("snail") mail and even telephones as the main medium of long-distance communication.
Bill Clinton, the youngest president of the USA since John Kennedy, elected in 1992, well represented the contradictions of the new era: he was the first "baby boomer" to become president. The economic expansion during his eight years was the longest in the history of the USA. The demographics had also changed significantly: the population of the USA was 280 million, and most of the growth took place in the South and the West. The most populated state was now California with over 30 million people, and Los Angeles (which a century earlies was a town of 100,000 souls) had become the second largest metropolis in the country.
There were, at the same time, disturbing signs of social disease. In 1992 racial riots erupted in Los Angeles and other cities, leaving 48 people dead. The USA intervened militarily in Panama (1989), Somalia (1992), Haiti (1994), Serbia (1999). Some of the problems of the previous decades had fathered worse problems. In 1989 Bush declared the "drug war" against hallucinogenic drugs (that was really a war against the drug cartels of Colombian and other "drug lords"). In 1992 street gangs were terrorizing entire areas of metropoles like Los Angeles. By the end of 1999 the World Health Organization estimated that 16 million people in the world had died of AIDS (more than half the victims being under the age of 25). In the USA that year actually marked the first decline of AIDS in the decade (17,000 people died of AIDS in 1998 versus 50,000 in 1997). In 1999 a new worrisome phenomenon took hold of the USA, though: 13 students and teachers were killed in a high school of Columbine (Colorado), leaving 13 people dead. Internationally, the security of the USA was not threatened by major powers but by a small group of terrorists, Al Qaeda, led by an Islamic fanatic from Saudi Arabia, Osama bin Laden, from his base in Afghanistan. In 1993 they tried to blow up New York's World Trade Center, and in 1998 they bombed two USA embassies in Africa, killing hundreds of people.
The economic boom ended soon, and with a bang. In April 2000 the stock market for high-technology companies crashed, wiping out trillions of dollars of wealth. To mood turned to gloom when, at the end of the year, George W Bush of the Republican Party became president on a technicality, beginning one of the most divisive presidencies of all times.
Thus the world, and in particular the USA, went through one of the most breathtaking decades in memory.

Musically, the 1990s saw the rock genres of the 1980s grow apart rather than fuse. Each of those genres (lo-fi pop, industrial, gothic, roots-rock, noise-rock, indie-pop, techno, ambient, etc) multiplied and evolved in a fashion largely independent of the others.

The 1990s marked, in many ways, the revenge of the "province". While the "new wave" and punk-rock (and rap and disco) had been centered around the big metropolitan areas in the North and in the West, the 1980s had slowly opened up to the rest of the country. By the time Bill Clinton became president (1992), the South, for example, had regained its grip on down-to-earth popular music, slowly establishing a supremacy over the whole gamut: alt-rock, pop, and, of course, roots-rock. The 1990s were also the age of Seattle, another relatively "provincial" center.

There were perhaps fewer new genres created in the 1990s than in any of the previous decades, but a few stand out: grunge, post-rock, trip-hop, drum'n'bass, glitch music. On the other hand, both new and old genre diverged much more than in any previous decade, de facto splitting rock music into a loose federation of subgenres.

An involuntary catalyst for the commercial success of the new genres was the magazine Billboard, that finally changed the way it ranked singles and albums by tallying actual sales at retail stores instead of using the industry-manipulated word of mouth. Suddenly, rock outsold pop, and "minority" genres such as hip-hop and country entered the charts. This, in turn, led the industry to invest more in these genres.

New York's legacy 1990-94

The influence of Sonic Youth was perhaps the most visible. Mostly unknown during the 1980s, Sonic Youth came slowly to represent "the" quintessential alternative band. An even more "alternative" act, Pussy Galore, was a close second. No surprise, then, that a few of the new leaders emerged from those two bands. Bewitched were formed by Pussy Galore's drummer Bob Bert, and recorded a boldly experimental work, Brain Eater (1990).

Jon Spencer's wife Cristina Martinez led Boss Hog, that re-invented party-music first on Cold Hands (1990), featuring Honeymoon Killers' bassist Jerry Teel and Unsane drummer Charlie Ondras, and then on White Out (2000), both clever revisitations of rock stereotypes.

Like Pussy Galore, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion was a bass-less trio playing careless, amateurish, skeletal and grotesque blues. The difference is that Spencer had dispensed with the "punk-rock" factor. A stylist of bad taste, Spencer carried out a postmodernist deconstruction of the blues, first on the cacophonous and viscerally crude Jon Spencer Blues Explosion (1992), which was virtually an insult to the great bluesmen of the past, then with the childish Extra Width (1993), and finally with the streamlined Orange (1994), which was in many ways his most accomplished (albeit not innovative) collection. These works contained psychotic rave-ups, demented jamming and scary vocals, which represented a "hip" kind of background music for the distorted values of the post-punk generation. The sophisticated sloppiness of Now I Got Worry (1996) and Acme (1998), the first Spencer album that featured a bass, further diluted the original outrage and presented a more civilized (i.e. less beastly) con-man.

New York, which had been the birthplace of noise-rock, had the most varied and crowded scene of noise-rock bands: the Dustdevils, fronted by the unpleasant vocals of Jaqi Dulany; Babe The Blue Ox, with the odd dynamics of Babe The Blue Ox (1993); St Johnny, whose High As A Kite (1993) was derivative of Sonic Youth; Bunny Brains, who delivered the creative chaos of Bunny Magick (1994); Versus, whose Secret Swingers (1996) fused Television's transcendental acid-rock and Sonic Youth's atonal pop; Lotion, with the mildly psychedelic Nobody's Cool (1996); Sleepyhead, disciples of Sonic Youth who moved on to psychedelic folk.

Overall, noise-rock was a metropolitan, intellectual affair, relatively removed from the populist issues of the American heartland.

The legacy of apocalyptic hardcore 1991-92

Chicago's noise-rock was heavily influenced by the subculture of hardcore, and by Big Black's apocalyptic noise. Jesus Lizard summarized the style better than anyone else. The historical line-up of Scratch Acid vocalist David Yow, Scratch Acid bassist David Sims, Phantom 309's drummer Mac McNeilly, and guitarist Duane Denison, was the vanguarde of a new kind of hardcore punk-rock that had absorbed funk, noise and industrial music. The EP Pure (1989) and the full-length Head (1990) were dramas of macabre hyper-realism, immersed into urban neurosis as viewed from Yow's sick mind. Goat (1991), their most accomplished work, found a magical balance between Yow's psychotic mumbling and screaming (and perverted visions), Denison's elegant vocabulary of grinding, scathing, sobbing, lashing sounds, and a repertory of ever-mutating epileptic rhythms. The quartet penned lugubrious, visceral, vulgar, truculent, abrasive nightmares. A less disordered and less pathological affair, Liar (1992) was still highly energetic, sometimes chaotic, and always galvanizing. The instrumental technique refined on Down (1994) stood as an impressive contribution to redefining the very essence of rock music. But their music was, first and foremost, a music of fear, the fear of a young urban population whose life was reduced to a series of agonizing spasms. The central character of their stories, a sort of mythological psychopath, was the collective subconscious of that population. If punk-rock had been the sound of a battlefield, the sound of Jesus Lizard was the sound of the wounded who rattled in the cold of the night.

In nearby Minnesota, Flour, the project of former Rifle Sport's bassist Peter Conway, recorded albums such as Luv 713 (1990) that wed Big Black's violence with dance beats and heavy-metal riffs.

Among the most oppressive followers of Jesus Lizard's convoluted power-rock were Missouri's Dazzling Killmen, no less brutal but a little jazzier. The cross-fire between vocalist Nick Sakes and guitarist Tim Garrigan, and the rhythm section's jarring movement, molded the infernal atmospheres of Dig Out The Switch (1992). The band relished horror psychodramas of ferocious intensity, an art that culminated on Face Of Collapse (1994).

In Chicago, Jesus Lizard's main disciples were perhaps Shorty, led by guitarist Mark Shippy and vocalist Al Johnson, with the eerie violence of Thumb Days (1993).

Unsane, formed in New York by Jon's brother Chris Spencer and drummer Charlie Ondras, concocted a dissonant and violent form of rock'n'roll that borrowed the sheer impetus of hardcore but emptied it of any emotion and melody. The catastrophic riffs, hammering rhythms and uncontrolled vocals of Unsane (1991) performed glacial and relentless surgery on the body of a zombie. Cascades of atrocious sounds destabilized its songs and generated a form of hysterical tribalism. Compared with Sonic Youth, the music was spasmodically tragic, not calmly intellectual. Vincent Signorelli replaced Ondras (who had died prematurely) on Total Destruction (1994), another work drenched in superhuman angst, another bleak, claustrophobic, painful vision of subhuman life. Even compared to the extreme sound of Big Black, Unsane's music was a further step down the stairway to hell, and the damned weren't even crying anymore.

San Diego's Three Mile Pilot, a guitar-less trio of vocals, bass and drums led by singer Pall Jenkins (Paolo Zappoli), revived Jesus Lizard's post-hardcore dejection on Na Vucca Do Lupu (1992), a brutal and passionate work, and Chief Assassin to The Sinister (1994), a tortured, stark and obscure testament.

Kansas City's Season To Risk played similar heavy, tortured music on albums such as In A Perfect World (1995).

Los Angeles' Distorted Pony delivered the gloomy, menacing, super-heavy, apocalyptic wall of noise of Punishment Room (1992), while Slug wed Big Black to an assortment of turntables and hip-hop rhythms, not to mention the monster assault of two basses, on Swingers (1993).

San Francisco-based Oxbow, fronted by nightmarish vocalist Eugene Robinson, concocted an insane free-form collage of atonal instruments, vocal rants, noise, punk energy and sheer nonsense on Fuckfest (1991) and especially King of the Jews (1992) and Serenade in Red (1996). After a long hiatus, An Evil Heat (2002) even included a 32-minute coda of musique concrete for distorted guitar and moribund groove, Glimmer Shine.

In New York, both Drunk Tank with the bleak Drunk Tank (1991), and Cell, with Slo Blo (1992), further explored the edges of this style.

These bands increasingly mixed noise-rock, grunge and industrial music.

Between noise-rock and feedback-pop 1991-95

Several bands took advantage of the harmonic revolution of noise-rock to craft personal, introverted and disturbing styles.

Broc's Cabin (1991), by Florida's Rein Sanction, was bleak and ominous like a cross between voodoo and noise-rock.

Indiana's Antenna, formed by former Lemonheads' and Blake Babies' guitarist John Strohm, evolved into Velo-Deluxe, whose Superelastic (1994) better represented the leader's fusion of roots-rock, power-pop, the Velvet Underground and My Bloody Valentine.

In Minnesota, Polara, the project of 27 Various' guitarist Ed Ackerson, bridged late Sonic Youth, Jesus & Mary Chain's feedback-pop and the "Madchester" sound on Polara (1995).

In Los Angeles, Further produced Sometimes Chimes (1994), which toyed with Dinosaur Jr-like noise-pop.

East Coast 1993-96

Later into the decade, a new generation of bands came around playing non-linear, dissonant song-oriented music, and North Carolina (namely, Chapel Hill) was its epicenter. Polvo, which were in many ways the leaders of this school, resurrected Television's guitar counterpoint, which straddled the line between neurosis and ecstasy, between western existentialism and eastern transcendentalism, but pushed it to the brink of cacophony and chaos. The effect was to give "atonal" a "subliminal" meaning. The intricate and repulsive guitar collisions of Ash Bowie and Dave Brylawski propelled Cor-Crane Secret (1992) inwardly, while shifting and incoherent tempos lent the journey a Freudian intensity, and twisted melodies plunged the "stories" into the realm of Alice In Wonderland. A more erudite effort, Today's Active Lifestyles (1993) was, de facto, a series of dissonant micro-concertos, which in turn evoked a gallery of abstract miniatures, not unlike Captain Beefheart's masterpieces. Exploded Drawing (1996), possibly their masterpiece, perfected their manual of harmony. While the surface still sounded like a spastic version of Henry Cow, the nonchalant and detached way with which the players secretly toyed with elements of raga, blues and folk amounted to a jungle of improper signs, to a semiotic disaster of the same magnitude as Arto Lindsay's and Mayo Thompson's most heretical endeavors. The more careful arrangements of Shapes (1997) revealed that the scaffolding of their sonic kaleidoscope bore psychedelic stigmata. Shunning the over-extended progressive/acid format, Polvo advanced the concept of noise in the format of the pop song more than anyone else since Sonic Youth.

Boston boasted an equally original scene. Live Skull's vocalist Thalia Zedek and guitarist Chris Brokaw (ex-Codeine) formed Come to indulge in noisy Royal Trux-ian blues jamming and neurotic Neil Young-ian ballads. Don't Ask Don't Tell (1994) was a collection of nightmarish streams of consciousness.

The Supreme Dicks were among the most intriguing practitioners of the aesthetics that equates "creative" and "primitive". The theatrical bacchanals of The Unexamined Life (1993) managed to combine ideas from the Holy Modal Rounders, Kurt Weill and Lou Reed. That kind of drunk, dissonant folk music evolved towards the avantgarde and psychedelia on The Emotional Plague (1996), a vastly more ambitious work that resorted to sparse, dilated and warped structures.

Followers of Sonic Youth in and around Boston included Papas Fritas, Small Factory, New Radiant Storm King, Turkish Delight.

In Pennsylvania, Latimer's LP Title (1995) was typical of Sonic Youth's nation-wide influence.

Two of the most original bands were from Washington (and not coincidentally related to Unrest). Tsunami, the band of ebullient singer Jenny Toomey, played frantic and muddled roots-rock on Deep End (1993). Pitchblende, the band of guitarists Justin Chearno and Treiops Treyfid, molded a vehement and jagged attack on Kill Atom Smasher (1993).

Modernism 1993-95

Ohio's Brainiac concocted a surreal hybrid of new wave and industrial music. Abandoning the punk-rock verve of their Devo-inspired debut album Smack Bunny Baby (1993), the short demented songs of Bonsai Superstar (1994), featuring new guitarist John Schmersal, revealed a lighter, gentler version of Pere Ubu, the Pixies and Sonic Youth. Chaotic and retro`, that album capitalized on those masters' innovations but, thanks to Tim Taylor's naive synthesizer and to a childish aesthetics, discarded the apocalyptic overtones. Hissing Prigs In Static Couture (1996) was a better organized madhouse, despite the relentless, frantic chaos.

Atlanta's Pineal Ventana offered a bold mixture of improvisation, tribal drumming, saxophone drones and edgy screaming on Living Soil (1995).

International noise-rock 1992-95

England was awash in Brit-pop, but still managed to deliver some of the most creative bands of the era.

Gallon Drunk was one of the most aggressive and intimidating outfits of its time. You The Night And The Music (1992) served rock'n'roll and rhythm'n'blues played by a pack of rabid wolves, skewed tribal dances derailed by awkwardly distorted guitar and organ and by demonic changes of tempo and mood. The album revived the lascivious and sinister musical universe of Birthday Party, the Cramps and the Scientists, but in a more catastrophic setting, and amid mutant echoes of Creedence Clearwater Revival and Bo Diddley. The slightly jazzier and more rational From The Heart Of Town (1993), featuring reed player Terry Edwards, turned that wild flight of the imagination into a style.

Therapy? unleashed another brutal work, Nurse (1992), a trip in a Freudian maze.

The aesthetics of Jacob's Mouse was even looser. Their No Fish Shop Parking (1992) was a cauldron of noise-rock styles.

The Faith Healers, featuring guitarist Tom Cullinan, imitated Pixies and Sonic Youth on Lido (1992).

Prolapse specialized in angular and abrasive noise-rock, which on the early albums, such as Backsaturday (1995), sounded like vitriolic indictments of pop music.

Boyracer behaved like childish hellraisers on More Songs About Frustration And Self-Hate (1994), that contains brief songs played with full-throttle clumsiness and clownish nerdiness.

Rosa Mota unleashed the triple guitar assault of Wishful Sinking (1995).

Beatnik Filmstars messed with the traditional song format in amateurish ways.

The "Halifax school" in Canada was briefly a phenomenon. Representative albums were Love Tara (1993), by Eric's Trip, which included Rick White and Julie Doiron, and Jale's Dreamcake (1994). The group to emerge from this crowd was Sloan, that from the noise-pop hybrid of Smeared (1993), a synthesis of the musical zeitgeist of the time, to the Sixties tribute of One Chord To Another (1996) to the pop behemoth Never Hear The End Of It (2006) cultivated a fixation for the most naive form of melody.

Switzerland's Sportsguitar, Italy's Uzeda, and Germany's Blumfeld were Continental bands influenced by noise-pop. The best one was perhaps Germany's 18th Dye, particularly on Tribute To A Bus (1995).


Progressive sounds
East Coast 1990-96

At the beginning of the 1990s, Phish, more than anyone else, established alternative rock on mainstream radio. Phish were more than just a surrogate of the Grateful Dead for the 1990s. They legitimized a return to the aesthetics of progressive-rock, particularly on the East Coast.

Blues Traveler were a simpler, domestic, rootsy version of Phish. Blues Traveler (1990) offered a judicious mixture of ballads and jams, and the band would eventually match and surpass Phish's commercial success.

Motherhead Bug was a bizarre orchestra (accordion, trumpet, saxophone, percussion, trombone, violin, piano), led by multi-instrumentalist David Ouimet, that performed soundtracks for imaginary films. Zambodia (1993) was influenced by the music-hall, the circus, cartoons, marching bands, nursery rhymes, Sullivan's operettas. It was the equivalent of the Penguin Cafe' Orchestra for the new generation. Their offshoot Sulfur, formed by Ouimet and vocalist and keyboardist Michele Amar, carried out a similar work of stylistic collage, but the mood of Delirium Tremens (1998) was tragic rather than comic, and the atmosphere evoked Beckett's absurd theater.

The Spin Doctors became stars with the jovial and catchy ditties of Pocket Full Of Kryptonite (1991), that recycled stereotypes of funk, soul, blues, reggae, and rock music.

One of the leading groups of instrumental neo-prog came out of Boston: Cul De Sac. The lengthy tracks on Ecim (1992) bridged German rock of the 1970s, John Fahey's transcendental folk, Terry Riley's minimalism and Pink Floyd's psychedelic ragas. Their most innovative work, China Gate (1996), increased the doses of jazz and world-music, thus achieving both a convoluted and a hypnotic state of mind. The narrative largely revolved around the counterpoint between Robin Amos' atonal synthesizer and Glenn Jones's post-surf guitar. On Crashes To Light (1999) that contrast, enhanced with sophisticated arrangements, became a slick texture that enhanced the melodic center of mass, and even lent the music a spiritual overtone, halfway between trance and fairy tale.

New York boasted talented and innovative combos that descended from the prog-rock bands of the 1980s. The veterans who ran Run On, drummer Rick Brown and bassist Sue Garner of Fish & Roses, plus guitarist Alan Licht of Love Child, and violin player Katie Gentile, showed how prog-rock could yield engaging songs and not only difficult constructs. Start Packing (1996) was a festival of instrumental lunacy, brainy hypnosis, eccentric arrangements, and lightweight cacophony that mostly stuck to the format of the pop song. The oneiric folk-rock of No Way (1997), inconspicuously raised on acid-rock and Indian music, homaged the classics (Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Neil Young) while steering away from classic rock. Nothing in these albums was obvious. Every note was where it was because "that" was not where it should have been, if one were a traditional composer. Brown and Garner's vision of music was a place where we should (obviously) all have been but have never even dreamed of being. Still (1999), credited to Garner and Brown, was, de facto, a late addition to the Run On canon.

One of the most eccentric musicians of his time, Dave Soldier (the violinist of the renown Soldier String Quartet), organized the Thai Elephant Orchestra (2001), an ensemble of elephants playing large custom-made instruments and performing their own improvisations and some compositions by Soldier and others. He also organized the Tangerine Awkestra (2000), a vocal ensemble of schoolchildren performing free improvisation.

Noise-punk-jazz 1992-95

God Is My Co-pilot inherited Half Japanese's miniaturized dementia. I Am Not This Body (1992) packed 34 brief, childish, dissonant pieces that parodied all sorts of genres. Their chaotic approach bordered on free-jazz cacophony, and on party music for a madhouse.

In San Francisco, the Molecules, formed by former Rat At Rat R guitarist Ron Anderson, had already done something similar on Steel Toe (1991). Ditto for Love Child in New York and their Witchcraft (1992).

God Is My Co-pilot's idea was pursued by Spiny Anteaters in Canada, with the goofy, amateurish Last Supper (1998), Outhouse in Seattle, for example on Process Of Elimination (1998), Blowhole, also in Seattle, and featuring Amy Denio, on Gathering (1995), Harry Pussy in Florida, with Ride A Dove (1996), and many others.

Chicago's Flying Luttenbachers, the quintet of drummer Weasel Walter (the only stable member), saxophonists Chad Organ and Ken Vandermark, trombonist/bassist Jeb Bishop, guitarist Dylan Posa, explored the punk-funk-jazz-rock fusion pioneered by the Pop Group and the Contortions, as well as the epileptic noise-jazz of John Zorn, on Constructive Deconstruction (1994) and Destroy All Music (1995). A new line-up recorded the even more spastic and chaotic Revenge (1996), the six-movement suite Gods Of Chaos (1998) and the free-jazz chamber music for cello, trumpet, clarinet, violin and percussion of The Truth Is A Fucking Lie (1999), while Walter alone penned the delirious Rise Of The Iridescent Behemoth, off Systems Emerge From Complete Disorder (2003).

Chicago's Scissor Girls, led by keyboardist Azita Youssefi and drummer Heather Melowicz, devoted We People Space With Phantoms (1996) to a schizoid (and largely improvised) form of punk, funk and electronic music.

Boston's Debris were a punk-jazz outfit featuring horn players next to a power-rock trio and improvising chaotic jams in the vein of Frank Zappa and Henry Cow on Terre Haute (1993).

Virginia 1992-96

During the 1990s, progressive-rock staged a come-back (although it had never truly disappeared), and mainly in the USA. Throughout the decade, Virginia and the Washington area were the epicenter, with bands such as Echolyn, whose Suffocating The Bloom (1992) contained the 11-movement suite A Suite For The Everyman, and Boud Deun, whose best album was probably Astronomy Made Easy (1997). They were typical of the genre, derivative of the Canterbury school and of King Crimson.

The most creative group was perhaps Bill Kellum's Rake. After the two lengthy improvisations of Rake Is My Co-Pilot (1994) that evoked a demented form of free-jazz rather than conventional prog-rock, Rake indulged in The Art Ensemble Of Rake (1995), four lengthy suites that ran the gamut from minimalistic repetition to distorted guitar workouts to blues bacchanals to bubbling Moogs to ghostly ambience. Intelligence Agent (1996) betrayed the band's stylistic debts towards Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, Mahavishnu Orchestra and Can.

On the other hand, the most successful Virginia act was the racially integrated Dave Matthews Band, whose collections, such as Under The Table And Dreaming (1994), offered a sophisticated blend of jazz-rock, world music, folk and rhythm'n'blues.

Solo 1990-95

More spices were added to the progressive-rock scene by New York-based instrumental virtuosos. Marc Ribot, who had played with the Lounge Lizards, John Zorn, Tom Waits, and the Jazz Passengers, demonstrated his fluid style, capable of bridging cacophony and melody in a smooth and swinging manner, on Rootless Cosmopolitan (1990), featuring jazz masters Don Byron on clarinet and Anthony Coleman on keyboards, and one of the few albums to evoke Peter Green's End Of The Game. Ribot followed that achievement with the minimalist noir jazz of Requiem For What's His Name (1992) and the relentless sonic (and frequently dissonant) assault of Shrek (1994).

Nicky Skopelitis, who had played with Anton Fier, Bill Laswell and Sonny Sharrock, concocted a subtle form of ethnic funk-rock, orchestrated for small multi-national ensembles, on Next To Nothing (1989) and Ekstasis (1993), the latter featuring bassist Jah Wobble and Can's drummer Jaki Liebezeit.

Blind Idiot God's guitarist Andy Hawkins penned the four abstract extended improvisations of Azonic Halo (1994) at the border between free jazz, heavy metal and droning music.

Buckethead, Brian Carroll's extravagant project, specialized in a goofy fusion of heavy-metal, funk and psychedelic music, which he administered on Frank Zappa-esque concept albums devoted to cyberpunk themes, such as Bucketheadland (1992) and Dreamatorium (1994), credited to Death Cube K. His best album, Day Of The Robot (1996), marked a more serious exploration of ambient and dance music. Despite a hiatus as Guns N' Roses' guitarist, Buckethead continued to reshape his futuristic funk-metal fusion on albums such as Monsters And Robots (1999), Cuckoo Clocks Of Hell (2004), Island Of Lost Minds (2004), Kaleidoscalp (2006).

A unique case, Loren Mazzacane Connors devoted his career to a solo instrumental music that transcended stylistic boundaries, particularly when it crafted abstract country/blues/gospel/folk meditations on Come Night (1991) and Evangeline (1998). A spectral, purer, zen-like quality, amid a John Fahey fixation, characterized the more ambitious multi-part suites of The Little Match Girl (2001) and Sails (2006).

Just like in the previous decade, a number of Frank Zappa alumni launched solo careers based on unique (and uniquely iconoclastic) styles. Ant-Bee, Billy James' project, was responsible for one of the most crazed albums of the decade, Pure Electric Honey (1990), that wed Brian Wilson's flair for eccentric arrangements with Frank Zappa's passion for deviant dynamics, and mixed up the result with techniques borrowed from musique concrete and psychedelic freak-outs. Lunar Muzak (1997), that collected veterans of the Mothers Of Invention (Bunk Gardner, Don Preston, Jimmy Carl Black), Gong (including Daevid Allen himself), Alice Cooper and Hawkwind (Harvey Bainbridge), was another madhouse party.

The compositions of Mike Keneally, whether the sprawling ones on Hat (1994) or the microscopic ones on Boil That Dust Speck (1995), whether the poppy ditties of Sluggo! (1997), his best album, or the all-instrumental tracks of Nonkertompf (1999), sounded like sprightly fragments of rock operas.

Gary Lucas was instead a veteran of Captain Beefheart's band. The swirling, cyclical structures of Skeleton At The Feast (1991) overflew with otherworldly guitar inventions.

Run On's guitarist Alan Licht concentrated on anarchic and dadaist noise with the lengthy improvisations of Sink The Aging Process (1994), Rabbi Sky (1999) and Plays Well (2001).

King Crimson's bassist Tony Levin fused world-music and chamber jazz on World Diary (1995).

Former Frank Zappa's and Missing Persons' drummer Terry Bozzio lived several lives in parallel, performing solo drum improvisations, such as the ones on Drawing the Circle (1998), as well as composing surreal symphonic music worthy of his master, notably the two Chamberworks (1998) for drums and orchestra.

Thinking Plague's guitarist Bob Drake recorded highly original instrumental albums of avantgarde roots-music: What Day Is It (1993), a post-modernist deconstruction of country cliches; Little Black Train (1996), a reckless venture into progressive bluegrass; Animal Medallion Carpet (1999), a wild ride down the dark but fascinating alleys of a very perverted musical mind, one that evoked the lunacy of the Residents and of the Holy Modal Rounders; and The Skull Mailbox (2001), which focused on pop melody, but Drake had enough imagination, and enough perversion, to turn each melody into a musical nonsense.

West Coast 1990-91

Mixing demented novelty tunes and goofy instrumental workouts, San Francisco's Primus seemed to emulate Frank Zappa's versatile and iconoclastic irreverence. Frizzle Fry (1990) was typical of their capricious art: like an amusement park, it was a combination of rollercoaster rides, comedy shows, relaxing strolls and childish games. The changes in speed, mood and fashion were as abrupt as virtuoso, thanks to the inventions of bassist Les Claypool (one of the all-time greats), to the quirkiness of former Possessed guitarist Larry Lalonde, and to the monumental support of drummer Tim Alexander. King Crimson-ian instrumental convolution was offset by funny lyrics and a self-demystifying attitude. The intellectual puzzles became popular songs on Sailing The Seas Of Cheese (1991) and Pork Soda (1993), when the fusion of heavy-metal, funk, jazz and music-hall reached an almost mechanical efficiency. The trio's sonic exploration in Tales From The Punchbowl (1995) was more adventurous, but also highlighted the limits of the pop format.

Faith No More-associates Mr Bungle were inspired by Frank Zappa and George Clinton on their debut, Mr Bungle (1991).

Seattle-based multi-instrumentalist Amy Denio led and collaborated to a number of bizarre jazz-rock projects in the vein of the Canterbury school, notably the Tone Dogs, whose Ankety Low Day (1990) was a quirky flight of the imagination, and Degenerate Art Ensemble, that straddled the line between jazz, classical and rock. Tongues (1993) set forth her ambitious program of deconstruction of world folk music, that can evoke Pere Ubu's abstract sonatas for accordion and synthesizer as well as Dario Fo's onomatopoeic theater. This led to a string of albums, culminating in The Danubians (2000), that were dominated by Denio's bizarre phonetic wordplay and by her spirited accordion playing. With these works she proved to be a devil of a composer, of an arranger, of a performer, and of a conductor.

The same scene spawned Portland's Caveman Shoestore, a guitar-less trio formed by vocalist and keyboardist Elaine DiFalco and by veteran jazz players Fred Chalenor (bass) and Henry Franzoni (drums). Their Master Cylinder (1992) ran the gamut from pop melody to Soft Machine-esque jazz-rock to dadaistic cacophony to Art Bears-esque lieder.

The Thessalonians, based in San Francisco and featuring percussionist Larry Thrasher, guitarist David James and keyboardists Kim Cascone, Don Falcone and Paul Neyrinck, performed live improvisations for electronic and acoustic instruments, documented on Soulcraft (1993), that were the ultimate cybernetic-psychedelic ragas. Falcone's own Melting Euphoria were disciples of the Ozric Tentacles' cosmic-progressive rock.

Zazen (formed by four veterans) added Eastern overtones to the style of Yes and Genesis on Mystery School (1991).

International progressive 1992-96

In France, Philharmonie experimented with the unusual format of a guitar trio, particularly on Les Elephantes Carillonneurs (1993). The creative and unorthodox aesthetics of the Canterbury school was revived by Xaal, a French instrumental progressive trio whose most ambitious work was Second Ere (1995); while Volapuk continued the neoclassical school of Art Zoyd and Univers Zero with albums such as Slang (1997).

Tear Of A Doll, featuring guitarist Francois L'Homer, fused progressive-rock, punk-rock, jazz, exotica and noise on Tear Of A Doll (1996). Later Francois L'Homer relocated to Burma and started Naing Naing, a project devoted to "music without instrument", as demonstrated on Toothbrush Fever (2004) for natural sounds, computer and studio mixer.

In Canada, Slow Loris' The Ten Commandments And Two Territories (1996) straddled the border between free-jazz and acid-rock.

Sweden continued to enjoy a fertile progressive scene. For example, In The Labyrinth, i.e. Peter Lindahl, blended neoclassical and ethnic music on The Garden Of Mysteries (1994).

In Japan, Happy Family betrayed the influence of King Crimson, Frank Zappa, Magma and Univers Zero on their second album, Toscco (1997); while Koenjihyakkei, the Magma-inspired side-project of Ruins' mastermind Tatsuya Yoshida, eventually achieved a baroque complexity on Angherr Shisspa (2005).

In Britain, saxophonist Kevin Martin launched a number of projects that explored the unlikely marriage of jazz, industrial, dub and punk-rock. The three lengthy jams of Possession (1992) and especially the chaotic nightmares of The Anatomy Of Addiction (1994), both credited to God (1), were relatively old-fashioned excursions in mood reconnaissance and neurotic stream of consciousness; but Techno Animal, a collaboration with Godflesh's guitarist Justin Broadrick, unleashed the destructive force of Ghosts (1990), a meeting of Foetus, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Anthony Braxton and one of the most powerful works of its time; a vision that was matched by the brutal and visceral sound of Under The Skin (1993), credited to Ice. Techno Animal's Re-Entry (1995), instead, delved into the claustrophobic darkness of ambient dub, summoning the likes of Jon Hassell, Bill Laswell and Brian Eno. Tapping The Conversation (1997), a collaboration between Kevin Martin and Dave Cochrane credited to Bug, crafted an obsessive sense of fear through a psychophysical torture of extreme hip-hop and dub deconstruction.

Roger Eno attempted a music at the border between classical, jazz and prog-rock with the ensemble Channel Light Vessel (featuring Kate St John, Bill Nelson, Laraaji, Mayumi Tachibana) on Automatic (1994) and Excellent Spirits (1996).

Italian-Swiss guitarist Luigi Archetti debuted with the brief demential/dissonant guitar vignettes of Das Ohr (1993) and Adrenalin (1994), in the vein of Fred Frith, but matured with Cubic Yellow (1999), that added sampling, electronics and drum machines to Archetti's eclectic and surreal guitar soundscapes. After the electronic vignettes in the droning/microtonal style of Transient Places (2004), Archetti gave his most abstract and intense works, Februar (2005), an atonal "concrete" symphony in 14 movements.

After 1991, when the Berlin wall fell, Eastern Europe developed a very creative brand of rock music, often indebted towards the local folk traditions and often looking to the avantgarde. Uz Isme Doma, in the Czech Republic, were perhaps the most adventurous with their progressive-rock performed with punk-rock fury, that freely mixed cabaret, folk, noise, ethnic, classical and dance music on albums such as In the Middle of Words (1990).

Babel 1996-98

Towards the end of the decade, the Babel of progressive-rock multiplied. In Boston, Bright's Bright (1996) bridged Cul De Sac and shoegazing. In Florida, Meringue mixed the verve and imagination of Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart and Gong on the monumental Music From The Mint Green Nest (1996); while Obliterati's Havy Baubaus Inflience (1998) sounded like a meeting of the Art Bears and the Contortions.

Ohio's Witch Hazel, the project of multi-instrumentalist Kevin Coral, indulged in a poppy and baroque form of progressive-rock on Landlocked (1995).

An erudite form of instrumental progressive-rock was coined in Boston by Cerberus Shoal. The neoclassical suites of And Farewell To Hightide (1997) and Element Of Structure/ Permanence (1997), particularly Permanence, sounded like Grateful Dead's Dark Star performed by a chamber ensemble. Deeper jazz and world-music undercurrents destabilized the two tours de force of Homb (1999), while the pieces on the transitional Crash My Moon Yacht (2000) sounded like collages. Mr Boy Dog (2002), both irriverently amusing and wildly creative in the tradition of Frank Zappa, offered sonic charades that mixed Albert Ayler, Nino Rota, Sonic Youth and Pink Floyd while deconstructing world-music, funk and free-jazz. The dense orchestration and inventive dynamics capitalized on three decades of progressive-rock.

In San Francisco, the Tin Hat Trio evoked the Penguin Cafe' Orchestra and the Lounge Lizards on Memory Is An Elephant (1999) with a mixture of tango, jazz, folk, avantgarde and world-music. Helium (2000) was its cerebral counterpart, a kaleidoscope of quasi-dissonant jamming, pseudo-Balkan frenzy and atonal lounge melodies.

Species Being penned the 11-movement suite Yonilicious (1998), an adventurous sonic odyssey through the musical genres.

Florida's Big Swifty crafted the austere compositions of Akroasis (1997) around drones a` la LaMonte Young, minimalist repetition a` la Terry Riley and microtonal techniques.


Post-psychedelia
East Coast 1990-96

Psychedelic music was the single greatest invention of the 1960s and remained the dominant genre in the 1990s. The 1960s coined a number of psychedelic styles, and they were still the basic psychedelic styles of the 1990s: the psychedelic pop of the Doors, the psychedelic freak-out of the Red Crayola, the psychedelic trance of the Velvet Underground, and the acid jam of the Grateful Dead. Among the innovations introduced during the 1980s, dream-pop and shoegazing were still popular in the 1990s. Far from merely plagiarizing the classics, the most significant bands of the decade contributed to re-define the art of the sonic trip.

Mercury Rev, originating from upstate New York and featuring John Donahue on guitar and Dave Fridmann on bass, achieved a synthesis of historical proportions. Yerself Is Steam (1991) was a psychedelic extravaganza that spanned three decades and three continents. Emotionally, it ran the gamut from Red Crayola's anarchic freak-outs to contemplative/meditative ecstases in the vein of new-age music. Technically, it blended and alternated pop melody, ambient droning, mind-boggling distortion, oneiric folk, martial tempos, pastoral passages, infernal noise and lyrical lullabies. Far from being merely a nostalgic tribute to an age, Mercury Rev's operation started with the hippie vision of nirvana on the other side of a swirling and chaotic music, but tempered the optimism of that program with an awareness of the human condition, and poisoned it with fits of neurosis and decadent atmospheres. The fantasies of Boces (1993) were even more variegated and imaginative, veritable collages of sonic events. The dense and busy arrangements, that owed more and more to Fridmann's command of keyboards and orchestration, did not interfere with what was fundamentally a much gentler mood, a distant relative of Kevin Ayers' fairy-tales. The progress towards a joyful and serene sound continued on See You On The Other Side (1995), which frequently embraced poppy melodies and facile rhythms, whereas Deserter's Songs (1998) marked the zenith of their phantasmagoric orchestrations.

Luna, formed by Galaxie 500's guitarist and vocalist Dean Wareham, Feelies' drummer Stanley Demeski and Chills' bassist Justin Harwood, specialized in shy, tender, whispered/conversational pop tunes, best on Bewitched (1994).

Minneapolis' Motion Picture achieved zen-like grandeur with Every Last Romance (1998).

In Indiana, Arson Garden sounded like the Jefferson Airplane performing renaissance psalms on Under Towers (1990).

Flaming Lips' lunatic pop influenced New Jersey's Tadpoles, whose He Fell Into The Sky (1994) matched the demented grandeur of the masters, the Wallmen in upstate New York, Jennyanykind in North Carolina. Mark Kramer's school of psychedelic pop continued to yield cauldrons of melodic oddities, for example Uncle Wiggly's There Was An Elk (1993).

Midwest groups tended to be derivative of 1960s' psychedelic-pop (Electric Prunes, Strawberry Alarm Clock, Blues Magoos) and garage-rock (13th Floor Elevator, Seeds). Notable albums of this kind were: Green Machine's King Mover (1993) in Minnesota; Outrageous Cherry's Outrageous Cherry (1994) in Michigan; Trunk Federation's The Infamous Hamburger Transfer (1996) in Arizona.

Original Sins' bizarre leader, John Terlesky, created one of the most irrational corpus of music ever recorded under the moniker Brother J.T. . Albums such as Vibrolux (1994) and Music For The Other Head (1996) conceived composition as an utter mess. Mostly, his "songs" were a hysterical rambling over cacophonous imitations of rock'n'roll. The longer tracks sounded like hippie music of the Sixties sucked, chewed and defecated by a psychedelic black-hole. It was a (hazy, incoherent, deranged) mental state, not an art.

Rhode Island's Space Needle, featuring keyboardist Jud Ehrbar, were responsible for the titanic nonsense of Voyager (1996), an amateurish work that relished technological primitivism and mystical noise. The no less cryptic hodgepodge of The Moray Eels Eat The Space Needle (1997) indulged in instrumental prog-rock jamming, ambient ballads and shoegazing ecstasy.

West Coast 1992-96

Medicine, formed in Los Angeles by Brad Laner, ex-Savage Republic's drummer but now on guitars and keyboards, delivered Shot Forth Self Living (1992), a therapeutic shock that owed both to My Bloody Valentine and to Sonic Youth. Trance and noise were also the pillars of follow-up The Buried Life (1993).

Seattle's Sky Cries Mary, which had adopted an eclectic fusion of jazz, funk, world-music and acid-rock on the EP Exit At The Axis (1992), converted to hippie/new-age spirituality with A Return To The Inner Experience (1993), which blended Klaus Schulze's cosmic music, David Byrne's African polyrhythms and Nico's catatonic ballads, thereby coining an anti-rethoric form of psychedelia, one that was more an ambience than an ideology. Their masterpiece, This Timeless Turning (1994), focused on the intersection between early Pink Floyd and dance music, but hip-hop beats, Hendrix-ian riffs, industrial tornados and ancestral rites percolated through the loose, flaccid lattice.

Both the hippies' philosophy and sound reincarnated in a bizarre San Francisco project, Anton Newcombe's Brian Jonestown Massacre. Despite the clumsy recording quality and the amateurish stance, Methodrone (1995) and Their Satanic Majesties' Second Request (1996) were monumental encyclopedias of psychedelic music, from the Jefferson Airplane to Hawkwind, from the Rolling Stones to the Velvet Underground. Subsequent albums alternated between superbly derivative, such as Take It From The Man (1996) and Give It Back (1997), majestically musical, such as Thank God For Mental Illness (1996), arranged with a wealth of instruments, and dreamy/melancholy, such as Strung Out In Heaven (1998). Newcombe mostly followed in the footsteps of deranged street folksingers like David Peel, but his naif folly could also explode in noise collages.

Quasi, formed in Oregon by Donner Party's guitarist and Heatmiser's bassist Sam Coomes, specialized in applying old-fashioned, and frequently out-of-tune, keyboards to catchy pop tunes, for example on Early Recordings (1995).

Oregon's most hyped band of the 1990s, the Dandy Warhols managed to fuse Brit-pop and the Velvet Underground on Dandys Rules OK (1995), but then sold out to generic power-pop with Come Down (1997) and Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia (2000).

The dominant styles of the 1980s and 1990s were still being revised, but the well was clearly drying up.

American shoegazing 1992-96

The influence of My Bloody Valentine and of the whole "shoegazing" movement became pervasive in America from 1992 on. Notable among the early albums of the genre were Fudge's The Ferocious Rhythm Of Previse Laziness (1992) in Virginia, and Drop Nineteens's Delaware (1992) in Boston.

Pennsylvania's Lilys evolved from the quiet transcendental bliss of In The Presence Of Nothing (1992) to the dilated, majestic amorphous melodies of Eccsame The Photon Band (1995).

Boston's Swirlies added mellotron, Moog and found noises to the guitar tremolos of Blondertongue Audiobaton (1993).

Chicago's Catherine bridged shoegazing and grunge on Sorry (1994).

New York's Saturnine 60 sculpted languid ballads that soared with epically distorted apotheoses on Wreck At Pillar Point (1995).

New Jersey's Lenola expanded the genre both forward, in terms of structure, and backwards, in term of melody, on The Last Ten Feet Of The Suicide Mile (1996). So did Georgia's Seely on Julie Only (1996).

New York's Bowery Electric, after the embryonic Bowery Electric (1995), a collection of lengthy guitar drones, enhanced their trance with dub reverbs, sampler, loops, drum-machines on Beat (1996).

Kansas' Shallow enhanced shoegazing with quasi-orchestral arrangements of flute, dulcimer, piano, organ and cello, besides loops and samples, on High Flyin' Kid Stuff (1997).

New Jersey's Flowchart wed My Bloody Valentine's droning symphonies and Enya's magical fairy tales on Cumulus Mood Twang (1998).

Beyond space-rock 1992-95

By fusing the extreme styles of psychedelia that favored the extended, free-form jam (acid-rock, space-rock, raga-rock) over the oddly-arranged tune, a number of groups sculpted epic sonic endeavors.

Lenghty and mostly improvised space jams took up ambitious albums such as: Fuzzhead's Mind Soup (1993) from Ohio; Lorelei's Everyone Must Touch The Stove (1996) from Virginia: Temple Of Bon Matin (1)'s Bullet Into Mesmer's Brain (1997) from Pennsylvania; etc.

Crawlspace, the creature of Indiana-via-L.A. singer Eddie Flowers, produced works such as Sphereality (1992) and The Exquisite Fucking Beauty (1995), both anarchic and erudite, that went even further into the formulation of psychedelic free-jazz.

Mooseheart Faith, formed by the Angry Samoans' bassist Todd Homer (now on autoharp) and (black) guitarist Larry Robinson, squeezed the entire psychedelic vocabulary (from space-rock rave-ups to dilated ballads, from catchy ditties to abstract electronic passages) into Magic Square of the Sun (1991).

A group of Los Angeles musicians straddled the line between industrial music and acid-rock, and produced intriguing works such as Pressurehed's Sudden Vertigo (1994), featuring vocalist Tommy Grenas and keyboardist Len Del Rio, the Anubian Lights' The Eternal Sky (1995), featuring Del Rio, and Farflung's 25,000 Feet Per Second (1995), featuring Tommy Grenas.

Michigan had one of the most fertile scenes. Fuxa, whose Very Well Organized (1996) harked back to both German avant-rock of the 1970s and Spacemen 3's shoegazing psychedelia. So did Medusa Cyclone, the new project by Viv Akauldren's keyboardist Keir McDonald, on their debut album, Medusa Cyclone (1996). Asha Vida's Nature's Clumsy Hand (1998) stretched as far as to free-jazz and musique concrete. Gravitar
were the noisiest of the bunch, and one of the noisiest groups of all times. Chinga Su Corazon (1993) and Gravitar (1995), totally improvised, were maelstroms of cacophony. Truculent rock'n'roll progressions built thick walls of noise. Each piece (especially on the second album) was a symphony of spectral dissonances harking back to Throbbing Gristle's macabre "industrial" rituals. Gravitar had endowed Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music with a rhythm. Now The Road Of Knives (1997), featuring a new guitarist, brought a bit of structure in their abominable chaos, revealing Chrome and Jimi Hendrix as the band's role models.

Chicago's Sabalon Glitz, led by keyboardist Chris Holmes and vocalist Carla Bruce, offered a more electronic version of Hawkwind's space-rock on Ufonic (1994).

Oregon's King Black Acid And The Womb Star Orchestra crafted some of the most eclectic, encyclopedic and exhilarating space jams on Womb Star Sessions (1995).

Pelt, in Virginia, further experimented on the format with Brown Cyclopedia (1995), a studio-savvy cross between Royal Trux's Twin Infinitive, Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation, the Velvet Underground's White Light White Heat and Pink Floyd's Ummagumma. The free-form instrumentals of Burning Filament Rockets (1996) and Max Meadows (1997), that merged mind-bending psychedelic distortions and mind-opening world instrumentation, the three epic tracks of Techeod (1998), that obviously homaged minimalism and free-jazz, and the colossal title track from Empty Bell Ringing In The Sky (1999), led to the tour de force of Ayahuasca (2001), whose "ragas" defined a post-psychedelic and post-ambient music bridging John Fahey, Grateful Dead, Ravi Shankar and LaMonte Young.

Connecticut's Primordial Undermind evolved from the garage-rock of Yet More Wonders Of The Invisible World (1995) and the space ballads of You And Me And The Continuum (1998) to the Hawkwind-style jams of Universe I've Got (1999) and the free-form space-rock of Beings Of Game P-U (2001), two albums which rank among the most "cosmic" and transcendental of the time.

New York's Escapade performed all-instrumental music straddling the line between kraut-rock, hyper-psychedelia and progressive-rock. The three lengthy acid jams of Searching For The Elusive Rainbow (1996) and the two epic-length excursions of Inner Translucence (1997) led to Citrus Cloud Cover (1998), containing the 30-minute The Sunlight, a tour of the force within the tour de force, and the best formulation of their conflagration of free-jazz and avantgarde electronic music.

Towering over every other space-rock band of the era, Philadelphia-based Bardo Pond (12) turned the acid-rock jam into a major art. Bufo Alvarius (1995) coined a new form of music built around supersonic drones. The average piece was a rainstorm of guitar distortions, strident turbulences and catastrophic drumming, halfway between MC5's heavy blues and Spacemen 3's shoegazing. It was the soundtrack of a cosmic trauma that still haunts the firmament. While no less brutal, Amanita (1996) revealed a spiritual element that harked back to both Popol Vuh's Hosianna Mantra and Pink Floyd's A Saucerful of Secrets; but nothing could be less religious than the apocalyptic chaos of Lapsed (1997). These albums were as musical as Einstein's relativity.

The members of Bardo Pond (guitarists John and Michael Gibbons, drummer Joe Culver, bassist Clint Takeda) also shone on two magnificent collaborations with guitarist Roy Montgomery, both credited to Hash Jar Tempo, Well Oiled (1997) and Under Glass (1999). The former, a seven-movement instrumental jam, is a cosmic hymn of monumental proportions, the psychedelic equivalent of a symphonic mass. Guitars compete for and concur to a universal "om", first running against each other, battling for the highest form of enlightenment, and then joining together in unison. The music emerges from spacetime warps, propelled by seismic rhythms, only to delve into deeper and deeper abysses, hypnotized by an unspeakable force. The second album was even more experimental, less dependent on guitars, and explicitly inspired by classical music. It alternated between glacial, imposing structures and chaotic noise collages, reconciling Wagner and Amon Duul, Verdi and Hawkwind, Bach and Red Crayola.

Texas 1990-95

By far the most active scene was in Texas. Texas psychedelia had been the craziest since the 1960s, and it claimed again that supremacy in the 1990s, led, of course, by the achievements of the Butthole Surfers. Except that, during the 1990s, this school diverged from punk-rock and moved towards a more experimental form of music, hardly "rock" at all. Spearheading the renaissance were severely irrational Butthole-ian bands.

If possible, Ed Hall even increased the psychedelic-madness quotient of the Butthole Surfers, beginning with the repellent bacchanals and hallucinations of Albert (1988). At the least, they grotesquely increased volume and speed on their classic Love Poke Here (1990), a gargantuan, shameless blunder that evoked Captain Beefheart's blues, voodoo exorcisms, drunk cowboys' hoedowns, Jimi Hendrix, breakneck hardcore and redneck boogie. Gloryhole (1991) was the punk equivalent of Beckett's absurd theater. The slightly more serious (at times even melodramatic) Motherscratcher (1993) and the slightly better structured (at times even linear) La-La-Land (1995) were also their densest stews of heretical sonic events.

The Cherubs, a spin-off of Ed Hall, added sampling, dissonance and hard-rock riffs to Ed Hall's already explosive mix, particularly on second album Heroin Man (1994).

ST 37, instead, followed in the footsteps of lysergic cosmic couriers a` la Hawkwind on albums such as Glare (1995).

Other notable works of Texas' virulent strain of psychedelia included: Bag's Midnight Juice (1991), Lithium Xmas's Helldorado (1994), Brutal Juice's Mutilation (1995).

The hynpotic, transcendental form of acid-rock was also popular in Texas. 7% Solution (1) gave more melodic and dynamic depth to the drone-driven ambient psychedelia of the shoegazers on All About Satellites And Spaceships (1996). Furry Things crafted the feedback-driven trance of The Big Saturday Illusion (1995) at the intersection of prog-rock, ambient music and acid jams. Its "songs" were grotesque deconstructions of rock'n'roll that twitched under clouds of swirling drones.

Two schools stood up among the various psychedelic acts of Texas, one based in Houston and one based in Dallas.

The Houston school was the more conventional of the two. Mike Gunn displayed a morbid fascination with Black Sabbath and Jimi Hendrix on Hemp For Victory (1991) and capitalized on it for the slow-motion ragas of their most original work, Almaron (1993). Mike Gunn's bassist Scott Grimm became Dunlavy, devoted to instrumental space-rock; while

Mike Gunn's guitarist Tom Carter started Charalambides, who experimented with deranged ballads, bizarre samples, guitar freak-outs and tape manipulation on the 100-minute cassette Our Bed Is Green (1992) and especially the double record Market Square (1995). The monolithic psychological explorations of Joy Shapes (2004), recorded by a trio of guitarists, even ventured into avantgarde music and free-jazz. Pared down to the duo of Christina and Tom Carter, Charalambides eventually achieved the naked melodic quintessence of A Vintage Burden (2006), that almost sounded like the negation of their original "acid" program.

Linus Pauling Quartet, who originated from the same proto-group as Mike Gunn, filled Immortal Classics Chinese Music (1995) with languid, whacky ballads a` la Flaming Lips but the extended jams Improvise Now (1996) and The Great Singularity off their best album, Killing You With Rock (1998), aligned them with the boldest sonic surgeons of their era.

A completely different route was followed in Dallas. The Vas Deferens Organization, or VDO, founded by New Orleans-natives Matt Castille and Eric Lumbleau, highlighted the link between psychedelic culture and the century-old cultures of dadaism and futurism. They specialized in a form of narrative nonsense for electronics and percussions that relied on a vast sonic puzzle. The three mad suites of Transcontinental Conspiracy (1996), featuring Medicine's guitarist Brad Laner, fluctuated between the most childish compositions of Frank Zappa and the most daring pieces of the classical avantgarde. Saturation (1996) combined the Mahavishnu Orchestra's wild jazz-rock with Terry Riley's keyboards-driven minimalism, musique concrete with raga. Abandoning the reckless frenzy of those early works, the five compositions on Zyzzybaloubah (1997) flew with more aplomb, displaying a brainy, pretentious attitude where merry pranksters used to play.

The VDO tribe spawned countless projects. Matt Castille recorded a lengthy suite of psychedelic excesses on Muz (1998). Eric Lumbleau formed Sound (USA) and recorded the audio montage of Drunk On Confusion (1999), worthy of Frank Zappa's most amusing and iconoclastic moments. Mazinga Phaser assembled the unfocused collages of Cruising In The Neon Glories (1996) by juxtaposing chamber music, elegiac bebop, gothic dub, space soul, ethereal bossanova and discordant drums'n'bass. Scott Sutton vented his Jimi Hendrix fixation on Late Nite Songs (1996), as J. Bone Cro, and his Syd Barrett fixation on Owners Manual (1997), as Jaloppy. Further emancipating themselves from the stereotype, Ohm, a keyboards-bass-clarinet trio, composed ethnic and electronic music on O2 (1997).

Texas had its share of conventional psychedelic poppers (Flowerhead, Starfish, Monroe Mustang ), but their feeble melodies paled compared with the bolder acts. The notable exception was Sixteen Deluxe with Backfeedmagnetbabe (1995).

San Francisco's noise psychedelia 1991-96

Mason Jones is a San Francisco-based guru of noisy, post-psychedelic, post-ambient, post-cosmic and post-industrial music. His manifestos were the first two collections of experiments released under the moniker Trance, Automatism (1991) and particularly Audiography (1993), whose compositions range from symphonic movement to ethnic watercolor. The formidable wall of noise of Delicate Membrane (1996) began the saga of Jones' Subarachnoid Space, featuring Melynda Jackson on guitar. The pieces were fully improvised, the sound was majestic, and the mood ranged from suspenseful trance to sheer horror. Ether Or (1997) showed that the distance between their therapeutic mayhems and free-jazz was negligible. The idea was further refined on Almost Invisible (1997), a massive hodgepodge of astral chaos, frantic ragas, oceanic psalms and abstract soundpainting that represented an ideal soundtrack for the marriage of heaven and hell. Jones had virtually resurrected early Pink Floyd and provided their biography with an alternative ending: a terrible mutation of A Saucerful Of Secrets rather than Dark Side Of The Moon. Endless Renovation (1998), their first studio recording and a more sophisticated variant on that idea (that quoted casually from Frank Zappa, Terry Riley or Colosseum) and The Sleeping Sickness (1999), a collaboration with the Walking Timebombs (the Pain Teens' Scott Ayers), simply increased the stylistic confusion around Jones' and Jackson's wild guitar distortions.

Mandible Chatter unleashed Helios Creed-ian guitar fury on the black mass Serenade For Anton (1992), before turning to sound manipulation on Hair Hair Lock & Lore (1994).

Guitarists Steven Smith and Glenn Donaldson focused on free-form instrumental psychedelia with Mirza's mini-album Ursa Minor (1996). In addition, Steven Smith released several solo works of eerie instrumental pieces created via a process of gradual composition, from Gehenna Belvedere (1996) to Tableland (2000) to Lineaments (2002). Those dense and meticulous blends of ancient, modern, acoustic, electric, western and ethnic instruments reenacted Smith's private ghosts, the primordial spleen that was the undercurrent of his avantgarde projects (the abstract and cacophonous Thuja, the pan-ethnic Hala Strana).

Six Organs of Admittance, the project of acoustic guitarist Ben Chasny, coined a psychedelic form of Sandy Bull's and John Fahey's western ragas with east-west meditations such as Sum of All Heaven, off Six Organs of Admittance (1998), and VIII, off For Octavio Paz (2003).

The golden age of British psychedelia

The golden age of British psychedelia was not the 1960s: it was the 1990s. Never had England witnessed such a deluge of psychedelic bands. The scene of raves created an inexhaustible demand for drug-induced, drug-related and drug-facilitating music.

The poppy version of psychedelia (the one that wrapped facile melodies in eccentric arrangements) went hand in hand with the booming phenomenon of Brit-pop: the Telescopes's Taste (1989), a more robust version of shoegazing; the Inspiral Carpets, who focused on the nostalgic Farfisa-driven sound on The Beast Inside (1991); Verve's A Storm In Heaven (1993), which predated their world-wide hit Bitter Sweet Symphony (1997); Sundial's Reflecter (1992), a bridge between California's Paisley Underground and British shoegazers; the Auteurs's New Wave (1993), a nostalgic tribute to the hippie era; Whipping Boy's Heartworm (1995), in Ireland, a work drenched in neoclassical melancholy; Kula Shaker's derivative but exuberant K (1996).

Plus Jellyfish Kiss, the Dylans, Jack, Freed Unit, etc etc. What was truly remarkable about these bands is how derivative and predictable they could sound.

A more sophisticated form of psychedelic pop song was devised by Curve, whose Doppelganger (1992) aimed for a lush, catchy and dance-oriented form of dream-pop; the Cranberries, an Irish band whose No Need To Argue (1994) was an album of desolate lullabies propelled by the operatic, guttural and melismatic vocals of Dolores O'Riordan; Rollerskate Skinny, also from Ireland, who were among the few bands to match the soulful madness of Mercury Rev on Shoulder Voices (1993); and Scotland's Beta Band, whose first two EPs, Champion Versions (1997) and The Patty Patty Sound (1998), were devoted to intense sound sculpting and disco-oriented shoegazing. In Belgium, dEUS crafted the eclectic and baroque Worst Case Scenario (1994).

The hippie spirit, and their favorite style, raga-rock, was resurrected by Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, particularly with the eccentric Tatay (1994), which Euros "Childs" Rowlands's keyboards and John Lawrence's guitar turned into, alternatively, a poppier Incredible String Band, a less caustic Bonzo Band, or a more bizarre Brian Wilson. The latter's orchestrations would provide the inspiration for the more conventional Barafundle (1997) and Gorky 5 (1998).

Far less successful commercially, although far more creative, in Britain was the noisy and free-form version of psychedelia that wed Hawkwind's space-rock and early Pink Floyd's interstellar ragas.

Porcupine Tree, the project of guitarist Steven Wilson, went through three stages. Initially, On The Sunday Of Life (1992), sounded like a compendium of Pink Floyd-ian sounds, from Syd Barrett's oblique ballads to Ummagumma's symphonic pieces. Then Japan's keyboardist Richard Barbieri helped fine-tune the languid, fluid, transcendental mini-concertos of The Sky Moves Sideways (1994). And, finally, a cohesive combo crafted Signify (1996) and Stupid Dream (1999) in a fashion reminiscent of early King Crimson's majestic ambience, an idea that eventually led to the slick production of In Absentia (2002).

Terminal Cheesecake played space-rock the way avantgarde composer Karlheinz Stockhausen would have played it. Echoes of Chrome, Pop Group and Throbbing Gristle turned Johnny Town Mouse (1989) and Angels In Pigtails (1991) into nightmarish experiences.

Skullflower, a loose group of musicians affiliated with guitarist Matthew Bower, performed heavy, droning psychedelic music on Obsidian Shaking Codex (1993) and Argon (1995), a symphony in four movements, Another Matthew Bower project was Sunroof, devoted to a psychotic version of cosmic music on the double-disc Delicate Autobahns Under Construction (2000). After a hiatus of seven years, Bower resurrected Skullflower erect the impressive walls of noise of Exquisite Fucking Boredom (2003), containing the four-part super-doom suite Celestial Highway, Orange Canyon Mind (2004) and Tribulation (2006), slowly drifting towards the idea of music as one long modulated massive distortion.

The Heads concocted Relaxing With (1996), a demented soup of Stooges, MC5 and Blue Cheer.

Latter-period shoegazers abounded. Ride adjusted the cliche` to the era of raves on Nowhere (1990). So did Ride's best imitators, Blind Mr Jones, on the mostly instrumental Stereo Musicale (1992). Swervedriver turned guitar distortions into an art of quasi-zen vespers, best on Mezcal Head (1993), while bridging the gap between the shoegazing acid-rock of My Bloody Valentine and the hard-edged garage-rock of the Stooges.

Both Loop and Spacemen 3 spawned a new generation of bands:

Spacemen 3's guitarist Jason Pierce formed Spiritualized as the natural sequel to his old band, with the same rhythm section, Mark Refoy on guitar and newcomer Kate Radley on keyboards. Lazer Guided Melodies (1992) was notable for the wildly schizophrenic dynamics that flung most songs between acoustic and quasi-symphonic passages. Pierce's abuse of drones and tremolos to create hypnotic lullabies and wavering ragas reached an almost baroque peak on Pure Phase (1995), recorded by the trio of Pierce, Radley and bassist Sean Cook. By then, Pierce had developed a process of scientific layering of sounds that was, basically, an exaggeration of Phil Spector's and Brian Wilson's production styles of yore. The lush trance-pop of Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space (1997) was almost the antithesis of his old "shoegazing" style. Overflowing with quotations from multiple genres, traditions and styles (and a penchant for gospel music), it exuded grace and majesty, even when it indulged in instrumental orgies. Pierce's cynical reappropriation of other people's music induced a Babylonian merry-go-round that outdid everybody at their own game while not playing their games at all. Abandoned by both Cook and Radley, Pierce recorded Let It Come Down (2001) with help from dozens of external musicians, but the result was a concept album on the subject of "getting high" that did not break any new ground. In general, the point with Spiritualized was whether theirs was art or technology.

Other spin-offs were Darkside, formed by Spacemen 3's bassist Pete "Bassman" Bain, Alpha Stone, formed by the same Bain, Hair And Skin Trading Co , formed by Loop's rhythm section, Slipstream, formed by Mark Refoy, the veteran Spacemen 3 and Spiritualized, and Lupine Howl, formed by Spiritualized bassist Sean Cook. They marked the meeting point of shoegazing and ambient music.

In England, dream-pop was no less popular than shoegazing. The influence of the Cocteau Twins was felt on works as different as Kitchens Of Distinction's Love Is Hell (1989) and Miranda Sex Garden's Suspiria (1992), a disco-oriented reconstruction of medieval music, Lush's Spooky (1992), scoured by the abrasive guitars and sugary vocals of Emma Anderson and Miki Berenyi, and Earwig's Under My Skin I Am Laughing (1992), the Cranes' Loved (1994) and Sharkboy's Valentine Tapes (1996).

A few acts matched, if not surpassed, the masters of dream-pop, while exploring different nuances of the genre.

The Pale Saints, who had debuted in the ethereal and oneiric style of The Comforts Of Madness (1990), introduced hard-rock into dream-pop on In Ribbons (1992).

The trance administered by Slowdive relied on the vocal harmonies of Neil Halstead and Rachel Goswell, and on triple-guitar arrangements. The hypnotic, velvety whispers, and the smooth, bright sound of Just For A Day (1991) reached for a psychological and even mystical level, that a game of echoes and reverbs merely enhanced. Souvlaki (1993) reinterpreted shoegazing as an abstraction of two formats: Strauss' symphonic poem and Brian Eno's ambient music.

Levitation, led by former House Of Love guitarist Terry Bickers, were reminiscent of Echo & The Bunnymen's baroque hypnosis on Coterie (1991).

Catherine Wheel debuted with a formidable synthesis of Neil Young's neurotic folk and Brian Wilson's eccentric pop, Ferment (1992), whose hammering mandalas wove colossal braids of distortions around naive refrains.

Graham Sutton's Bark Psychosis upped the ante of dream-pop with the extended singles All Different Things (1990) and Scum (1993), which were abstract mini-concertos built around ineffable melodies. The method was refined with the slow, lengthy sonic puzzles of Hex (1994), which fused dissonances, electronics, swirling ragas, jazz drumming, ghostly drones, lounge music, soft funk polyrhythms and so forth, into an organic whole.

Whether the pop, shoegazing or dream-pop variation, England was awash in psychedelic rock as never before.

Hyper-psychedelia in the Pacific, 1992-97

Perhaps the most intriguing take on psychedelia came from New Zealand. One of the most significant musicians of the 1990s, Roy Montgomery created a successful hybrid of all these styles with his ensembles Dadamah, Dissolve, and Hash Jar Tempo (the collaboration with Bardo Pond). Dadamah's This Is Not A Dream (1992), featuring bassist Kim Pieters, keyboardist Janine Stagg and Scorched Earth Policy's drummer Peter Stapleton, was a magic recreation of the Velvet Underground's psychedelic trance, updated to the new-wave zeitgeist of the Modern Lovers, sprinkled with effervescent oddities in the surreal vein of Pere Ubu. Dissolve's That That Is (1995) was merely an ectoplasm for two guitars, but their Third Album For The Sun (1997), by adding keyboards, percussions and cello to the guitar jamming, attained a spiritual solemnity.
In the meantime, Montgomery's solo albums walked an even more arduous path: the impressionistic vignettes of Scenes From The South Island (1995) harked back to the transcendental spirit of John Fahey, to the divine introspection of Peter Green, and to the dreamy psalms of David Crosby; while an obscure, symbol-drenched metaphysics and an obsessive preoccupation with the afterlife led Montgomery through the stages of the imaginary Calvary of Temple IV (1996). His song-oriented career peaked with And Now The Rain Sounds Like Life Is Falling Down Through It (1998), which contrasted introspective melody and metaphysical setting, resulting in a set of rarified, hermetic prayers, each wrapped into a different universe of haunting sound effects. But his philosophy was better expressed with the free-form soundpainting of True (1999). The Allegory of Hearing (2000) overflew with innovative guitar techniques and included the 17-minute tour de force of Resolution Island Suite, which recapitulated the Montgomery's theory of transcendental harmony the same way that the Art of the Fugue summarized Bach's and Rainbow In Curved Air summarized Terry Riley's. The sonic mandala of For A Small Blue Orb, off Silver Wheel Of Prayer (2001) continued his exploration of the individual's relationship with the eternal.

Dean Roberts pursued similar experiments, first with Thela's two albums of lengthy artsy/noisy jams, Thela (1995) and Argentina (1996), then with his solo project White Winged Moth, that devoted albums such as I Can See Inside Your House (1996) to instrumental vignettes situated halfway between John Fahey and Derek Bailey, and finally with the spiritual, ambient, psychedelic and ethnic collections under his own name, such as Moth Park (1998) and All Cracked Medias (1999), his masterpiece.

The saga of the bands built around Scorched Earth Policy's drummer Peter Stapleton was one of the most intriguing and influential of New Zealand. He joined forces again with guitarist Brian Cook for the second album by the Terminals, the spaced-out Touch (1992), derailed by tribal drumming and dissonant organ. At the same time, Stapleton recorded the Dadamah album with Roy Montgomery. Flies Inside The Sun were born from the ashes of Dadamah (Stapleton, Pieters, Cook and guitarist/keyboardist Danny Butt), but An Audience Of Others (1995) and especially Flies Inside The Sun (1996) dramatically increased the degree of improvisation and cacophony. In fact, Stapleton, Pieters and Butt recorded the even more abstract Sediment (1996), this time credited to Rain; and then the trio of Stapleton on drums, Pieters on bass and Dead C's Bruce Russell on guitar formed (a free-noise "supergroup") recorded the six instrumental improvisations of Last Glass (1994). Finally, Stapleton and Pieters launched the project Sleep (NZ) with Enfolded in Luxury (1999).

New Zealand's Alastair Galbraith recorded albums, particularly between Talisman (1994) and Cry (2000), that were not so much collection of songs as experiments on sound.

Post-noise in Japan

The most extreme kind of psychedelia (free-form jams that hark back to Grateful Dead, Red Crayola, early Pink Floyd and Hawkwind) was practiced mainly in Japan. The most imitated band was High Rise, but the man who, over a 30-year career, propelled Japanese acid-rock to the top of the world was Keiji Haino, whose numerous projects were rediscovered during the 1990s.

Yamazaki Maso's Masonna represented the link with the previous generation of noise-makers on albums devoted to lengthy free-form jams such as Shinsen Na Clitoris (1990) and Noisextra (1995).

Christine 23 Onna, the duo of Maso Yamazaki (Masonna, Space Machine, Acid Eater) and Fusao Toda (Angel In Heavy Syrup), specialized in wild, distorted, chaotic retro-analog electronic sounds on Shiny Crystal Planet (2000) and Acid Eater (2002 - MIDI Creative, 2006).

Similar to Fushitsusha were guitarist Kaneko Jutok's Kousokuya, whose Kousokuya (1991) indulged even more in free-jazz improvisation.

High Rise bassist Asahito Nanjo was responsible for two of the most brutal projects of the era. Mainliner, formed with Acid Mothers Temple guitarist Makoto Kawabata, unleashed Mellow Out (1996) and Sonic (1997), nuclear tornados of cacophonous Feedtime-like chaos and Chrome-like martian cadences. The former's wall of noise signaled the advent of a new kind of "rock" music, one that relied on unrelenting impetus (just like hardcore) while retaining the mind-expanding qualities of acid-rock.

The most prolific of this prolific school of space-rockers was, by far, Kawabata Makoto, the (demented) brain and the (logorrheic) guitar behind Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O. . Synthesizer-heavy progressive jams in the vein of freaks such as Magma and Gong filled their early albums, Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso Ufo (1997) and Pataphysical Freak Out Mu (1999), but subsequent collections, such as La Novia (2000), became more chaotic and orgiastic. The mini-album 41st Century Splendid Man (2002), featuring Tatsuya Yoshida of the Ruins, adopted instead a celestial trance bordering on ambient and cosmic music, and Univers Zen Ou De Zero A Zero (2002) found perhaps the middle path between the two extremes. This natural evolution towards a synthesis of styles led to Nam Myo Ho Ren Ge Kyo (2007) and Electric Psilocybin Flashback, off Crystal Rainbow Pyramid Under The Stars (2007), colossal jams built around the ancient Buddhist mantra of the title. Ethereal soprano Cotton Casino was to Kawabata in AMT what Gilli Smyth was to Daevid Allen in Gong.

Musica Transonic, a supergroup with Acid Mother Temple's guitarist Makoto Kawabata and Ruin's drummer Tatsuya Yoshida, specialized on a less barbaric fury and even jazzy stylings on albums such as Introducing (1995), A Pilgrim's Repose (1996) and Orthodox Jazz (1997).

Ghost, led by guitarist and vocalist Masaki Batoh, fused Japanese folk music and ambient music on Ghost (1991). The surreal orchestration and "ghostly" effects of Lama Rabi Rabi (1996), increased the gothic quotient, while the four-part title-track of Hypnotic Underworld (2004) was the crowning formal achievement of a group of visionary jazz-rock musicians, equally adept at pop songwriting and bizarre avantgarde. In Stormy Nights (2007) featured the 28-minute collage of Hemicyclic Anthelion, constructed in studio by Batoh assembling snippets of live performances.

An all-female quartet, Angel In Heavy Syrup delivered one of the most intriguing fusions of Pink Floyd and Amon Duul II on III (1995).



Surf and garage music
Scandinavia's garages 1990-94

During the 1990s, the single most impressive concentration of garage-rock bands was perhaps in Scandinavia. Hanoi Rocks had led the way, and, one decade later, a number of Scandinavian bands followed their lead, storming through programs of acrobatic rock'n' roll numbers with the sensitivity of a conquering viking.

MC5, Motorhead and New York Dolls were the role models for Sweden's Hellacopters, who delivered the impressive punch of Supershitty To The Max (1996) and Payin' The Dues (1997), and for Norway's Gluecifer.

Norway's Motorpsycho offered perhaps the most eclectic take on the cliches of psychedelic hard-rock on monumental albums such as Demon Box (1993) and Timothy's Monster (1994). They displayed musical ambitions that went beyond the power guitar riff, and often ended in quasi-symphonic magniloquence. The four colossal suites of Little Lucid Moments (2008) stood as virtually a recapitulation of jam-oriented rock music from the 1960s to the 1990s.

Instrumental revival, 1995-98

Instrumental music staged a massive revival during the 1990s.

Raised on sci-fi serials and horror movies, Alabama's Man Or Astroman invented a cyberpunk version of Shadowy Men On A Shadowy Planet's postmodernist surf that recalled Devo's satirical/mythological philosophy but dispensed with the silly lyrics. From the naive and exuberant Is It Man Or Astro-man? (1993) to the more adventurous Experiment Zero (1996), they defined a science of epic guitar twangs, epileptic surf hoedowns, suspenseful vibratos and menacing reverbs.

The Mermen, from San Francisco, altered surf music via Neil Young's blues-psychedelic neurosis and Jimi Hendrix's devastating spasms on Food For Other Fish (1994), and found a miraculous balance between revival and experimentation with the three creative jams of A Glorious Lethal Euphoria (1995). Their compositions, led by guitarist Jim Thomas, alternate between slow, tortured dirges that flowed towards controlled cacophony, somber, colloquial meditations, majestic, symphonic, twang-drenched odes, John Fahey-ian East/West fusion, jazz-rock, raga, etc. The Amazing California Health And Happiness Road Show (2000) includes their tour de force, Burn.

While not as original, an impressive number of groups offered witty and creative takes on the genre. Notable albums of the 1990s included: Interstate (1994) by Seattle's Pell Mell, the group of producer and keyboardist Steve Fisk; The Utterly Fantastic and Totally Unbelievable Sound (1995) by the Los Straitjackets in Tennessee; At Home With Satan's Pilgrims (1995) by the Satan's Pilgrims in Oregon; Savage Island (1996) by the Bomboras in Los Angeles; The Exciting Sounds Of Model Road Racing (1994) by the Phantom Surfers in San Francisco.

In Canada, Mark Brodie And The Beaver Patrol resurrected the vibrato melodies of the Ventures and Dick Dale on The Shores Of Hell (1996), thus following in the footsteps of Shadowy Men On A Shadowy Planet.

Shark Quest, in North Carolina, contaminated surf music with flavors of country and folk on Battle Of The Loons (1998).

Crampsiana, 1993-97

The spring of garage-rock was not extinguished. The Cramps, in particular, were a massive influence on American garage-rock, from Tennessee, where the Oblivians recorded Popular Favorites (1996), to Kentucky, where Bodeco recorded Bone Hair And Hide (1992). Reverend Horton Heat (Texan rocker Jim Heath) continued the tradition of mad rockabilly on albums such as the demonic The Full Custom Sounds (1993).

Seattle's Gas Huffer played epileptic rock'n'roll with the psychotic impetus of the Heartbreakers and the Cramps but also with the childish silliness of the Ramones. Janitors Of Tomorrow (1991) and Integrity Technology And Service (1992) were collections of time-warp aberrations.

The Honeymoon Killers' leader Jerry Teel went on to join the Chrome Cranks, with whom he produced at least one aberration worthy of the Honeymoon Killers, Chrome Cranks (1994).

Ohio's Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments, led by Great Plains vocalist Ron House and guitarist Bob Petric, delivered a concentrate of Cramps, Stooges and Ramones on Straight To Video (1997).

In North Carolina, Southern Culture On The Skids delivered a stew of old-fashioned styles (surf, rockabilly, country, garage-rock, rhythm'n'blues) with a punk attitude, reaching back to Rolling Stones, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Cramps. They were at their best when they let the bad vibrations flow, such as on For Lovers Only (1993), a madhouse of a roots-rock album, and the even more eclectic and exuberant Ditch Diggin' (1994).

Shifting from drums to guitar (and wearing a drag-queen costume), Gories veteran Dan Kroha, formed the Demolition Doll Rods, who focused on Cramps' glam-core.

In Minnesota, the veterans of the Lee Harvey Oswald Band concocted the infernal party of A Taste Of Prison (1994), which also indulged in the most perverted side of life.

That tradition continued unabated throughout the decade with decadent acts such as Georgia's Nashville Pussy , whose Let Them Eat Pussy (1998) harked back to Cramps' porno-billy.

MC5iana, 1993-95

Naturally, Michigan was the epicenter of the ferocious sound of MC5, although Go and Speedball did not live up to the same ferocious standards of previous generations.

Ohio boasted two of the best groups. Heirs to MC5's bacchanals, but also a bridge to contemporary genres such as grunge, thrash-metal and hardcore, God And Texas drenched the songs of History Volume One (1992) and Criminal Element (1993) into feverish distortions and catastrophic drumming. The New Bomb Turks were even more barbaric and breathtaking, particularly on Destroy Oh Boy (1993), but anchored the songs of mature albums such as At Rope's End (1998) to linear progressions and anthemic melodies.

North Carolina's Pipe with Six Days Till Bellus (1995) and Seattle's Tight Bro's From Way Back When, with Runnin Thru My Bones (1999), were also inspired by MC5's frantic rock'n'roll.

Closest to MC5's agit-prop intent were Washington's Love 666 with the mini-album American Revolution (1995).

Pacific Northwest, 1992-97

San Francisco's Mummies were perhaps the ideological leaders of the garage revival, even if they lasted only one album, the orgiastic and lo-fi Never Been Caught (1992).

Other notable albums from the Pacific Northwest included the Mono Men's Wrecker (1992), and Outta Sight (1993), by Sinister Six.

Oregon's garage school, which had been revitalized in the 1980s by the Miracle Workers, continued with Marble Orchard and Gorilla.

Seattle's Makers unwound a feast of fuzz, treble and feedback at full throttle on their third album, Makers (1996). The Murder City Devils added the screams of vocalist Spencer Moody and the gothic overtones of an organ to the mayhem of Empty Bottles Broken Hearts (1998).

Spenceriana, 1990-95

New takes on the blues and rhythm'n'blues were tried by bands throughout the country, from Ohio's Prisonshake, with A Girl Named Yes (1990), to Boston's 360's, with Illuminated (1991), from Kansas' Mercy Rule, formed by 13 Nightmares' guitarist John Taylor, with God Protects Fools (1993), to Pennsylvania's Psyclone Rangers, Feel Nice (1993). Needless to say, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion became an increasing influence on everybody during the decade.

Some in New York had actually predated Spencer: Marcellus Hall's Railroad Jerk were playing a similar brand of subnormal psycho-blues since their debut, Railroad Jerk (1990).

Los Angeles' Clawhammer, led by former Pontiac Brothers' guitarist Jon Wahl, performed the unlikely wedding of Captain Beefheart and Devo on Clawhammer (1990).

Ohio's Gits, featuring the witchy vocals of Mia Zapata, crossed punk-rock and blues-rock, halfway between X and Sex Pistols, with the addition of an angry feminine touch, on Frenching The Bully (1992).

Arizona's Doo Rag, a lo-fi duo fronted by Bob Log, kept the blues closer to the archaic sound of the Delta on What We Do (1996).

The punk approach to the blues and to soul music was refined by Washington's Delta 72, whose The R&B Of Membership (1996) and particularly Soul Of A New Machine (1997) were derailed by Sarah Stolfa's organ and Gregg Foreman's primordial howl. Their conceptual revisitation of black music eventually led to imitate the Rolling Stones circa Exile On Main Street on the more professional 000 (2000).

Michigan's Mule, formed by guitarist Preston Long and Laughing Hyenas' formidable rhythm section (Jim Kimball and Kevin "Monro" Strickland), played blues-rock for hell's saloons. Mule (1993) offered harsh, truculent and discordant music that borrowed from Z.Z.Top, Captain Beefheart, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Jimi Hendrix and Creedence Clearwater Revival but savagely deformed the original sources.

Chicago's Red Red Meat started from similar premises but evolved towards a more intellectual exploration of music. Red Red Meat (1992) and Jimmy Wine Majestic (1993) unleashed the dirty, feverish and unstable vibrations of all the blues irregulars of the past (the Rolling Stones, Captain Beefheart, Pussy Galore, etc), but the atmospheric Bunny Gets Paid (1995) veered towards desolate free-form "pieces" that felt like scarred remnants of pop songs. This, in turn, led to the abstract framework of There's A Star Above The Manger Tonight (1997), replete with synthesizer and other sophisticated arrangements, which was, de facto, a postmodernist exercise in stylistic deconstruction, bordering on trip-hop and ambient music while retaining the cacophony of Captain Beefheart and Pussy Galore. Red Red Meat guitarist (and original founder) Tim Rutili, drummer Ben Massarella and bassist Tim Hurley set out to further investigate this unfocused sea of sounds as Califone. The brooding acid-blues sound of their early EPs, Califone (1998) and Califone (2000), and of their full-length albums Roomsound (2001) and Quicksand Cradlesnakes (2003) absorbed jazz, post-rock, samples and loops into the canon of blues depression and gospel ecstasy. Heron King Blues (2004) further disintegrated the format of the roots-rock song, with the mostly instrumental jam Heron King Blues performing a bold balancing act between organic free-form abstraction and geometric pulsing pattern, a worthy addition to the program of Captain Beefheart's Mirror Man. The dusty interplay of voice, guitars, banjos, hurdy gurdies, drums and electronics concocted an understated post-everything mayhem.

New York's Jonathan Fire Eater were perhaps the main followers of Jon Spencer, particularly on their debut album, Jonathan Fire Eater (1995), before they mellowed down.

In Australia, Bloodloss, which were basically Lubricated Goat with Mudhoney's vocalist Mark Arm replacing Stu Spasm, assembled one of the ugliest blues albums of all times, Live My Way (1995), disfigured by saxophones, trumpets and keyboards, and influenced by Jon Spencer, Captain Beefheart and the Rolling Stones.


Lo-fi Pop
Oceania, 1991-94

Lo-fi pop, the great invention of New Zealand's independent musicians, became one of the main phenomena, world-wide, of the 1990s.

The scene in New Zealand was largely dominated by members of the old bands, and little was added to the canon by the new generations. Graeme Jefferies' Cakekitchen (1) concocted the adult blend of austere melodies, bitter philosophy and elegant arrangements of World Of Sand (1992), eventually achieving the intrepid and rarefied atmosphere of The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea (1996). Bailter Space, led by guitarist Alister Parker, gave their best with the hypnotic and atmospheric noise-rock of Vortura (1994), that capitalized on the innovations of My Bloody Valentine and Galaxie 500.

The Underground Lovers updated the psychedelic canon with Leaves Me Blind (1993), drenched in exotic and mystical sounds. King Loser were unique in producing a huge noise a` la Blue Cheer on Sonic Super Free Hi-Fi (1994) and You Cannot Kill What Does Not Live (1996). More conventional hard-rock was played by the 3Ds.

In Australia, former Cannanes guitarist Randall Lee's Nice (Australia) and Ashtray Boy were typical of how the dynasties of the 1980s survived the 1990s. All Souls Alive (1994), by the Blackeyed Susans, formed by vocalist Rob Snarski and bassist Phil Kakulas, owed the charm of its folk/country chamber elegies to Triffids' guitarist David McComb, Dirty Three's violinist Warren Ellis and drummer Jim White. The Moles' Untune The Sky (1991), featuring Richard Davies, was perhaps the most charming oddity, worthy of New Zealand's classic pop.

USA, 1990-94

The legacy of lo-fi pop was felt much stronger in and around the American colleges. Olympia, near Seattle, ruled by Beat Happening, boasted the most fertile scene: Al Larsen's Some Velvet Sidewalk, the Kicking Giants, Lync (Sam Jayne's band, that later evolved into Love As Laughter), Rebecca Gates' Spinanes, etc.

The most influential lo-fi band of the 1990s was Pavement. Slanted And Enchanted (1992) was more attitude than art (and certainly more epigonic than original), but the chaotic, erratic and unassuming delivery was precisely the point, especially when combined with Stephen Malkmus' bizarre philosophy. Crooked Rain Crooked Rain (1993) was even catchy and marginally innocuous.

The contagion spread from Los Angeles (Refrigerator, originators of the "Shrimper scene"), to New York (Fan Modine, Fly Ashtray), from Kansas (Butterglory) to Virginia (Wingtip Sloat), from Oregon (Crabs) to Chicago (Number One Cup), to Toronto (Dinner Is Ruined).

David Berman's Silver Jews coined a "lo-fi" version of the Velvet Underground's boogie-trance, like a cross between Luna and Pavement, on Starlite Walker (1994).

Shannon Wright's Crowsdell contaminated Pavement's style with roots-rock on Dreamette (1995).

Unfortunately, Pavement's idea was frequently misunderstood as meaning that a mediocre musician could produce an unlimited amount of music while at the same time disregarding any musical obligation. Independent musicians became more and more prolific.

Seattle's Modest Mouse was the vehicle for Isaac Brock's honest, heart-felt vignettes on This Is A Long Drive For Someone With Nothing To Think About (1996), a sprawling chronicle of everyday life in the 1990s. His portraits of drifters, losers and disillusioned fools became much sharper and more musically assured on The Lonesome Crowded West (1998), and his most experimental work was Sharpen Your Teeth (2002), released by his side-project Ugly Casanova, featuring Black Heart Procession's Pall Jenkins and Califone's Tim Rutili,

Texas' Spoon, the vehicle for Britt Daniel, evolved from the alt-pop influenced Girls Can Tell (2001) towards a power-pop style that boasted memorable hooks but also a minimal approach to arranging, the opposite of Phil Spector's "wall of sound", as demonstrated on Gimme Fiction (2005).

Primitivism, 1992-95

The more creative strand, the one that descended from Half Japanese and the Residents, was kept alive by groups that shunned the mainstream.

San Diego's Trumans Water Of Thick Tum (1992) sounded like a group of musicians who had no desire to play anything, and therefore each song was a bit of a torture. Their music was the opposite of "entertainment", as Spasm Smash (1993) proved: a carousel of spastic gestures. It was rock'n'roll filtered by the no wave and Royal Trux's Twin Infinitives.

Maryland's Velocity Girl synthesized the new sounds of their time: Sonic Youth's noise-rock, Uncle Tupelo's alt-country, Pavement's lo-fi dynamics. The dissonant pop of Copacetic (1993) was a study in contrast: effervescent tempos, wildly off-key guitars, Sarah Shannon's seductive pop-soul register, naive melodies; and Simpatico (1994) merely capitalized on the primitive style of strumming/jamming that they had invented to produce postmodernist dissection of pop, soul and even jazz cliches.

Pop primitivism had many faces and was practiced around the country: Pennsylvania's Vegetarian Meat, with Let's Pet (1995); Texas' Sincola, with What The Nothinghead Said (1995); Louisiana's one-man band Quintron, with Internet Feedback 001-011 (1996); New Jersey's Kickstand; and many others.

Florida's Home stood out from the crowd, thanks to a broad stylistic range (from cinematic prog-rock instrumentals to spastic pop songs) and to a focus on mundane events of the American youth (like a more serious Frank Zappa). Works such as IX (1995), containing the operetta Concepcion X (1996), arranged by the Devil's Isle Orchestra (horns, strings and choir), Netherregions (1998), their most deranged excursion, XIV (2000), a set of richly-arranged madrigals of abstract, psychedelic music, and Sexteen (2006), a concept on sex, called the bluff on rock music, both lyrically and musically.

New Jersey's Danielson Famile reinvented Christian music as lo-fi pop on A Prayer For Every Hour (1995), Tell Another Joke At The Ol' Choppin' Block (1997) and Tri-Danielson!!! (1999), singing spirituals and gospel hymns with an off-kilter instrumental backing and frantic harmonies worth of the Holy Modal Rounders and David Peel.

Trumans Water's bassist Glen "Galaxy" Galloway also dedicated his project, Soul Junk, to Christian themes, best on 1952 (1995).

The prolific San Diego-based singer-songwriter and guitarist Rob Crow launched a number of parallel projects, starting with the progressive hardcore of Heavy Vegetable, documented on The Amazing Undersea Adventures Of Aqua Kitty And Friends (1994). He built a bizarre sound around vintage keyboards as Optiganally Yours on Spotlight On Optiganally Yours (1997) and Presents Exclusively Talentmaker (2000). An acoustic quartet named Thingy penned the avant-melancholia of To The Innocent (1999). Then he found a compromise of sort in Pinback's somnolent lullabies at the border between post-rock, new wave, psychedelic-rock and folk-rock, first on This Is Pinback (1999) and especially the EP Offcell (2003). Pinback kept twisting the formula of power-pop until they achieved a slightly angular format of lo-fi song on Summer In Abaddon (2004) and Autumn of the Seraphs (2007).

Lo-fi Singer-songwriters
Bleak folk, 1990-96

In a sense, the 1990s "were" the decade of the singer songwriter, as more and more artists decided to go "solo" rather than look for a band. Both the technology (that allowed individuals to arrange their own compositions) and the loose networking of the post-punk generation (that favored more fluid partnerships) helped increase the number of musicians who recorded simply under their own name.

In general, singer-songwriters of the 1990s tended to be more subdued and humbler than in the 1980s and in the 1970s. Their masters were Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen, not Bob Dylan or Bruce Springsteen. One of the most influential styles of the 1990s was the moody and depressed one pioneered by Chris Isaak, Smog and American Music Club in San Francisco. It spread like a disease and almost became a stand-alone genre. Bleak dirges were strummed everywhere.

Georgia's Vic Chesnutt, confined to a wheelchair, shared with Smog the honor of having pioneered the style. West Of Rome (1992) and Drunk (1994) took southern gothic to a very personal and highly emotional level. Later his art became not only more pensive but also more austere via longer compositions and a penchant for sound that sometimes obscured the singing: Silver Lake (2003), with a full-fledged roots-rock band; Ghetto Bells (2005), with VanDyke Parks on accordion and Bill Frisell on guitar; North Star Deserter (2007), with a small orchestra of post-rock soundsculptors.

The Screaming Trees' Mark Lanegan sculpted the agony of Winding Sheet (1990), a journey through the eternal damnation of a soul that was both lyrical, existential and lugubrious. Even more rarified and metaphysical, Whiskey For The Holy Ghost (1993) ventured deeper inside in a tender and doleful register, halfway between Leonard Cohen and Nick Cave, while the atmosphere was reminiscent of David Crosby's first solo album, and occasionally claustrophobic like in Tim Buckley's psychedelic nightmares. Lanegan's dilated mind seemed to be imploding on the fragile Scraps At Midnight (1998).

In Los Angeles, Mountain Goats, John Darnielle's project, was a bizarre experiment for voice, acoustic guitar and cheap organ whose major career was devoted to concept albums such as Zopilote Machine (1994), Sweden (1995), and Tallahassee (2003), mostly about disintegrating relationships, which were as lyrically ambitious as musically humble.

In Oregon, Heatmiser's singer and songwriter Elliott Smith employed spare, acoustic arrangements and anemically whispered lyrics on Roman Candle (1994) to pen tuneful vignettes of daily life that merged Nick Drake's melancholia and Simon & Garfunkel's romanticism. Smith kept delving deeper into the human psyche with Elliott Smith (1995), that focused on heroin addiction, and Either Or (1997), but then resorted to Brian Wilson-ian arrangements of violins, reeds and keyboards for Xo (1998).

In New York, Jeff Buckley was condemned to re-live his father Tim's turbulent and brief life, but Grace (1994) boasted a denser sound, more reminiscent of Van Morrison's soul-jazz ballads.

Toronto's Ron Sexsmith crystallized the idea in the naive/tender style of Tim Hardin and Paul Simon on Ron Sexsmith (1995), while wedding it to Jackson Browne's arduous meditations.

Dinosaur Jr's bassist Mike Johnson, who had also collaborated to Mark Lanegan's masterpieces, became the most credible candidate to the title of "Leonard Cohen of the 1990s" with the funereal ballads of Year Of Mondays (1996) and What Would You Do (2002).

His main competition for that title was Nebraska's Simon Joyner, a philosopher equipped with Leonard Cohen's deep baritone and doleful vision, but also with a much grander musical ambition. The oneiric Songs for the New Year (1997) was Cohen-ian in spirit and letter, but the trilogy recorded with Mike Krassner, beginning with Yesterday Tomorrow and In Between (1998) and continuing with the lengthy ballads of The Lousy Dance (1999) and Hotel Lives (2001), progressively increased the complexity of his compositions, capitalizing on an impressive cast of distinguished jazz, folk and rock musicians (Ken Vandermark on clarinet, Fred Lonberg-Holm on cello, Jeb Bishop on trombone, Ernst Long on flugelhorn, Will Hendricks on vibes), that augmented a rock trio (Ryan Hembrey on bass, Glenn Kotche on percussions, Michael Krassner on guitar). It was a wedding of chamber and pop settings that transported the slow, hypnotic music to a metaphysical dimension, while retaining a deeply-moving, humane dimension.

Los Angeles' Duncan Sheik wrapped the chronic mood of desperation and heartbreak of Duncan Sheik (1996) into an "ambient folk-rock" style that merged lush string arrangements and the acoustic style of the troubadours.


Suicidal dirges and stately odes were the soundtrack of the 1990s. Notable albums in the style included: Matt Keating's Scaryarea (1994), from New York; Dave Schramm's Folk Und Die Folgen (1994), from New York; Karl Hendricks' Misery And Women (1994), from Pennsylvania; Damien Jurado's Waters Ave S (1997), from Seattle; Johnny Dowd's Temporary Shelter (2001), from upstate New York, T.W. Walsh's Blue Laws (2001), from Boston.

Ohio's Jason Molina, better known as Songs:Ohia, evolved from the cliche' of the melancholy cry of a tortured soul towards the sinister post-psychedelic depression of Ghost Tropic (2000).

Neo-pop, 1990-94

As far as melody goes, the decade was largely marked by the gigantic shadow of Boston's Stephen Merritt. His multi-faceted career began under the moniker Magnetic Fields as a humble amateur of pop music who vented his fear and nostalgy via formally impeccable melodies and arrangements. The formative Distant Plastic Trees (1991) and The Wayward Bus (1992), sung by Susan Anway, and his first masterpiece, Holiday (1993), which was also the first album sung by Merritt himself, coined a form of "introverted kitsch" that quoted the Sixties without sounding derivative and that employed electronic rhythm and instruments in a discrete manner. Despite being light like feathers, Merritt's ditties sounded like tributes to Brian Eno's early albums and to the classics of synth-pop. The concept album The Charm Of The Highway Strip (1994), his second masterpiece, perfected the idea. Leaving behind his synth-pop roots, Merritt wed the idyllic register of a Donovan, neoclassical orchestrations and the persona of a bashful lunatic. The algebraic precision of his musical artifacts was only apparently a continuation of Brian Wilson's and Van Dyke Parks' program: Merritt shunned their symphonic opulence and favored the small, intimate format of the chamber ensemble. Get Lost (1995) was, first and foremost, an exercise in laying out chamber instruments; but it was also his bleakest statement, and thus redeemed the indulgence with deeply felt emotions. At the same time, Merritt's mission was very much a thorough reexamination of the pop tradition, from Burt Bacharach to Phil Spector, from Tin Pan Alley to doo-wop: his ultimate sin of vanity, the colossal 69 Love Songs (1999), was a catalog of variations on cliches of pop music. Merritt had managed a synthesis of historical proportions but he carried it out with the humble attitude of an everyman who hardly knew anything about history. In the meantime, he had also released albums as the 6ths and the Future Bible Heroes. The 6ths albums, Wasps' Nests (1996) and Hyacinths and Thistles (2000), were collection of sugary ditties performed by impressive casts of guest vocalists. The importance of arrangement and production had eventually taken over the importance of lyrics and melodies, and thus wrecked the whole idea of innocent, sincere, heartbreaking music. Most tunes on later albums such as I (2004), credited to the Magnetic Fields, The Tragic Treasury (2006), credited to the Gothic Archies, and Distortion (2008), credited again to the Magnetic Fields, did not serve any purpose other than Merritt's post-modernist strategies, but a few revealed that he still had a soul, the soul that in the 1990s had conquered the indie-pop and pre-emocore generation.

Several veterans of the alt-rock movement became top performers in the "neo-pop" category: the first solo album by Violent Femmes' drummer Victor DeLorenzo, Peter Corey Sent Me (1990); Jellyfish's Jason Falkner, with Author Unknown (1996); Guided By Voices' Tobin Sprout, with Carnival Boy (1996); former Love Child's leader Will Baum, disguised under the moniker 9-Iron, with the concept album Make-out King (1995); etc.

Michigan's humble Brendan Benson penned songs in the tradition of Todd Rundgren: One Mississippi (1996) and Lapalco (2002).

Scottish transplant Chris Connelly, who had played in Chicago's industrial combos Ministry and Pigface, reinvented himself as a pensive pop crooner on albums such as Shipwreck (1995) and The Ultimate Seaside Companion (1998), credited to the Bells.

Frank Black, the new alias of former Pixies' vocalist Charles "Black Francis" Thompson, now relocated to Los Angeles, indulged in his trademark "scream of consciousness" on his solo albums Frank Black (1993) and Teenager Of The Year (1994), still characterized by erratic structures and reckless melodies.

Mike Gira basically continued the atmospheric work of latter-period Swans. His tortured soul engaged in a form of lugubrious and apocalyptic folk, which constituted, at the same time, a form of cathartic and purgatorial ritual. After his solo album Drainland (1995), which was still, de facto, a Swans album, assisted by Jarboe and Bill Rieflin, Gira split the late Swans sound in two: Body Lovers impersonated the ambient/atmospheric element, while Angels Of Light focused on the orchestral pop element. On one hand, Gira crafted the sinister and baroque layered instrumental music of Body Lovers' Number One Of Three (1998) and the subliminal musique concrete of Body Haters (1998). On the other, Angels Of Light's ethereal and supernatural folk music of How I Loved You (2001), a concept on sex, and Everything Is Good Here Please Come Home (2003), which explored simultaneously the personal, historical and political planes, renewed the similarities with Nico's stately, pagan, ancestral lied. Basically, the Body Lovers was the culmination of the Swans' experiments with magniloquent production (the "male" component of their sound), while Angels Of Light was the continuation of Jarboe's "female" component of the group's sound.

New Zealand's main singer-songwriters were the leaders of the classic bands of the 1980s: Clean's David Kilgour , who debuted with the catchy Here Comes The Cars (1992), the Tall Dwarfs' Chris Knox, etc. Both the leaders of the Go-Betweens recorded solo albums, but only Grant McLennan's Horsebreaker Star (1995) lived up to their reputation.

American Music Club's Mark Eitzel became a cocktail-lounge entertainer with 60 Watt Silver Lining (1996).

A Brian Wilson fixation permeated the work of Australian expatriate Richard Davies, who attained a magical balance of Syd Barrett, David Bowie and Donovan on his collaboration with Eric Matthews, Cardinal (1995), a classic of chamber pop, and crafted the austere There's Never Been A Crowd Like This (1996) and the surreal Telegraph (1998), whose vocal harmonies are reminiscent of Crosby Stills & Nash.

His partner in Cardinal, Eric Matthews, indulged in Van Dyke Parks' orchestrations on his own It's Heavy In Here (1995).

In Britain, David Gray was a sophisticated bard in the tradition of Van Morrison who scoured a broad emotional and musical territory, from the passionate confessions of A Century Ends (1993) to the vibrant power-ballads of Sell Sell Sell (1996), from the fragile pop vignettes of White Ladder (2000) to the bleak introspection of A New Day At Midnight (2002).

Disguised as Divine Comedy, Irish songwriter Neil Hannon indulged in the orchestral pop of Casanova (1996), anchored to old-fashioned arias and classic storytelling.

Neo-folk: the men

Los Angeles happened to be the next stop in the evolution of the genre. Beck Hansen turned eccentricity into stardom and changed the way singer-songwriters sounded and were perceived by the mainstream. With the carefree eclectism of Mellow Gold (1994) Beck invented folk music for the age of hip-hop and proved that stylistic confusion can appeal to the masses. A more organic approach to the fusion of folk, blues, rap, garage-rock and pop enhanced the overall sound of Odelay (1996). The fact that his lyrics were free-form associations, and only vaguely hinting to social reality, was somehow consistent with his superficial approach to musical integration (an operation that other musicians had carried out at a deeper level). Mutations (1998), reminiscent of Radiohead's subtle orchestrations, and Midnite Vultures (1999), a sort of tribute to soul music, rapidly removed the sheen from one of the decade's most over-rated artists.

Beck may have learned his tricks from an obscure and insane folksinger, Paleface, whose Paleface (1991) was a bizarre product of the anti-folk movement.

Far more original was the artistic mess concocted by former Red Hot Chili Peppers' guitarist John Frusciante on Niandra Lades And Usually Just A T-Shirt (1994), between agonizing blues and demented singalongs, a neurotic and hysterical version of Daniel Johnston.

Eels, the project of Los Angeles-based songwriter Mark Oliver Everett, worked out a storytelling style that was both humble and sophisticated on Beautiful Freak (1996), locating his tone and arrangements somewhere between Beck and the Flaming Lips. Electro-Shock Blues (1998), a bleak concept album and a moving requiem for friends who died, upped the ante by adopting Tom Waits' skewed orchestral arrangements and topping Neil Young's manic depression. By exploiting the disorienting sonic events generated by keyboards, samplers and turntables, and by integrating jazz and neoclassical motifs, Everett coined a solemn, disturbing, jarring form of folk music. By the time of the autobiographical concept Blinking Lights And Other Revelations (2005), Everett had refined his ability to modulate a monotonous discourse into graceful, colorful, mesmerizing calligraphy.

Virginia's Mark Linkous, who records under the moniker Sparklehorse, created studio miracles such as Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot (1995) and It's A Wonderful Life (2001), which coupled oddly original music with melancholy overtones, something that harked back to the Pearls Before Swine.

Soon, eccentric arrangements became as important as the words and the refrains. Ambitious arrangements reached a paradoxical peak at the end of the decade: Sunny Day Real Estate's Jeremy Enigk, with Return Of The Frog Queen (1996); Sea And Cake's guitarist Archer Prewitt, with In The Sun (1997); Washington's Sea Saw, with Magnetophone (1996); New York's Dean "Illyah Kuryahkin" Wilson, with Thirtycabminute (1999).

Ohio's Joseph Arthur wed electronica and folksinging on the eclectic Big City Secrets (1997), but made his point more poignantly with the simpler and catchier songs of Come To Where I'm From (2000).

Jack Drag, John Dragonetti's project, penned Unisex Headwave (1997), an eclectic work that ran the gamut from blues to pop to psychedelia to hip-hop.

In Canada, Rufus Wainwright, the son of Loudon Wainwright III and Kate McGarrigle, went beyond Brian Wilson with Rufus Wainwright (1998), an erudite, melodramatic extravaganza that mixed Italian opera, Sullivan's operettas, French cabaret, Broadway show-tunes, and early Brian Eno. Wainwright progressed from vaudeville to opera with Poses (2001).

Visual Audio Sensory Theatre (1998), or VAST, the project of San Francisco-based multi-instrumentalist Jon Crosby, epitomized unrelenting melodrama and symphonic arrangements.

Australia's Ben Lee adopted a high-tech instrumentation of computers, keyboards, samplers and drum-machines on Breathing Tornados (1998).

Nebraska's Bright Eyes, the brainchild of Conor Oberst, signaled the maturity of this movement with the multiple refracting moods and sounds of Fevers And Mirrors (2000).

By borrowing ideas from Debussy, Stravinsky and Hindemith rather than Van Dyke Parks or Brian Wilson, San Francisco's Her Space Holiday, the brainchild of Marc Bianchi, coined a form of grand, symphonic pop on albums such as Manic Expressive (2001).

Jason Lytle's Grandaddy, from Modesto (California), served quirky pop a` la Sparklehorse on Under The Western Freeway (1997), which became almost futuristic on the socio/sci-fi concept album The Sophtware Slump (2000).

Stone Temple Pilot's vocalist Scott Weiland (1) became the eccentric bard of 12 Bar Blues (1998), another example of stylistic fusion and futuristic folk.

Chicago harbored two wacky satirists in the vein of David Peel. Bobby Conn displayed the wicked, twisted, frequently obnoxious wit of street performers: Bobby Conn (1997) was a wild, uncensored ride in a labyrinth of genres, and the concept album The Golden Age (2001) sounded like a parody of his generation. Lonesome Organist (multi-instrumentalist Jeremy Jacobsen) evoked early Frank Zappa with Collector Of Cactus Echo Bag (1998), a post-modernist merry-go-round of quotations.

At the end of the decade, Indiana's isolated Dave Fischoff virtually invented a new form of folk music, barely audible and mostly indecipherable, with Winston Park (1998).

Neo-country, 1990-96

The folk/country tradition largely lost to the post-modernists, but still managed to produce worthy heirs to Gram Parsons and Neil Young.

San Francisco's Richard Buckner pursued Joe Ely's "outlaw" country with a voice reminiscent of Townes Van Zandt on Bloomed (1995) and particularly on the concept album Devotion And Doubt (1997), backed by Giant Sand and Marc Ribot.

Protagonists of the country-rock renaissance included: in Seattle Gerald Collier, with the agonizing I Had To Laugh Like Hell (1996), and Pedro The Lion, the project of David Bazan, with It's Hard To Find A Friend (1998); in Oregon Varnaline, the project of Space Needle's guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Anders Parker, with the hard-rocking Varnaline (1997); in New York, Jim White, with Wrong-Eyed Jesus (1997); in Ohio, Tim Easton, with Special 20 (1998); in Georgia, Kevn Kinney, the former Drivin'N Crying' singer, with MacDougal Blues (1990); etc.

The greatest of this (not so wild) bunch was Freedy Johnston, a New York transplant who introduced himself as Neil Young gone cow-punk on the effervescent, edgy and eclectic Trouble Tree (1990), but then was rapidly converted to a smoother and streamlined sound. The bleak stories of betrayal, failure and guilt on Can You Fly (1992) and This Perfect World (1994), featuring guitarist Marc Ribot, cellist Jane Scarpantoni and drummer Butch Vig, relied on impeccable melodies, as if Simon & Garfunkel were playing funeral music. By the time Never Home (1997) came out, Johnston had transformed into a more superficial pop auteur.

Neo-populists, 1990-93

The populists (a` la Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, John Mellencamp, etc) were mainly veterans of the punk generation.

The solo work of former Dream Syndicate's vocalist Steve Wynn favored melancholy and introverted confessions at the intersection of Lou Reed, Bob Dylan and Neil Young. Kerosene (1990) was too obviously derivative, but Melting In The Dark (1996) let loose his passion for Sixties garage-rock, which overflew on the propulsive, noisy and emphatic My Midnight (1999). Wynn's quest for a balance of youthful punk-rock and adult roots-rock, of a music capable of roaring, sweating and bleeding, culminated with Here Come The Miracles (2001), a survey of his emotional territory, a varied set of solemn, mournful, upbeat, tender, romantic, rough, demonic, harsh ballads and rave-ups.

Firehose's and Minutemen's bassist Mike Watt entrusted the vignettes of Ball-Hog Or Tugboat (1994) to an extraordinary cast of vocalists.

The Replacements' Paul Westerberg remained a bard of ordinary anguish, but only Suicaine Gratifaction (1999) went close to fully realizing his vision.

Neo-blues, 1991-94

White blues singer-songwriters were obscured by the stars of lo-fi pop and neo-pop. Canada's Sue Foley, a Bonnie Raitt-soundalike, came to prominence with Young Girl Blues (1992) but matured as a songwriter with Walk In The Sun (1996). Texas' Chris Whitley used his spectacular guitar technique to vent teenage angst on Living With The Law (1991) the way punk's anti-heroes did. Los Angeles' Ben Harper, an eclectic African-American folksinger, debuted with Welcome To The Cruel World (1994), a monumental exercise in stylistic excursion.

Post-feminism, 1990-99

The ladies had their own styles (plural). First of all, at the turn of the decade, an eccentric figure of lo-fi psychedelic storyteller emerged out of New York's underground lofts.

New York's multi-instrumentalist Azalia Snail devoted her career to enigmatic and arcane reconstructions of the hippie era. Snailbait (1990) featured a parade of folk-psychedelic vocal impersonations as well as erratic guitar playing with no rhythm section, and peaked with a 23-minute collage of singing, distorted tapes, found noises and assorted turbulence, So Much More To Go. Burnt Sienna (1992) indulged in psychedelic effects, amid distorted vocals and dissonant music, leading to the chaotic Fumarole Rising (1994), the culmination of her program of disintegration of the pop song.

The Swans' vocalist Jarboe resumed that band's apocalyptic folk on Thirteen Masks (1992), a set of majestic odes, oneiric visions, psychodramas, fairy tales, religious psalms, and ethnic nightmares that ran the gamut from purely acoustic to subtly electronic. While not as magical and emotional, the vocal tour de force of Sacrificial Cake (1995) upped the ante: each song "was" a different voice, and the album as a whole sounded like a grotesque conventicle of personas.

Already early in her career, Lida Husik couldn't decide whether she wanted to be a popster or a sound painter. Bozo (1991), produced by Kramer, was a collection of ethereal and dreamy lullabies for voice, guitar, organ and beats. Each song was programmed to sink slowly into the listener's subconscious, like a magic potion. Your Bag (1992), on the other hand, was devoted to experimental compositions based on collage techniques. Both albums were drenched into hallucinogens. As she emerged from the haze of drugs, Husik turned to the political stance of The Return Of Red Emma (1993), which sounded like a theater piece set to a vast catalog of possible musics. Leaving behind the hallucinated nightmares of her acid-induced early years, Husik regressed to the childish folk tunes of Joyride (1995) and Fly Stereophonic (1997), which were also her most touching works (particularly the former), while, at the same time, venturing into electronica with the astral lounge music of Green Blue Fire (1996), a collaboration with ambient specialist Beaumont Hannant, and with the trance-collages of Mad Flavor (1999), which were, first and foremost, aural experiences.

At the same time, the ladies (particularly in New York and Los Angeles) continued the noble and intellectual self-searching saga inaugurated by Joni Mitchell.

Composer, pianist and vocalist Robin Holcomb, a staple of New York's jazz avantgarde (Wayne Horvitz's wife and main composer for his New York Composers' Orchestra), debuted with the mostly instrumental improvisations of Larks They Crazy (1989), accompanied by the supergroup of Horvitz, Doug Wiselman, Marty Ehrlich, David Hofstra and Bob Previte. A similar ensemble wove the delicate tapestry of Robin Holcomb (1990) for her simple, sweet melodies, sung in a register which evoked Nico's glacial and melancholy lament. With these brainy nursery rhymes she achieved a unique fusion of classical, jazz and folk music. Further removed from her jazz roots, Rockabye (1992) was a collection of sophisticated songs delivered by an aristocratic chanteuse.

One of the most moving voices of the decade was a humble violinist from Indiana: Lisa Germano. Her albums were comparable to the harrowing ending of a thriller. Rather than songs, the carefully assembled elements of On The Way Down From Moon Palace (1991) were humble concertos that straddled the line between country, classical and new-age music. Her mournful melodies were reminiscent of Pachelbel's Canon and Albinoni's Adagio while the instrumental setting was a lesson in psychology. Happiness (1993) "universalized" her grief, but also climbed one tier down into her personal hell, past, present and future merged in her feeble and confused stream of consciousness. Geek The Girl (1994) was both a self-portrait and an allegoric concept. It was both an epic diary of insecurity and a Dantesque journey into the psyche of a girl. It was her most atmospheric work, but also her most personal. In telling the story of her story, and making it the story of all (women's) stories, she performed the miracle of a kind of simplicity bordering on madness. The majestic dejection of the episodes worked like the exhausting grief of a lengthy funeral. In the process, Germano reenacted Nico's most lugubrious nightmares as well as Leonard Cohen's saddest fables. Her songs had become pure existential shivers. Excerpts From A Love Circus (1996) saw the light at the end of the tunnel, although the scene was still unfocused. Leaving behind the claustrophobic excesses of the previous albums, Germano entered a less creepy landscape. Rather than soliloquies, these songs sounded like dialogues between her touching voice and her ghostly violin. But the romantic interlude ended with the maniacal intensity of Slide (1998), back to the inner wasteland that ever more eccentric arrangements likened to Alice's Wonderland.

Los Angeles-based vocalist and pianist Tori Amos fused Kate Bush's operatic falsetto, Joni Mitchell's piano-based confessional odes and Cat Stevens' romantic piano figures on Little Earthquakes (1991). Its ballads were simple but profound, personal but universal, melodic but discordant, thus achieving a synthesis of emotional states, not only of musical styles. The violence of hyper-realism seemed to prevail over the fairy-tale magic of introversion on Under The Pink (1994), a work derailed by syncopated rhythms, dissonant lashes, gospel organs, hysterical fits, orchestral flourishes and moody vocals. Leveraging the experiments of that album, the harpsichord-obsessed Boys For Pele (1996) sounded like a work of uncontrolled musical genius: it indulged in timbric juxtaposition, but mostly for its own sake. Backed by a rock'n'roll band and enhanced by electronic arrangements, Amos eventually chose a simpler career, starting with the much more accessible (and trivial) From The Choirgirl Hotel (1998).

Juliana Hatfield, the Blake Babies' bassist and vocalist, continued to offer a moderate view of youth's troubles. Hey Babe (1992) was a masterpiece of whim and contrarian morals, penned by girlish voice, modest melodies, and graceful guitar rock. The self-pitying and self-loathing themes that recurred throughout the album painted a charming and anthemic biography of a teenager growing up. That existential implosion began to show a muscular side on Become What You Are (1993), whose sound ranged from folk-rock to hard-rock, and Hatfield definitely lost her (musical) virginity with Only Everything (1995), which submerged her artful whining with loud and furious riffs.

The pop-soul divas continued to rule the best-sellers' charts, notably Mariah Carey, one of the most successful artists of all times. The soul-jazz tradition was updated to the new sound technology by the likes of Alana Davis, Poe, and most notably Sophie Hawkins.

Neo-folk: the women
The 1990s saw an explosion of female singer-songwriters, partly as a consequence of the riot-grrrls movement and partly as a sign of a changing psychological landscape.

Kristin Hersh carried out a solo parallel career to her band Throwing Muses with the acoustic collections Hips And Makers (1994), a tender and shy self-tribute via a stream of consciousness that reached the depths of her soul, and Strange Angels (1998), two albums of a music that was as cold as ice, as ascetic as a nun's rosary. Sky Motel (1999), on the other hand, sounded like a Throwing Muses reunion, and broke the spell.

With the mostly-acoustic and autobiographical Pieces Of You (1995), San Diego-via-Alaska's Jewel Kilcher manufactured a pseudo-hippie persona akin to Joni Mitchell and her proud soprano.

The 10,000 Maniacs' chanteuse Natalie Merchant conceived the fragile, tender, sensual melodies set to sophisticated folk-jazz arrangements of Tigerlily (1995).

Poi Dog Pondering's violinist Susan Voelz enveloped the mournful ballads of Summer Crashing (1995) in a solemn haze.

Danielle Howle's powerful and disorienting vocals increased the appeal of her deep thoughts on About To Burst (1996).

Patty Griffin inherited the mantle of Lucinda Williams on Living With Ghosts (1996), for voice and guitar, until Children Running Through (2007) fulfilled the promises of her grating country-pop-gospel fusion.

Cat Power, the project of New York-transplant Chan Marshall, debuted with the somber and spartan Myra Lee (1996) and the desolate, suffocating What Would The Community Think (1996). The latter formulated an art that took the shy pessimism of auteurs such as Nick Drake and Laura Nyro to a new dimension of introspection. Its sketchy vignettes and self-analyses coined a subtle and almost embarrassing format, that turned the listener into a voyeur peeping through the keyhole. Marshall was, at the same time, the cameraman and the actress: she played the role of a tormented heroine while she was filming herself playing that role. Her songs were as much acting as they were singing. Marshall's cinematic genius peaked with the song cycle of Moon Pix (1998), enhanced with the ambient, free-form arrangements of Dirty Three's Jim White and Mick Turner. The emotional intensity packed by her half whisper in the gloomy lieder of You Are Free (2003) bordered on the suicidal.

Another New Yorker, Fiona Apple, conveyed the anguish of her generation (she was still a teenager) on the piano-driven Tidal (1996), boasting a cabaret-like blend of blues, soul and jazz, and When The Pawn Hits The Conflicts (1999), enhanced by Jon Brion's idiosyncratic arrangements that mixed the old-fashioned and the futuristic.

San Francisco-based Hannah Marcus penned some of the most otherworldly atmospheres, reminiscent of Laura Nyro's ominous elegies, Nico's glacial soliloquy, Tim Buckley's folk-jazz fusion, Lisa Germano's painfully childish introspection, Jane Siberry's abstract self-reflections, as well as of Patti Smith's delirious stream of consciousness, especially on her second and fourth albums, Faith Burns (1998) and Desert Farmers (2004).

Lili Haydn, a vocalist and violinist who sang with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and performed with the Los Angeles Philarmonic Orchestra, concocted an austere blend of classical, folk, jazz, rock and pop on Lili (1997).

The melancholy whisper of Edith Frost breathed real life into the hypnotic lullabies of Calling Over Time (1997), arranged by Chicago luminaries such as Eleventh Dream Day's Rick Rizzo, Gastr Del Sol's David Grubbs and Jim O'Rourke. Its natural evolution was the chamber pop of Telescopic (1998): Frost bled angelic melodies in a shy and introverted voice, which were captured in a web of timbres (cello, violin, flute, accordion, trombone, organ) and perturbed by psychedelic guitar effects. She did to folk music what the first Velvet Underground album did to rock music: carve a bleakly subliminal, darkly metaphysical, cruelly hellish space beneath an apparently innocent surface.

The works of Ohio-based singer-songwriter Jessica Bailiff were, de facto, collaborations with Low's guitarist Alan Sparhawk. Even In Silence (1998) set her dilated, ethereal vocals and her intimate, bedroom confessions, against the backdrop of an unfocused, loose instrumental noise. She was the first to fuse folk, ambient, psychedelia and slo-core. The litanies and lullabies of Jessica Bailiff (2002), oddly devoid of structure, had a supernatural quality.

Heather Duby owed half the artistic success of Post To Wire (1999) to the oneiric orchestrations of Pell Mell's Steve Fisk, soundscapes that metabolized all sorts of styles while the singer borrowed from Nico, Enya and Bjork her emotional charge.

Crowsdell's vocalist Shannon Wright, an accomplished pianist, penned the austere chamber folk elegies of Flight Safety (1999), the nightmarish, emphatic, almost expressionistic music of Maps Of Tacit (2000) and, best of all, the theatrical, neoclassical meditations of Dyed In The Wool (2001).

Grrrrls, 1990-99

Several singer-songwriters bridged the gap between singer-songwriters and the "riot-grrrls" movement. Propelled by the success of their decade-old anti-folk movement, the new generation took on a wilder, angrier, more sarcastic tone.

Lois Maffeo, one of the leaders of Olympia's "riot grrrrls" movement, best summarized her age on the acoustic Butterfly Kiss (1992), featuring Bratmobile's drummer Molly Neuman and the Young Marble Giants' bassist Stuart Moxham.

Buffalo's fiercely independent folksinger Ani DiFranco reached maturity with her fifth album, Out Of Range (1994). Her songs vibrated with raw energy and emotion, bit with sarcasm and wit, pondered with angst and depression. DiFranco's art was both personal and social: while she hunted her post-menstrual demons, she also delved into poignant commentary. Her staccato acoustic guitar was no less original, a highly emotional fusion of Delta-blues and Appalachian folk picking. Parables and rants acquired new life with the less spartan format of Not A Pretty Girl (1995) and especially Dilate (1996) and To the Teeth (1999), that also emphasized her plastic classy vocals, while Little Plastic Castle (1998) presented a kinder, gentler folksinger who was less at war with society and more at ease with her own life.

The music of mad Englishwoman Polly Jean Harvey was born at the crossroad between punk rage and a nervous breakdown. Dominated by her vulgar, hysterical voice, reminiscent of Patti Smith and Sinead O'Connor, the country-blues bacchanals of Dry (1992) and especially Rid Of Me (1993) tore apart very personal and often scabrous dirges. Harvey's soul struggled between pleasure and pain, affection and libido, frustration and desire, and ultimately expose a psyche that was metaphorically nymphomaniac. To Bring You My Love (1995) and Is This Desire (1998) evolved her style towards labyrinthine production jobs that increased the doses of electronics and downplayed the role of Harvey's voice, and Harvey ended up sounding more like a spectator than a protagonist.

Chicago's Liz Phair came to prominence with a highly intellectual post-modernist and post-feminist exercise, Exile In Guyville (1993), theoretically a diary of brutal confessions (and superficially a hyper-realistic orgy of lust) but in practice a vast fresco of the women of her generation, musically modeled after the Rolling Stones' masterpiece but also quoting everybody from Bob Dylan to Juliana Hatfield. Less cynical and more romantic, Whip-Smart (1994) and especially Whitechocolatespaceegg (1998) focused on her eclectic musical skills. Phair now engaged in a more oblique approach to her sexual and moral appetites, to reconciling sex and love, an approach which revealed her as an impressive innovator of the folk-rock idiom.

DQE, the project of Atlanta-based singer-songwriter and guitarist Grace Braun, erupted highly personal, visceral, unpleasant confessions via a frantic vocabulary of shrieks, yelps, roars, whispers and wails on But Me I Fell Down (1994).

The rebellious stance of these performers influenced Til' Tuesday's Aimee Mann, who resurrected a changed woman on I'm With Stupid (1995).

Two veterans climbed the charts in Los Angeles with a mainstream sound and a mood that were the outcome of these changes: Sheryl Crow, with Tuesday Night Music Club (1994), and Meredith Brooks, with Blurring The Edges (1997).

A turning point was represented by the success of a Canadian teenager and former disco diva, now transplanted in Los Angeles and acquainted with the punk ethos, Alanis Morissette. Her carefree vocal style and romantic exuberance, enhanced by producer Glen Ballard's edgy rock and hip-hop arrangements (which enlisted the likes of the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Dave Navarro and Flea), transformed the songs of Jagged Little Pill (1995) into generational and gender anthems.

Neko Case, also a member of the New Pornographers, emerged out of the alt-country legion crooning and serenading in a broad range of vocal styles to pen the mood pieces of Blacklisted (2002).

British soundscapes, 1993-99

However, the most influential female singer-songwriter of the 1990s was neither American nor British: Sugarcubes' singer Bjork Gudmundsdottir came out of Iceland, of all places. Debut (1993) employed massive doses of electronic keyboards and synthetic rhythms (conducted by producer Nellee Hooper of Soul II Soul) to sculpt dance-pop tunes that combined the savage, vital spirit of rhythm'n'blues with the psychic devastation of the post-industrial age. Along the way, Bjork garnered debris of gospel, jazz, house, hip hop, Broadway show-tunes, etc. Her eccentric vocal style, which was the musical equivalent of cinematic acting, dominated Post (1995), an album that focused more openly on the groove and that the producers (Hooper, 808 State's Graham Massey, Howie B and Tricky) turned into a hodgepodge of fashionable sounds. Her traumas sounded more sincere on Homogenic (1997), which was also her most cohesive album; while her crooning on Vespertine (2001) merely admitted her fundamental travesty of kitsch, easy listening and orchestral pop of the past. In a sense, her definitive statement was Medulla (2004), which she recorded with no instruments: just her voice and studio wizardry.

Avantgarde oboe player Kate St John concocted an elegant fusion of chamber music and free-jazz on Indescribable Night (1995).

Transglobal Underground's vocalist Natacha Atlas speculated on that band's seductive world-fusion on Diaspora (1995), Halim (1997) and especially Gedida (1999).

Sally Doherty's Sally Doherty (1996) focused on multi-layered vocals (inspired by Cocteau Twins' dream-pop and Enya's wordless lullabies) set to a lush acoustic music reminiscent of Michael Nyman's minimalistic repetition, ancient musical forms and ethnic folk.

Beth Orton bridged folk music, trip-hop and Bjork's orchestral pop on Trailer Park (1997) and especially Central Reservation (1999), spicing her pensive ballads with electronic arragements, while Comfort of Strangers (2006) chartered a psychological territory halfway between Joni Mitchell's austere meditations and Cat Power's naive confessions.

The surreal songs of Swedish singer-songwriter Nicolai Dunger were influenced by the holy triad of Robert Wyatt, Tim Buckley and Van Morrison, especially on Eventide (1997), boasting neoclassical arrangements. After the trilogy of Blind Blemished Blues (2000), A Dress Book (2001) and Sweat Her Kiss (2002), Dunger perfected his fusion of soul, jazz and rock with the lavish arrangements of strings, horns, piano and percussion on Soul Rush (2001).

The second coming of industrial music
Aggro, 1990-96

Born as one of the sub-genres of the new wave, industrial music had explored a wide and wild spectrum of styles, from dance music to white noise.

Throughout the 1990s, the brutal style of Nine Inch Nails (NIN) was pervasive in the USA. Industrial music became a mass phenomenon with NIN's visceral punk ethos applied to mechanical rhythms and arrangements. At the same time, the influence of KMFDM' "aggro" style was less obvious but no less ubiquitous, with most bands trying different variations on the idea of fusing heavy-metal guitars and machines.

San Francisco's Grotus were among the few to try new ways of fusing industrial music and rock music by utilizing a battery of synthesizers, samples, turntables and real drums on Slow Motion Apocalypse (1993).
Chicago's NIN followers included: Filter, i.e. Richard Patrick and Bryan Liesegang, who were most derivative on Short Bus (1994); Stabbing Westward, with Ungod (1994); Acumen, who unleashed the industrial-metal fury of Territory = Universe (1996) and then mutated into DJ? Acucrack, who unleashed the industrial-metal to experiment with a brutal, all-electronic, version of techno and drum'n'bass, best on Mutants Of Sound (1998).

Skrew in Texas, formed by Angkor Wat's frontman Adam Grossman, devoted Burning In Water Drowning In Flame (1992) and especially Dusted (1994) to a heavier and more frantic sound.

New York's Sister Machine Gun, the project of keyboardist Chris Randall, offered a more melodic version of KMFDM on Torture Technique (1994).

Around the country, Nine Inch Nails and KMFDM imitators included: Los Angeles' Ethyl Meatplow , with Happy Days, Sweetheart (1993), Chicago's Electric Hellfire Club, with a classic of satanic rock such as Burn Baby Burn (1993), New York's Chemlab, with Burn Out At The Hydrogen Bar (1993), San Francisco's Hate Dept, with Meat Your Maker (1994). Oregon's 16 Volt (Eric Powell), with Skin (1994), Seattle's SMP, or Synthesia Murder Program, with Stalemate (1995), Los Angeles' Kevorkian Death Cycle, with Collection for Injection (1996), Missouri's Gravity Kills, with Gravity Kills (1996), New York's Bile, with Teknowhore (1996), Colorado's Society Burning (1), who produced one of the most violent works, Tactiq (1997), Oregon's Hell3ent (Bryant Black), with Helium (1998), Arizona's Machines Of Loving Grace, Ohio's Prick, i.e. Kevin McMahon, etc. Los Angeles' Drown wed the genre with prog-metal on Hold On To The Hollow (1994), Pennsylvania's God Lives Underwater wed it to Depeche Mode's synth-pop with the all-electronic Life In The So-Called Space Age (1998). In most cases, industrial-metal had simply become a pretext for producing dancefloor grooves.

The most original group was Girls Vs Boys, formed in Washington by Soulside's guitarist Scott McCloud, drummer Alexis Fleisig and bassist Johnny Temple, plus Edsel's keyboardist Eli Janney (Silas Greene). Their hardcore roots were erased by Janney's bleak, noir, jazzy soundscapes on Tropic Of Scorpio (1992), a work that explored the morbid, expressionist backdrop of industrial music rather than its brutal undertones. Janney doubled on bass for the more cohesive Venus Luxure No.1 Baby (1993), which alternated between calm, atmospheric meditations and devastating bursts of power, the former radiating infernal spleen and the latter charging with atonal guitar and dissonant keyboards on top of spasmodic rhythms (hammering bass lines and catastrophic drumming). Nick Drake' mortal anemia met Big Black's harsh, abrasive psychodramas. Cruise Yourself (1994) and House Of GVSB (1996) focused on the ugliness of that sound, leveraging denser kaleidoscopes of sound effects.
McCloud pursued his sonic research with a new project, New Wet Kojak, whose New Wet Kojak (1995) and Nasty International (1997) were dark, textural studies that mixed electronic and jazz to create eerie atmospheres reminiscent of Robert Wyatt and Morphine.

In Europe, KMFMD's aggro progressed thanks to works such as Excluded (1990) by Denmark's Klute (Claus Larsen of Leaether Strip); Pariah (1991) by Denmark's Sloppy Wrenchbody, Combat Shock (1994) by Switzerland's Swamp Terrorists, Assassins Dk United (1994) by Denmark's Psychopomps Transmission Pervous (1995) by Germany's Steril, Misery Loves Co (1995) by Sweden's Misery Loves Co, etc.

In Britain, Cubanate blended Anthemic guitar riffs, devilish electronic pulses and sub-human screams like noone else on Cyberia (1994); while Pitch Shifter were the main disciples of Godflesh's industrial-tinged grindcore.

International EBM, 1992-98

EBM or "electro" (Cabaret Voltaire, Front Line Assembly, Skinny Puppy, Front 242) became more abrasive, brutal and visceral with Brainstorming (1992) by Germany's Yelworc (Domink van Reich), Solitary Confinement (1992) by Denmark's Leaether Strip (Claus Larsen), Stored Images (1995) by Belgium's Suicide Commando (i.e., Johan Van Roy), Bunkertor 7 (1995) by Germany's :Wumpscut: (Rudy Ratzinger), Unburied (1997) by Spain's Allied Vision (Oscar Storm), El Dia De La Ira (1998) by Mexico's Hocico, etc.

American EBM, on the other hand, was mostly a grotesque mutation of European EBM. Mentallo & The Fixer fused synth-pop, EBM and dissonant electronics for the infernal visions of Revelations 23 (1993) and Where Angels Fear To Tread (1994). San Francisco's Battery relied on vocalist Maria Azevedo, best captured on Distance (1997), to deliver a formidable punch. San Francisco's Scar Tissue crafted one of the most innovative and complex works, TMOTD (1997). San Francisco's Xorcist (Peter Stone) was the most successful of the gothic dance acts, best heard on Damned Souls (1992).

Music for the Death Factory, 1990-95

The original tenet of industrial music (to write white-noise soundtracks depicting the psychological horror of the industrial society) survived in the works of sound sculptors spread all over the world.

The most radical were New Zealand's Dead C (15), i.e. Michael Morley and Bruce Russell. The primitive, guitar-based cacophony of DR503 (1987) evolved into Trapdoor Fucking Exit (1990), which harmonized raga-rock, acid-rock, the Velvet Underground's Sister Ray and the Grateful Dead's Dark Star, and into the improvised chamber psychedelic jams of Harsh '70s Reality (1992), whose rhythm-less, droning, electronic soundscapes evoked both Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music and Gordon Mumma's sonic scupltures. More anti-atmospheric improvisations surfaced on The Operation Of The Sonne (1994), containing three apocalyptic jams (notably Air). If Brian Eno invented music that should not be listened to, Dead C invented music that is impossible to listen to. However, blurred shapes of ballads appeared behind the thick, magmatic mist of White House (1995), one of their most emotional "sculptures", Repent (1996) and Tusk (1998). They always excelled at abstract chaotic noisy narratives such as Speederbot on Dead C (2000), Forever on New Electric Music (2002), Garage on Future Artists (2007).

Morley's project Gate indulged in hyper-abrasive and dilated ballads on Dew Line (1994), but progressively evolved towards the gentle, languid computer-generated electronic music of The Lavender Head (1998).

Russell's collaboration with violinist Alastair Galbraith, A Handful Of Dust was best represented by the two lengthy improvisations of The Philosophik Mercury (1994) and by The City of God, off Jerusalem Street Of Graves (1998)

Bruce Russell's trilogy of solo albums, Project For A Revolution In New York (1998), Maximalist Mantra Music (2000) and Painting The Passports Brown (2001), focused on the atmospheric quality of his extended compositions for distorted guitars and bedroom electronics

Purveyors of noise included: Germany's Genocide Organ, whose Leichenlinie (1989) was one of the terrifying albums that bridged the old school and the new school; Italy's Templebeat continued the mission of Pankow on Media Sickness (1996); Philadelphia's Namanax, with Multi-Phase Electrodynamics (1993); Chicago's Illusion Of Safety, the project of Dan Burke and Jim O'Rourke, specialized in macabre anguish on albums such as Cancer (1992); Dead Voices On Air, formed in Vancouver by former Zoviet France's collaborator Mark Spybey, with New Worlds Machine (1995); etc.

The percussive pandemonium of San Diego's Crash Worship was quite unique and hardly documented on Triplemania II (1995). Seattle's TchKung, too, staged tribal shows that offered vivid views of industrial decay, accompanied by political rants on Tchkung (1995).

Notably missing in the 1990s were the British, the very founders of the genre. Perhaps the only significant addition to the canon came from Towering Inferno, who summarized twenty years of experiments with the terrifying multimedia opera Kaddish (1994).

Digital hardcore, 1992-96

Several bands had been toying with a fusion of techno and rock. For example, Los Angeles' Babyland played techno with the fury of punk-rock on You Suck Crap (1992).

A far stronger synthesis was achieved in Germany by Atari Teenage Riot, the project of Berlin's programmer and anarchist Alec Empire (Alexander Wilke) and two vocalists (Carl Crack and Hanin Elias). The "digital hardcore" (supersonic beats, heavy-metal riffs, agit-prop lyrics, videogame-ish sound effects) of Delete Yourself (1995) straddled the line between punk-rock and techno. Alec Empire, the angry young man of techno, toyed with all sorts of styles, notably: the all-electronic Les Etoiles Des Filles Mortes (1996), which displayed the influence of avantgarde composer Karlheinz Stockhausen and gothic overtones; the glacial ambient noise of Low On Ice (1995); the cubistic, psychedelic downtempo of Hypermodern Jazz 2000.5 (1996); the "drill and bass" of The Destroyer (1996); and the nightmarish free-jazz electronica of The Curse of the Golden Vampire (1998), a collaboration with Techno Animal's mastermind Kevin Martin.

EC8OR, i.e. French keyboardist Patric Catani and German vocalist Gina D'Iorio, conducted a similar campaign with All Of Us Can Be Rich (1997), a terrifying, excruciating, nonstop sonic assault made of bulldozer/jackhammer beats, mind-bending distortions and death-metal riffs.

Slo-core
Slo-core, 1991-94

One of the most important innovations of the 1990s to the canon of psychedelic folk-rock was "slo-core", variously defined depending on local variations, but basically a slow, dreamy, melancholy version of dream-pop, a direct descendant of Galaxie 500 and Yo La Tengo, that typically required lengthy and restrained compositions.

Slo-core was sanctified in Chicago by Codeine with Frigid Stars (1991). John Engle's guitar distortion was so dilated to sound like an organ, Chris Brokaw's drumming sounded like bells tolling for a funeral and Stephen Immerwahr's sleepwalking litanies evoked Nick Drake and Tim Buckley. That emotional "black hole" attained nirvana on White Birch (1994), featuring new drummer Doug Scharin: longer songs, deeper trance, slower tempos, as if they were aiming for a song with no title in which the group does not play and does not sing.

North Carolina's Seam, the project of former Bitch Magnet's vocalist Sooyoung Park, fashioned the floating timbres and shimmering textures of Headsparks (1991) but, more importantly, the unstable filigree of The Problem With Me (1993), a sedate but also forceful work that seemed to merge tender folk-pop and neurotic hardcore, and felt like the slow-motion replay of a volcano's eruption. Are You Driving Me Crazy? (1995) was both an even more personal show of the leader and a less abstract, almost "poppier" affair, which led to the atmospheric melodies of The Pace Is Glacial (1998).

San Francisco's Red House Painters, an acoustic quartet led by introverted poet Mark Kozelek, penned the depressed mantras of Down Colorful Hill (1992): shy guitars that played chords as if they were reciting rosaries, and moribund dirges that seemed to end before beginning but then lasted for eternity, created quietly unnerving atmospheres that blurred the border between sorrow and ecstasy. Like with the music of Leonard Cohen, Tim Buckley and Nick Drake, the effect was both subdued and majestic, a contradiction that became the quintessence of their art. The demo-quality of those recordings contributed to the sense of philosophical melancholy, but Red House Painters (1993), also known as Rollercoaster, revealed a much lighter and brighter mood: rather than whining, Kozelek was contemplating the universe. Each song was a moment in time, an impressionistic watercolor. Ocean Beach (1995) brought even more life to the compositions, dispensing with the most austere elements of their slow acoustic chamber folk. Mark Kozelek's next project, Sun Kil Moon, interpreted Kozelek's existential spleen in the 14-minute cryptic tour de force Duk Koo Kim, off Ghosts Of The Great Highway (2003), and especially in the sprawling streams of consciousness of April (2008).

Minneapolis' trio Low, too, resurrected the depressed and anemic mood of Nick Drake, but then wed it to LaMonte Young's minimalism and to the Cowboy Junkies' lounge melodies. I Could Live In Hope (1994) was the quintessential case of "the whole is more than the sum of its parts": the parts were trivial and scant, but the whole was a triumph of unbridled creativity. Ascetic more than mournful, it sounded like the rock equivalent of Japanese haiku and Tibetan tangka, an art of frigid ballads that drowned in a lattice of empty notes. Low's "song" was chamber music for emotions that slowly faded away, that were never truly felt. At the same time, the unbearable delay and dilation of musical structures fostered and maintained an intensity of feeling that an ordinary refrain would have released in a few seconds. The tranquil jams of Long Division (1995) were as musical as circles spreading in a pond, but were given a soul by the whispered thoughts of guitarist Alan Sparhawk and drummer Mimi Parker. The Curtain Hits The Cast (1996) turned to electronic keyboards in order to relieve the gloom and lighten up the ambience, and Secret Name (1999) expanded the instrumentation by adding a string section, piano and timpani. Low regressed to a more conventional format for Things We Lost In The Fire (2001) and attained formal perfection with Trust (2002), a masterpiece of subtle metamorphoses, glacial counterpoint and ghostly religious music.

Texas' Bedhead, led by Matt Kadane, exlored a state of mind between psychedelic trance and teenage angst on What Fun Life Was (1994) and Beheaded (1996). Their ameobic pieces "grew" rather than simply exist: they were the object of a gradual, evolutionary (and potentially never-ending) process that slowly brought the emotions into focus.

The "slo-core" style became ubiquitous, gathering momentum around the country.

Ethereal pop, 1990-95

A variant on "male" slo-core was a style of fragile folk-pop ballads for female whispers and understated arrangements, more or less inspired by the Cowboy Junkies.

The concept was pioneered by a group that originated from the psychedelic movement, Mazzy Star. Rain Parade's and Opal's guitarist David Roback replaced Kendra Smith with a more delicate vocalist, Hope Sandoval, and greatly expanded the scope of his music on She Hangs Brightly (1990), a melting pot of acoustic folk, Delta blues, oneiric acid-rock and laconic lounge jazz. So Tonight That I Might See (1993) barely increased the melodic element of their tender lullabies, which reached alternatively for the galactic, subliminal, mystical and impressionistic levels.

Somewhat related to this atmospheric and psychological school were the electronic vignettes of His Name Is Alive, the brainchild of Michigan's multi-instrumentalist Warren Defever who employed different female singers for each album. Rhythm was optional on Livonia (1990), an experimental work that indulged in tape loops and samples but mostly relied on an elegant combination of ghostly neoclassical vocals and surreal electronic effects. Guitars were given more prominence on Mouth By Mouth (1993), and the group sound was more earthly, bridging Laurie Anderson's musical theater and dream-pop. The sophisticated, almost ambient Stars On E.S.P. (1996), was reminiscent of Brian Wilson's productions but in a skewed, unorthodox way. Defever's arrangements did not shun the obvious: they recreated the obvious in another dimension.

Others included: Illinois' Moon Seven Times, featuring Lynn Confield, who specialized in ethereal madrigals that boasted the spiritual depth of a raga on Moon Seven Times (1993); Congo Norvell, led by former Gun Club's guitarist Kid Congo Powers and vocalist Sally Norvell, who gave one of the best imitationsof the Cowboy Junkies with their Lullabies (1993); Boston's Helium, led by Mary Timony, who bordered on feedback-pop on Dirt Of Luck (1995); Ohio's Elysian Fields, fronted by Marlene Dietrich-ian vocalist Jennifer Charles, with Bleed Your Cedar (1996); etc.

The atmospheric ballad, 1990-99

Whether it was "slo-core" or simply slow pop, the influence of alt-country or a by-product of psychedelia, the slow, atmospheric ballad became fashionable again.

Los Angeles' Idaho, i.e. singer Jeff Martin and guitarist John Berry, were both the most existential and the most psychedelic. Year After Year (1993) was a set of suicidal psalms imbued with documentary lyrics and recited in a pensive tone halfway between Leonard Cohen and Lou Reed. Martin's indolent pessimism reached new heights of sweetness on This Way Out (1994).

Acetone continued the tradition of (in reverse chronological order) Dream Syndicate, Television, Neil Young, Grateful Dead with collections of transcendental pseudo-country ballads such as Cindy (1993).

Pennsylvania's acoustic quintet Low Road wed the aesthetic of slo-core to country music on The Devil's Pocket (1994).

That abyss of gloom got rather crowded: Los Angeles' Love Spirals Downwards, who concocted a gothic/exotic/medieval/spiritual variant of the dream-pop cliches made popular by the Cocteau Twins and by Dead Can Dance, for example on Ardor (1994); Los Angeles' Spain, with The Blue Moods Of Spain (1995); Virginia's Drunk, with A Derby Spiritual (1997); etc.

Texas' American Analog Set advanced the oneiric sound pioneered by Galaxie 500, especially on their second album, From Our Living Room To Yours (1997).

New York's trio Calla sculpted shadowy melodies that slowly crept out of their fragile envelopes on the stark and stately Calla (1999), a softly-hallucinated music reminiscent of Ry Cooder's soundtracks and Calexico's desert ambience.

Seattle (and the Northwest in general) originated a close relative of "slo-core", a form of "textural rock" that hanged somewhere between the extremes of roots-rock and post-rock, and emphasized non-linear guitar-based soundscapes. Built To Spill were the reigning champions of the genre throughout the decade. Formed in Idaho by guitarist Doug Martsch, with Caustic Resin's guitarist Brett Netson and Lync's rhythm section, Ultimate Alternative Wavers (1993) was mostly a guitar tour de force, but already displayed their slovenly, messy and noisy fusion of Neil Young, Grateful Dead and Sonic Youth. There's Nothing Wrong With Love (1994), instead, focused on structure, constraining Martsch's imagination. Perfect From Now On (1997) summed the two, granting the guitar several degrees of freedom while anchoring it to a spectacular group sound (the Spinanes' drummer Scott Plouf, Nelson's bass, cello, mellotron and synthesizer). These articulate and elegant compositions relied both on lengthy hypnotic jamming and on simple, manageable form. Martsch's relentless guitar ruminations created the noise-rock equivalent of John Fahey's "primitive guitar": introspection, meditation on the meaning of life, contemplation of the universe, and worship of the absolute. Keep It Like A Secret (1998) simply channeled that creative force in the format of the rock song. When Built To Spill finally returned to the science of abstract jamming, on You In Reverse (2006), its blend of pensive transcendence and manic depression sounded like the perfect soundtrack for the zeitgeist of the new century. Martsch's guitar had a unique way to penetrate the inner core of a song's melody and transform it into a cathartic experience. Marstch's tormented solos were the antidote to an era that increasingly strived for simplicity and superficiality.

Silkworm boasted the depressed noise of guitarists Joel Phelps and Andy Cohen. Cohen's introverted mood and neurotic guitar dominated In The West (1993) and Libertine (1994). Pared down to a trio after Phelps' departure, Firewater (1996) veered towards the distorted, metaphysical folk-rock of Dream Syndicate and Neil Young, while highlighting the creative rhythms of drummer Michael Dahlquist and bassist Tim Midgett. Developer (1997) was another subtle essay of musical imagery, and perhaps even more arduous.

Red Stars Theory turned Built To Spill's brainy trance upside down, emphasizing the trance, on their mostly-instrumental albums But Sleep Came Slowly (1997) and especially Life In A Bubble Can Be Beautiful (1999), which fused psychedelic, chamber and country music. Their songs were amoeba-like pseudo-jamming lattices that freely elaborated on a theme relying more on atmosphere and feeling than on structure or dynamics.

The legacy of slo-core was still being felt at the end of the decade on countless recordings: Fuck's Baby Loves A Funny Bunny (1996) and Half Film's East Of Monument (1998) in San Francisco; Kingsbury Manx's bucolic Kingsbury Manx (1999) in North Carolina; etc.

Built To Spill's best pupils were Seattle's Death Cab For Cutie, whose painstakingly detailed stories of alienation and defeat on Something About Airplanes (1999) employed the "textural" technique of the masters.

British transcendence, 1995-97

In England, Drugstore's Drugstore (1995) was a work of subtle seduction a` la Cowboy Junkies and Mazzy Star.

Mojave 3, the new project by Slowdive's vocalists Neil Halstead and Rachel Goswell, were modern bards that harked back to the golden age of country-rock and folk-rock (Bob Dylan's Blonde On Blonde, early Donovan, Leonard Cohen) but added a metaphysical dimension. Ask Me Tomorrow (1996) and especially Excuses For Travellers (2000) were devoted to folk and country ballads that a lacerating pain had emptied of all energy and filled with a zen-like acceptance of the mystery of life.

Movietone, the project of Flying Saucer Attack's vocalist Rachel Brook and Third Eye Foundation's guitarist Matt Elliot played melancholy twilight ballads a` la Mazzy Star on Day And Night (1997).

Tram's Heavy Black Frame (1999) still revealed the ghost of Nick Drake behind slo-core's agony.

Dance-music in the age of techno
Body Music

It took a decade for techno and house to become the dominant dance styles, but, when they did, they spread like wildfire around the globe. The masses reacted enthusiastically, as they had in the 1960s to the hippy phenomenon. Over the years, the difference between techno and house blurred, and most ravers would not know which one was which (techno was mostly instrumental and descended from Kraftwerk, whereas house was mostly vocal and descended from soul, funk and disco music).

Belgium was one of the epicenters of the fad, perhaps fueled by the school of "electronic body music" (Front 242). Lust (1991), by the Lords Of Acid offered wildly throbbing as well as openly erotic dance-music with female vocalist. From Belgium, the new dance-craze spread to Holland and France. Soon, all the European countries overflew with techno acts.

France's Laurent Garnier, with Shot In The Dark (1995), and Japan's Ken Ishii, with Jelly Tones (1995), were quintessential techno musicians of the era.

Germany boasted the most varied scene. Disc-jockey Sven Vath virtually invented Frankfurt's "progressive-house" (or, simply, "trance") with the ambient Accident In Paradise (1993); while Maurizio (Moritz Von Oswald) coined a dub-inflected style in Berlin. Air Liquide, i.e. Ingmar "Dr Walker" Koch and Cem "Jammin` Unit" Oral, spearheaded Cologne's psychedelic techno with the ambitious The Increased Difficulty Of Concentration (1995), at the border between collage and stream of consciousness, an album that included the colossal Robot Wars Symphony, replete with movements that harked back to (alternatively) Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream and Brian Eno. La Bouche, formed in Frankfurt by two black American vocalists, became the most successful acts of melodic techno after they concocted the Euro-techno hits Sweet Dreams (1994) and Be My Lover (1995); while L@n, the Duesseldorf-based duo of Rupert Huber and Otto Mueller, belonged to the avantgarde with the Neu-influenced robotic electronic music of L@n (1996). X Marks The Pedwalk continued the tradition of the industrial dance of the 1980s, whereas Porter Ricks played "intelligent" techno. Ian Pooley (Pinnekamp) was one of the prime innovators of house.

Norway's Apoptygma Berzerk (Stephan Groth) explored gothic techno on Soli Deo Gloria (1994).

Starting with Intervision (1997), Finland-born singer and multi-instrumentalist Jimi Tenor played kitsch music (and sang in a sexy falsetto) to a techno beat with an approach that was the musical equivalent of Andy Warhol's pop art but that mocked everybody from soul to glam.

Sweden seemed to specialize in Abba-like melodies sung to the techno beat, whether in a clearly Abba-derived fashion, as Ace Of Base did with All That She Wants (1992) and Beautiful Life (1995), or in an ironic synth-pop style, as Aqua did on the exuberant Aquarium (1997).

Other international hits of the mid-1990s included: Corona's Rhythm Of The Night (1993), from Italy; Real McCoy's Runaway (1994), from Germany; 2 Unlimited's Get Ready For This (1994), from Holland; veteran American r&b vocalist Judy Cheeks' Reach (1996) Playahitty's Summer Is Magic (1996), from Italy; No Mercy's Where Do You Go (1996), from Miami; although the biggest sensations worldwide was a much simpler production, Los Del Mar's flamenco-infected Macarena (1993).

Australia's most creative techno musician was perhaps David Thrussell, who evolved from the naive techno sound of Snog's Lies Inc (1992) to the almost avantgarde industrial-ambient-ethnic fusion of Black Lung's Silent Weapons For Quiet Wars (1994) to the sophisticated techno sculptures of Hollow Earth (1994), credited to Soma, a duo with Pieter Bourke.

The USA, the homeland of techno, on the other hand, was highly derivative of the European styles. The jovial romps of New York's Deee-Lite and Los Angeles' Crystal Method were old-fashioned party music adapted to the new instruments. The American scene was hardly a match for the English disc-jockeys. Detroit's second (third?) generation was best represented by the work of Jeff Mills, founder of the "Underground Resistance" collective, particularly his experiments on stripped-down techno beat begun with Waveform Transmission Vol 1 (1992) and culminating with the multi-part symphony Time Machine (2001). Another Detroit act, Drexciya, i.e. the duo of James Stinson and Gerald Donald, between 1991 and 1996 fused the electro sound of the 1980s with space-jazz and cosmic music. Stinson pursued that avenue till the transcendent soundscapes of Harnessed the Storm (2002), while Donald concocted cryptic revisions of techno stereotypes for the post-cyberpunk age on Dopplereffekt's Linear Accelerator (2003) and Der Zyklus' Biometry (2004). DJ Assault (Craig Adams) publicized the "ghetto tech" style, influenced by hip-hop culture. Felix Da Housecat was a purveyor of old-fashioned Chicago house. BT (Los Angeles-based composer Brian Transeau) invented "epic house" (or "progressive house" or "trance") with the single Embracing The Sunshine (1995), and his album IMA (1996) pushed the boundaries towards out-of-space electronica (the 43-minute Sasha's Voyage Of IMA). Wod, the project of Chicago's Tod Miner, concocted a combustion of robotic beats, wild drumming, electronic noises and forceful staccatos, with little or no interest in melody, on No Peace Without The Beat (1998).

The exception was San Francisco, the only place where a truly "American" style emerged. Starting with the EP Magick Sounds of the Underground (1992), Hardkiss, a trio of San Francisco disc jockeys and producers, began bridging the hippie and the rave eras by specializing in eccentric psychedelic electronica via lush, hallucinatory, orgasmic jams of acid, cosmic, techno-dub. San Francisco's Daum Bentley became part of that movement, that also included Single Cell Orchestra, Young American Primitive, High Lonesome Sound System, etc. His own project, Freaky Chakra, adapted Chicago house, European body music and British techno to acid-rock. Trancendental Funk Bump/ Halucifuge (1993) and Peace Fixation (1994) upped the ante for the entire movement thanks mainly to their cornucopia of electronic effects. The trippy tracks of Lowdown Motivator (1995) spiraled out of control, soaring over a jungle of manically pulsing synths and sequencers.

British progressive dance

Britain was a different story altogether. First and foremost, there were countless remnants of the rave season, which means exuberant pop-dance acts: EMF, whose Unbelievable (1990) boasted an infectious mixture of bubblegum, psychedelia and rap; Utah Saints, who basically replaced the idea of the "cover song" with the idea of a song made of samples of other songs; New Mind, whose Fractured (1993) was a summary of the state of the art; Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine, whose The Love Album (1992) offered cartoonish glam-rock and synth-pop embellished with punk rage and scathing satire.

But, inevitably in a world that lived on continuous change, the days of traditional techno and house were numbered. In 1996, for example, legendary disc-jockey Paul Oakenfold launched "Goa Trance" at the "Full Moon Party", yet another dance craze ("Goa Trance" was literally Sven Vath's "trance" via the hippie tribes of Goa, in India), one that actually took hold in Germany and produced such production masterpieces as Paul Van Dyk's For An Angel (1998) and Andre Tanneberger's 9pm Till I Come (1999). And more dance crazes would follow.

Ambient House

An unusual form of dance-music became popular in England during the 1990s: "ambient house". The idea (originally from 808 State) was to offer music to "chill out", but soon the soundtracks for "chill-out rooms" created a genre of its own, at the border between techno and minimalism. It caused a major stylistic revolution.

The manifesto of "ambient house" was Chill Out (1990), by the wacky duo of Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty, KLF, who mixed field recordings, celestial organ drones, languid guitar tones, musical samples, and electronic sounds.

The idea was given artistic depth by pioneers such as Irresistible Force, the project of disc-jockey Mixmaster Morris (Morris Gould). Flying High (1992) was inspired by avantgarde composers such as Harry Partch and Karlheinz Stockhausen, and was reminiscent of Brian Eno, Steve Reich and Tangerine Dream, while revealing affinities with Terence McKenna's hallucinogenic metaphysica. Global Chillage (1994) showcased both the psychedelic factor and the (almost baroque) producer's skills, thus wedding the postmodernist aesthetics of assemblage and acid-rock (after all, his suites were merely a new take on the old form of the free-form jam).

Orb, formed by disc-jockey Alex Paterson (who had worked for Paul Oakenfold's "chill-out rooms") with assistance from former KLF's mastermind Jimmy Cauty, codified the revolution that was underway. The music of the EP A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Centre Of The Ultraworld (1989), a cosmic mantra for water and synthesizer, and of the album Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld (1991) sounded like new-age music. The lengthy tracks of U.F. Orb (1992) were born at the crossroad between Brian Eno's impressionistic landscapes, the postmodernist ideology of stylistic recycling, the new technologies of sampling and the techno beat. They did not have an emotional impact, and they did not unravel in a narrative way: they slowly morphed. Blue Room (a 40 minute-long single) featured guitarist Steve Hillage and bassist Jah Wobble, and was Paterson's tour de force of montage and mixing. Paterson had transformed the disc-jockey into a classical composer and transferred collage art to electronic dance music. Rather than fully endorsing the "ambient" style that he had contributed to create, Orb continued to experiment new forms of dance music: Orbus Terrarum (1995) and Orblivion (1997) rely on a subtle art of choreography to deliver an experience that is both unsettling and hypnotic.

Ultramarine, i.e. Paul Hammond and Ian Cooper, laid an unlikely bridge between Canterbury's prog-rock of the 1970s and ambient house. Their ethereal, pastoral vision begin to form on Every Man And Woman Is A Star (1992), which was virtually a collection of chamber pieces for flutes, trumpets, pianos, string section, samples and electronic machines, and blossomed on United Kingdom (1993), which added stronger dub and jazz ambience and Robert Wyatt's divine vocals.

Psychic Warriors Ov Gaia, the project of Dutch electronic musician Reinier Brekelmans, introduced exotic ambient house with Ov Biospheres And Sacred Grooves (1992).

Norway's multi-instrumentalist Geir Jenssen (ex-Bel Canto), who had pioneered ambient house with Bleep's North Pole By Submarine (1990), produced one of the most lyrical albums of ambient house, Microgravity (1991), credited to his new project, Biosphere. And that project evolved towards a rhythm-less "arctic sound", set in a icy wasteland of sonic bliss, notably with Substrata (1997).

By 1992 the masters had all debuted and were spawning countless imitations. Global Communication (1), i.e. Mark "Link" Pritchard and Aphex Twin co-founder Tom Middleton, penned the cosmic, minimalist and melancholy soundpaintings and subtle, bionic mutations of 76:14 (1994).

Jonah Sharp's Spacetime Continuum, who had collaborated with psychedelic philosopher Terence McKenna, electronic soundpainter Tetsu Inoue and ambient dub master Bill Laswell, joined the ambient fray with the polished production, the chromatic arrangements, the organic flow and the psychodramatic tension of Sea Biscuit (1994).

George Fleming-Saunders, disguised under the moniker Solar Quest, blended minimalist repetition and ambient stasis on Orgship (1994).

Toby Marks, better known as Banco De Gaia, was quick to jump on the bandwagon with the alternatively ambient and dance postcards of Maya (1994) and Last Train To Lhasa (1995).

Paul Frankland's Woob delivered the exotic and impressionistic 1194 (1995), ambient house's musical equivalent of Gauguin's and Rousseau's paintings.

German musicians also excelled the ambient and atmospheric variant of techno/industrial music, marked by slower tempos and sophisticated arrangements: Project Pitchfork, with the romantic and exoteric Entities (1992); the tender, delicate minimalism of Bionaut (Joerg Burger), for example on Ethik (1993); Haujobb's charming lounge-techno on Solutions For A Small Planet (1996); etc.

Drome, i.e. German Keyboardist and vibraphonist Bernd "Burnt" Friedman, was one of the first to incorporate hip-hop breaks into chill-out grooves with his album Final Corporate Colonization Of The Unconscious (1993).

IDM

Numerous outfits experimented with the format of techno and house music, and with the sampling technology (the real protagonist of this generation's dance-music). The Intelligent Dance Music (IDM) mailing list was set up on the Internet in August 1993 to discuss the works of these artists, and the name stuck.

Orbital, i.e. Paul and Phil Hartnoll, crowned the season of raves. Their Green Album (1991) and Brown Album (1993) did to techno what Art Of Noise had done to hip-hop: they transformed it into a sophisticated art of complex compositions by intellectual "auteurs". The latter, in particular, was a parade of stylish gestures and poses, from sci-fi dissonances to dilated drones, from angelic voices to dadaistic collages, from staccato repetition a` la Michael Nyman to machine-like industrial cadences. Snivilisation (1994) and especially In Sides (1996) turned to narrative logic and emotional content, using the dance beats as mere background.

Eat Static, a side project of Ozric Tentacles' drummer Merv Pepler and keyboardist Joie Hinton, used techno beats to reach the same orbit as Gong's effervescent space-hippie prog-rock. The craft of Implant (1995) was both insane and imaginative, and was channelled into smoother structures on Epsylon (1995), eventually leading to the sophisticated and elegant art of transglobal samples and stylistic cross-breeding of Science Of The Gods (1997).

London's disc-jockey Andy Weatherall was one of the men who revolutionized the scene with the Sabres Of Paradise, a project that evolved from the inventive techno music of Sabresonic (1993) to the loose, fractured, ghostly downtempo of Haunted Dancehall (1994), a style that spilled over onto the evocative soundscapes of his next project, Two Lone Swordsmen's The Fifth Mission (1995), that blended dub, breakbeats and noise.

Future Sound of London, i.e. electronic musicians Garry Cobain and Brian Dougans, incorporated natural sounds (often as a rhythmic element), Klaus Schulze's cosmic music and exotic voices into Lifeforms (1994). The harmonic puzzle of Dead Cities (1996) returned to frantic rhythms, and used the feverish stylistic changes as yet another rhythmic element.

Black Dog Productions experimented with jazz, minimalism, cosmic and ethnic music on Spanners (1994). Plaid, an emanation of Black Dog Productions, revolutionized with new rhythmic patterns on Mbuki Mvuki (1991), predating jungle.

Leftfield, i.e. the duo of Neil Barnes and Paul Daley, created techno for non-dancers (slower, softer, lighter) with Leftism (1995).

Spaceheads, i.e. the duo of trumpeter Andy Diagram and percussionist Richard Harrison, alumni of Pop Group-style avant-jazz-funk-rock outfits such as the Honkies during the "Madchester" era, wed the collage techniques of the avantgarde, jazz improvisation and the angular rhythms of the post-techno dancefloor (a mixture of hip hop, drum'n'bass and acid jazz) on Spaceheads (1995), enhancing the textures of their "prepared" instruments with loops and overdubs.

The general impetus towards "intelligent" dance-music yielded the grotesque phenomenon of electronic musician Richard James. The three EPs credited to AFX, starting with Analogue Bubblebath (1991, 1992 and 1993) contained harsh, abrasive dance-music, sometimes sounding like a disco version of Morton Subotnick's electronic poems (and they remained his most valuable musical statements). In the meantime, the catchy singles credited to Aphex Twin, Quoth (1993) and On (1993), were fusing techno and pop, aiming for the charts, and Polygon Window's Surfing On Sinewaves (1992) was traditional, throbbing techno music, aiming for dancefloor appeal. To further confuse his persona, Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works 1985-92 (1992) and Selected Ambient Works Volume II (1994) were experiments in ambient house and abstract electronic/concrete composition. They were childish and antiquated (and perhaps a joke on music critics), but they increased James' reputation, making him the first star of ambient house. I Care Because You Do (1995), his most cohesive work, cleaned up his act, offering atmospheric dance-music with occasional hints to his old virulent style.

Ontario-based disc-jockey Richie Hawtin, better known as Plastikman, refined techniques developed over the years from Kraftwerk to Cabaret Voltaire to achieve the minimal and psychedelic aesthetics of Musik (1994) and Consumed (1998).

In the USA, the most famous techno artist of the 1990s was Richard Melville Hall, aka Moby. His early anthems, Go (1991) and Drop A Beat (1992), were soon superseded by the ambient/new age/neoclassical/minimalist ambitions of Ambient (1993) and Everything Is Wrong (1993), a passion confirmed by Voodoo Child's The End Of Everything (1997), a collection of electronic vignettes a` la Brian Eno, and possibly his best work. Vapourspace, i.e. disc-jockey Mark Gage, produced the 35-minute single Gravitational Arch of 10 (1993) and the Themes From Vapourspace (1994), that are reminiscent of avantgarde electronic music and reference Kraftwerk, Philip Glass and Klaus Schulze. But, again, the USA was only the periphery: Britain was the center for IDM.

Transglobal dance

Another powerful innovation to come out of England was the "transglobal dance" craze. By fusing world-music, electronic arrangements and dance beats, these ensembles coined the ultimate synthesis of the 1990s.

The idea was pioneered by the multiracial group Transglobal Underground, featuring Natacha Atlas' exotic melisma, Nick "Count Dubulah" Page's creative sampling, Alex Kasiek's surreal keyboards and Hamid Mantu's forest of percussions, on Dream Of 100 Nations (1993) and International Times (1994), that fused dance, ambient and ethnic styles. It was not a sterile exercise of Arabic-African-Indian fusion, but a stab at reinventing rhythm itself: their "world beat" was solidly rooted in ethnic traditions from around the world, but was no longer any of them. As they replaced samples with real instruments, they also achieved a warmer (and more authentically "ethnic") sound on Psychic Karaoke (1996).

Another multiracial ensemble, Loop Guru, overdubbed tape loops, field recordings, vocal samples, and exotic instruments in a way that emanated stronger ambient and jazz flavors. Duniya (1995), which included their tour de force, The Third Chamber, sounded like a blend of Orbital, Jon Hassell, Brian Eno and Weather Report, and the mellotron-heavy Amrita (1995) made the experiment more accessible.

Future Primitive (1994) was the manifesto of former Tangerine Dream member Paul Haslinger. Swinging from extreme violence to extreme calm, Haslinger unleashed demonic orgies of percussions, techno-funky tempos, heavy-metal riffs, chamber music interludes, industrial beats, screams, electronic distortions and pounding polyrhythms. That futuristic collage technique intensified on World Without Rules (1996), which also boasts a stronger ethnic flavor and the sheer violence of a heavy-metal band, while remaining anchored to the format of dance-music. Score (1999) completed the trilogy in a more technical vein.

Michael Paradinas, better known as Mu-ziq, unleashed the polyrhythmic bacchanals of In Pine Effect (1995), that worked more like a therapeutic shock than dance grooves, an idea refined on his most complex work, Lunatic Harness (1997), that ran the gamut from symphonic music to jazz, from lounge music to drum'n'bass.

The multiracial quartet Cornershop, led by Tjinder Singh, fused Indian, hip-hop and techno music on Woman's Gotta Have It (1995) and on the more commercial When I Was Born For The 7th Time (1997).

In the USA, the closest thing to "transglobal dance" was probably Tulku, the project conceived by Native American keyboardist Jim Wilson: Transcendence (1995) and Season Of Souls (1998), were experiments in ethnic trance music that drew inspiration from various indigenous styles of the world.

Holland's Alain Eskinasi, better known as Brainscapes, used the idea to package relaxing new-age music on Brainscapes (1996).

London-born producer, disc-jockey and tablas virtuoso Talvin Singh was an erudite purveyors of this fusion with OK (1998).

Big Beat

The last dance "cross-over" of the decade was to be the one between techno and rock music (or "big beat"). This happened almost by accident, as a number of British producers and djs reacted to the intellectual wing of dance-music by focusing on more accessible dance-music that relied on shameless, old-fashioned catchy breakbeats and silly, novelty-like samples. Because it did not depend so much on studio trickery, it could be performed live, thus meeting the demand of the rock audience. Because it could be performed live, it reasserted the importance of the "front-man", the distinctive trait of rock music.

The idea was pioneered in England by Liam Howlett's Prodigy with the hyperkinetic numbers of Experience (1992), the versatile and cosmopolitan Music For The Jilted Generation (1995) and the super-synthesis of The Fat Of The Land (1997), which ran the gamut from ambient to heavy-metal (albeit in a very superficial manner). The Prodigy became the first superstars of the rave culture. Howlett was the brain behind the act, but Keith Flint (the singer) attracted the tabloids. It was techno for the rock market.

An even more obvious premonition was contained in the music of Underworld, the trio of disc-jockey Darren Emerson, vocalist/guitarist Karl Hyde and keyboardist) Rick Smith. Rock guitars, electronic dance beats and spoken-word found a magic intersection in the lengthy tracks of Dubnobasswithmyheadman (1994), each a chameleon continuously changing in texture, melody and tempo without ever losing its identity. The album, a tour de force of dance production techniques, referenced the insistent sequencers of Giorgio Moroder's disco-music but was mainly a container of sound effects, polyrhythms and haunting melodic fragments. Second Toughest In The Infants (1996) reprised the combination of existential mood and fantasia-like melodic collage.

Musically speaking, the frenzy increased with the Chemical Brothers, i.e. "Madchester" veterans Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons, whose Exit Planet Dust (1995) and Dig Your Own Hole (1997) recycled overdoses of funk, heavy-metal and hip-hop, confusing the languages of Public Enemy, Kraftwerk and the Stooges.

The prophecy of "big beat" was fully realized later into the decade by Norman Cook, better known as Fatboy Slim. The "songs" on Better Living Through Chemistry (1996) and You've Come a Long Way Baby (1998) were wacky collages of styles set to dance beats and fragmented into jerky segments, a praxis that, despite the high-school prank mood, was reminiscent of the deconstruction/reconstruction techniques of postmodernist art.

Death In Vegas, the brainchild of multi-instrumentalist Richard Fearless, contributed the ambient-dub-techno-rock stew of Dead Elvis (1998).

Unlike most techno musicians, Basement Jaxx, i.e. disc-jockeys Felix Burton and Simon Ratcliffe, composed real "songs", songs that stood on their own, such as Samba Magic (1996) and Fly Life (1996).

Their only rivals were France's Daft Punk, whose Homework (1996) featured a retro fixation for Giorgio Moroder's disco-music, high-energy frenzy, and well-formed songwriting.

Other groups that tried to bring back the fun into dance music included Bentley Rhythm Ace and (from Scotland) Bis. They both were retro musicians offering little or no innovation, but plenty of catchy hooks and irresistible beats.

Dance music for non-dancers

Ambient house transformed into avantgarde music with Scanner, born Robin Rimbaud. His works achieved intense melodramas through either hypnotic layering of found sounds or subliminal repetition of soundbites and beats. His early recordings, such as Mass Observation (1994), focused on austere sound-collages of telephone conversations. Exposing the existential nudity of the wireless society, Rimbaud contented himself with providing a passive documentary of the city's aural cacophony. His most challenging soundscapes were on Spore (1995) and the Lauwarm Instrumentals (1999), a bold excursion from new-age meditational pieces to symphonic apotheoses.

Faithless, the project of producers and disc-jockeys Rollo Armstrong and Ayalah "Sister Bliss" Bentovim, penned the elaborate, acrobatic, chameleon-like arrangements of Reverence (1996).

The Lo-Fidelity Allstars opted for a "street" approach to dance music, rooted in urban alienation and decadence, with albums such as How To Operate With A Blown Mind (1998), while the music sampled (literally and metaphorically) half a century of dance styles, from soul to funk, from dub to house, from hip hop to trip-hop.

Luke Slater crafted Freak Funk (1997), an eclectic potpourri of hip-hop, propulsive funk and ambient textures.

Christian Vogel was a significant composer of "dissonant" techno, particularly challenging on Specific Momentific (1996) and the programmatic All Music Has Come To An End (1998).

In Ireland, David Holmes composed works, such as his third album, Bow Down To The Exit Sign (2000), that mixed audio verite` segments and an eclectic range of musical styles.

In Japan, Susumu Yokota wove the intricate grooves of Cat Mouse And Me (1996) in a continuum of sonic bliss before turning to ambient house with Magic Thread (1998), a stylistic journey that would lead to an art akin to Brian Eno's impressionistic soundpainting on Sakura (2000) and Grinning Cat (2001).

Foxcore
The riot-grrrrls of Seattle

Hardcore punk-rock had been mostly a male phenomenon. Girls were excluded from hardcore the same way they were excluded in society from many other male-only rituals, whether street gangs or American football. The "riot grrrrls" movement of the 1990s changed the sociopolitical landscape of punk-rock by introducing the "girl factor" into the equation of frustration/ depression/ desperation/ anger.

The riot-grrrrls movement originated largely in and around Seattle (Olympia, to be precise), and indeed it was Seattle that boasted the most fertile scene for female-only bands. The movement's manifesto was the article "Women, sex and rock and roll", published by "Puncture" in 1989. The first radio program to address the angry young girls was "Your Dream Girl", conducted by Lois Maffeo on Olympia's KAOS. One of the earliest riot-grrrrls was Molly Neuman, who joined Allison Wolfe to create the fanzine "Girl Germs", one of the main alternative media for American college girls. In the summer of 1991 they celebrated themselves at the Olympia campus, shouting their slogan "Revolution Girl Style Now!" The mood had been changing throughout the 1980s: the magazine "Sassy" had been founded already in 1987 as an alternative, not afraid to tackle brutal themes, to the conventional magazines for teenage girls.

Artistically, these young girls harked back to New York's female folksingers of the 1980s (who began singing the female condition in hyper-realistic terms, not only from a sociopolitical point of view but also from an intimate-diary point of view), to California's all-female punk bands (Runaways, Pandoras, Frightwig, L7, not to mention Sugar Baby Doll, formed in San Francisco in 1986 by future foxcore stars Kat Bjelland, Courtney Love and Jennifer Finch), and to a few creative all-female British bands (Raincoats, X-Ray Spex, Slits). To some extent, female intellectual rockers such as Patti Smith, Chrissie Hynde, Exene Cervenka, Lydia Lunch, Kim Gordon were all influential in defining the riot-grrrrl ethos. Seattle/Olympia was one of the areas with the most sophisticated "do it yourself" infrastructure: it was not difficult for these girls to began releasing their own cassettes and CDs (e.g., via the label founded by Beat Happening's Calvin Johnson). In nearby Vancouver, anarchic poetess Jean Smith had formed Mecca Normal in the mid-1980s to create polemic works such as Calico Kills The Cat (1988), which became an inspiration for the riot-grrrrls of Seattle.

This was a musical movement founded on the lyrics, not on the music, so their sound varied wildly. But, mostly, the vocals were quite unattractive (they tended to imitate a scream, rather than enhance a melody) and the playing was quite amateurish. The female voice had been treated as an instrument (a sound) in the male-dominated musical culture: it now became a vehicle for a message. The rest of the music was largely redundant and/or optional.

They were rebels, but only to an extent. Their message was not revolutionary: their message was intimate. They dealt with the real problems of teenage girls, from rape to loneliness. Their fanzines were not agit-prop pamphlets, they were blackboards to write on about their intimate experiences. The fundamental fact of the riot grrrrls was that their heroine was not terrible: she was terrified.

Musically, the riot-grrrrl phenomenon began in february 1991, when Kathleen Hanna and Tobi Vail formed Bikini Kill at Olympia's Evergreen College, and released the cassette Revolution Girl Style Now (1991), followed by the even more furious mini-abum Pussy Whipped (1993). Hannah would later clean up her act, and, dressed like a housewife from the Sixties, release a solo album credited to Julie Ruin (1998), offering her post-feminist meditations in a surprisingly radio-friendly format (a fusion of electronica, dub, and hip-hop). Even more accessible was Le Tigre (1999), the album recorded with video director Sadie Benning and music critic Johanna Fateman.

Even less musical was Pottymouth (1993), the debut album of Molly Neuman's Bratmobile Other original riot-grrrrls were Calamity Jane, who released Martha Jane Cannary (1992) four years after the first singles; Dickless, whose Saddle Tramp (1990) revealed the roaring vocals of Kelly Canary that would detonate the Teen Angels' Daddy (1996); Donna Dresch's Team Dresch, who hailed lesbianism on Personal Best (1994). They mostly played ragged rock'n'roll overflowing with angst and propelled by screeching guitars and primitive drumming.

Courtney Love's Hole was one of the bands that launched the new female aesthetics nation-wide, thanks to Love's slutty attitude (an extension of the kind of depraved punk provocation already inaugurated by the likes of Lydia Lunch and Madonna) and to her marriage with Nirvana's Kurt Cobain. Pretty On The Inside (1991) was indeed a powerful statement of psychological devastation, its desperate ballads delivered in spasmodic fits.

Unrelated to the political movement, but sharing its visceral and raw approach to rock'n'roll, Seven Year Bitch delivered Viva Zapata (1994), and Sleater-Kinney (1), i.e. songwriters Corin Tucker and Carrie Kinney, delivered Call The Doctor (1995), two albums that easily matched the emphasis of the early riot-grrrrls while focusing on the music.

California's foxcore

The contagion soon spread to California.

San Francisco, whose Frightwig had pioneered the idea, boasted the Mudwimin, formed by Frightwig's guitarist Mia Levin and Tragic Mulatto's drummer Bambi Nonymous, with Skiz (1992); Stone Fox, lesbians who played melodic hard-rock on Burnt (1994); 4 Non Blondes, whose Bigger Better Faster More (1992) was highlighted by the Janis Joplin-style roar of openly-lesbian Linda Perry; Tribe 8, a radical lesbian band that played loud and fast "homocore" on Fist City (1995); and more moderate groups such as Tiger Trap, the project of Sacramento-based Rose Melberg, who played romantic punk-pop on Tiger Trap (1993), and Ovarian Trolley, with the even less aggressive Crocodile Tears (1993).

The spectrum was broad, but was eventually unified and sold to the masses by the Donnas, a novelty act (four teenage girls from Palo Alto all named Donna who played tight punk-rock with a strong Ramones fixation) equipped with producer Darin Raffarelli's catchy, energetic, anthemic tunes on The Donnas (1996), released when they graduated from high school, and American Teenage Rock 'N' Roll Machine (1998).

Los Angeles (where L7 ruled) was home to some of the most successful and influential bands: the Red Aunts, a sort of cross between the Sex Pistols and the Rolling Stones on #1 Chicken (1995); That Dog, featuring violinist Petra Haden and bassist Rachel Haden (daughters of jazz great Charlie Haden), who honed the intellectual Totally Crushed Out (1995); the Muffs, a vehicle for former Pandoras bassist Kim Shattuck, who seemed to re-live the careers of wild female rockers of the past on Blonder And Blonder (1995).

Post-feminism

The Midwest (where Scrawl were already a legend) was no less prolific of girl-only bands: Illinois' Corndolly; Indiana's Smears; Minnesota's Zuzu's Petals, perhaps the best heirs to the Scrawl with When No One's Looking (1992). On the other hand, Veruca Salt, led by the songwriting duo of Nina Gordon and Louise Post, offered little more than power-pop on American Thighs (1994).

Perhaps the most talented musicians of the entire scene were Minneapolis' Babes In Toyland, led by vocalist and guitarist Kat Bjelland. Spanking Machine (1990) was already an eruption of cathartic violence, but Fontanelle (1992) was a set of psychological traumas, a witchy pandemonium of voodoo/pow-wow rhythms, hysterical screams and massive distortions, from which Bjelland vomited harrowing lyrics, mad with rage, disenchantment, hopelessness and frustration. The trio managed to express the schizophrenic coexistence of the innocent, apprehensive, defenseless child with the experienced and corrupt slut, junkie and juvenile delinquent. The Babes In Toyland invented an art of extreme emotions: more than singing or playing theirs was "acting", and it was "acting" one's own life.

Sugarsmack were the vehicle for Fetchin Bones' vocalist Hope Nicholls, one of the most extraordinary voices of her generation. Top Loader (1993), assembled with help from Pigface's Martin Atkins, came through as a catalog of terrifying neuroses, mising industrial music, rap, heavy-metal, blues, acid-rock, and conveyed in her visceral, guttural, demonic style that fused Patti Smith's hysteria and Lydia Lunch's depravation.

The phenomenon was hardly visible on the East Coast. New York's Free Kitten was mainly a supergroup of female intellectuals (mainly Pussy Galore's Julia Cafritz and Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon). Luscious Jackson, featuring keyboardist Vivian Trimble, were white female rappers in disorienting soundscapes of jazz, funk and lounge music. The Murmurs were a duo of female folksingers, capable of running the gamut from angelic folk to distorted hard-rock on Pristine Smut (1997), their third and best album. Cake Like were the closest thing to a riot-grrrrl in New York, particularly on Delicious (1994).

Washington's Slant 6 were punk-poppers, catchy and amusing on Soda Pop = Rip Off (1994).

Pork in Texas, Pee Shy in Florida, Picasso Trigger in North Carolina, featuring acrobatic vocalist Kathy Poindexter, were riot-grrrrls of the South.

In the rest of the world, "riot grrrrls" did not enjoy much of an audience, except for Huggy Bear in England.

Brit and non-Brit pop
Brit-pop 1990-98

As was often the case in rock music, the most publicized phenomenon was also the least artistically interesting. "Brit-pop" became a derogatory term, one associated with ephemeral and dubious acts that speculated on facile melodies and trivial arrangements. If the British Invasion of the 1960s had at least revitalized the USA scene, the "Brit-pop" invasion of the 1990s... was hardly an invasion at all. The Brit-pop bands were all terribly similar and terribly... tedious. In the end, only a few of them managed to have one or two world-wide hits, and most of them added very little to the history of rock music (other than yet another proof of the aberrations of its industry).

In 1990 Brit-pop had not materialized yet as a "fad", but the seeds were already being planted by bands such as Lightning Seeds, with their retro' classic Cloudcuckooland (1990), and La's, with La's (1990), specializing in sculpting memorable and unassuming melodies. Teenage Fanclub produced one of the best imitations of Big Star with Bandwagonesque (1991).

Heavenly inherited the Primitives' passion for melodious simplicity. Fronted by former Talulah Gosh's singer Amelia Fletcher, they resurrected the age of Petula Clark, the girl-groups and bubblegum music on Heavenly Vs Satan (1991). Their romantic and naive approach to the pop tune evolved with Le Jardin De Heavenly (1992) and Decline And Fall (1994) into a new form of revisionist art, one that transformed Britain's perennial Sixties revival into an international language.

Pulp, fronted by Jarvis Cocker's out of fashion dandy style, were the quintessence of glam, retro` and kitsch on albums such as the erotic concept His 'N' Hers (1994) and singles such as My Legendary Girlfriend (1991), Babies (1992), Common People (1995).

Scotland's Eugenius, the new project by former Vaselines' guitarist/singer Eugene Kelly, Dodgy, and Ireland's Frank And Walters, also predated the 1994 explosion.

But the massive Brit-pop phenomenon began in earnest with the bands destined to rule the world (according to the British press of the time): the Boo Radleys, who turned "retro" with Giant Steps (1993), Blur, who attained stardom with Parklife (1994), and Oasis, the band (or the "bluff") that best personified the fad, from the exuberant Definitely Maybe (1994) to the multi-million seller Morning Glory (1995).

The most stunning feature of these bands was their absolute lack of imagination. They continued a British tradition, dating from at least the Beatles, of pop musicians who had nothing to say but said it in a sophisticated manner.

Then it became a race to produce ever more predictable music. Each "next big thing" hailed by the British press was merely a copy of a copy of a copy of something that was not particularly exciting even the first time around. Love Split Love, the new band by Psychedelic Furs' singer Richard Butler, and Ash in Ireland were typical.

If nothing else, Suede, featuring guitarist Bernard Butler and vocalist Brett Anderson, offered an original take on glam-pop on Suede (1993), one that inspired bands such as the Super Furry Animals, with Fuzzy Logic (1996), and Placebo , with Placebo (1996).

The Smiths were a strong influence on the Sundays, Echobelly, Gene.

The exceptions to the rule of mediocrity were few. Former Microdisney's guitarist Sean O'Hagan, proved his stature as a Brian Wilson-style arranger on the first two albums by the High Llamas, Gideon Gaye (1995) and especially the ambitious and monumental Hawaii (1996). Supergrass sounded like the heirs to the Buzzcocks, at least on I Should Coco (1995).

One "next big thing" led to another "next big thing", and soon England was attacked by a revival of the "mod" culture of the 1960s (read: the Who and, more recently, the Jam). Pioneered by Ocean Color Scene, particularly with Moseley Shoals (1996), this school yielded Menswear, These Animal Men, Wildhearts, perhaps the most energetic and blasphemous of the pack with Earth Vs The Wildhearts (1993), and, much later, Comet Gain, that resurrected the idea on more hysterical works such as Tigertow Pictures (1999).

Inspired by the new wave of the 1970s, bands such as Low Pop Suicide, led by former Gang Of Four's and Shriekback's bassist Dave Allen, Elastica, fronted by Justine Frischman and harking back to Blondie's and the Cars' disco-punk sound of the 1970s on Elastica (1995), Sleeper, also relying on a female voice (Louise Wener) on Smart (1995), offered a less trivial kind of commercial rock.

The ultimate product of Brit-pop were the Spice Girls, as hyped and as inept as the Mersey-beat groups of 30 years earlier.

The second half of the decade saw a rapid decline of Brit-pop, although Catatonia, another Echobelly-wannabe with International Velvet (1998), Mansun, with Attack of The Grey Lantern (1997), Stereophonics, with Word Gets Around (1997), and Scottish bands such as Adventures In Stereo, with Alternative Stereo Sounds (1998), and Embrace, with The Good Will Out (1998), tried to keep the flame alive.

Trembling Blue Stars, the project of former Field Mice's frontman Bob Wratten, that continued Field Mice's "bedroom-pop" on a more personal basis with Broken By Whispers (1999), a parade of elaborate and sumptuous ballads dwelling halfway between Lycia's gothic depression and the Cure's somber existentialism.

The Tindersticks deployed elegant quasi-orchestral arrangements, that relied mostly on the delicate polyphony of guitar, keyboards and violin, on Tindersticks (1993). Its songs were the ideal soundtrack for brothels packed with philosophers. Stuart Staples' voice (a Chris Isaak soundalike) was lost in the labyrinth of his own visions, haunted by the giant shadows of Tom Waits, Nick Cave and Leonard Cohen. But the subtlety of that work drained away as the band (a "big" band) opted for orchestral pop and lounge music on Tinderstick (1995) and Curtains (1997).

Scotland's Usurei Yatsura were unusual in that they embraced Pavement's lo-fi approach on We Are (1996). The Delgados turned to sumptuous orchestral pop with The Great Eastern (2000).

Retro futurism 1991-98

Brit-pop begot other melodic sub-genres.

Stereolab were not the first and were not the only ones, but somehow they came to represent a nostalgic take on Sixties pop music that employed electronic rhythms and arrangements. Built around the collation of keyboardist Tim Gane (ex-McCarthy) and French vocalist Laetitia Sadier, i.e. the juxtaposition of hypnotic, acid instrumental scores and surreal, naive vocals, as refined by their early EPs Super 45 (1991) and Super-Electric (1991), Stereolab walked a fine line between avantgarde and pop. As they continued to fine-tune the idea on Peng (1992), echoing the trance of the Velvet Underground, Neu and Suicide, while increasing the doses of electronic sounds, Sadier's voice became a sound and an instrument, contributing more than catchy refrains to the allure of the mini-album Space Age Batchelor Pad Music (1993), the aesthetic manifesto of their chamber kitsch. Stereolab probably reached their zenith with the singles of John Cage Bubblegum (1993) and Jenny Ondioline (1993), that inspired the stylistic tour de force of Transient Random Noise Bursts With Announcements (1993). Stereolab had coined a new musical language, as austere as classical music and as light as easy-listening. New keyboardist Katharine Gifford contributed to the elegant and smooth sound of Mars Audiac Quintet (1994), their most accomplished fusion of nostalgy and futurism, although not as innovative as the previous album. Emperor Tomato Ketchup (1996) was even more impersonal, pure sound for the sake of sound, pure abstraction of kitsch music. Stereolab injected Soft Machine's progressive-rock, Terry Riley's minimalism, Neu's robotik rhythm, Pink Floyd's atmospheric psychedelia into the fragile melodic skeleton of British pop music.

"Retro futurism" was pioneered also by Saint Etienne. Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs bridged Depeche Mode's synth-pop, the Sixties pop revival, sensual disco-like vocals (Sarah Cracknell) and almost neo-classical arrangements on the sophisticated production exploits of Foxbase Alpha (1991) and So Tough (1993). They were unique in crafting a celestial, effervescent and ghostly fusion of jazz, funk, lounge and house music. Tiger Bay (1994) achieved pure nirvana, pure ambience, pure style. At their best, it felt as if a Broadway star of the 1950s was backed by Giorgio Moroder on electronic keyboards and by an orchestra conducted by Ennio Morricone.

The genre soon became one of the most abused musical lingos of the 1990s: State Of Grace, who matched Saint Etienne's achievements on Jamboreebop (1996), Space, with Spiders (1996), and finally Broadcast, whose stylistic evolution led to new step in space-age pop: the cubistic remixes of pop stereotypes of Haha Sound (2003).

These bands laid the foundations for the success of Add N To X, a British trio on analog keyboards whose retro-futurism was inspired by Tangerine Dream, Suicide, Cabaret Voltaire, Kraftwerk and Devo. On the Wires of Our Nerves (1998) evoked a dark, claustrophobic, teutonic fantasy of mechanical monsters gone mad. It wasn't electronica, the way Led Zeppelin's was not blues. They discovered a rougher and deeper dimension of electronica, just like Led Zeppelin had discovered a rougher and deeper dimension of blues. They discovered "hard electronica" just like Led Zeppelin discovered "hard rock". Avant Hard (1999), instead, put aside the uncompromising sonic onslaught for a more mature symphony of tones and textures; whereas the poppy, danceable, electronic rock'n'roll of Loud Like Nature (2002), drowned in an orgy of digital cacophony, heralded a new form of post-industrial decadent futuristic punk cabaret.

Japanese Kitsch 1990-97

Japanese bands excelled at this parodistic and futuristic approach to kitsch and muzak.

Pizzicato Five, who had turned supermarket muzak into a sub-genre of synth-pop on Couples (1987), became one of the leading retro' bands when they enrolled eccentric vocalist Maki Nomiya, the ideal alter ego of electronic keyboardist Yasuharu Konishi. The single Lover's Rock (1990), possibly their masterpiece, and the album This Year's Girl (1991) celebrated their passion for icons of the Sixties (James Bond soundtracks, hare-krishna chanting, novelty numbers, silly dance crazes), whereas later collections such as Bossa Nova (1993) and Happy End Of The World (1997) experimented with a format closer to orchestral disco-music.

Cibo Matto, the duo of Miho Hatori and Yuka Honda, specialized in musical satire inspired by junk food and implemented via a casual assembly of jazz, hip-hop, funk and dissonances. Viva La Woman (1996) performed a clownish postmodernist massacre of stereotypes.

Fantastic Plastic Machine, the creature of producer Tomoyuki Tanaka, debuted with Fantastic Plastic Machine (1998), a collection of ultra-hip, glamourous cross-cultural tunes composed via a montage of cliches of western pop music.

Buffalo Daughter wed both a retro' and a progressive ideology. Captain Vapour Athletes (1996) and especially New Rock (1998) delivered ebullient, quirky synth-rock for electronic keyboards, turntables and samplers.

Multi-instrumentalist Cornelius, born Keigo Oyamada, composed "pop tunes" by overdubbing "found" samples and stereotypical music, achieving on Fantasma (1997) and, partially, on Point (2002) a kind of eclectic postmodernist nonsense. The most creative aspect of his compositions was how elements of "musique concrete" (found noises that were sampled, looped and refined) got to be integrated with the rhythmic and melodic infrastructure of the songs without sacrificing the aural appeal of the song.

Ooioo, the side-project of Boredoms's drummer Yoshimi "P-We" Yokota and a few of her female friends that began as an exercise in hyper-deconstruction of kitsch, juxtaposed all sorts of musical debris in the suites of Feather Float (1999) and Taiga (2006), vaguely reminiscent of the aesthetic ambitions of progressive and psychedelic music but insanely playful.

International Kitsch

Outside Britain and Japan, there were other significant acts of "futuristic kitsch".

French duo Air, Nicolas Godin and Jean Benoit Dunckel, indulged in the retro' sound of vintage analog keyboards on Moon Safari (1998), a work marked by a zany campiness that exuded Pink Floyd's psychedelic majesty, jazz's subdued ambience, random quotations from the history of soul, funk and disco music, and more than a passing mention of Burt Bacharach's and Ennio Morricone's scores.

While not as successful as Air, April March (Elinore Blake) in Los Angeles, with the eclectic and campy And Los Cincos (1998) and Chrominance Decoder (1999), Mocket in Seattle, with Fanfare (1997), and Komeda in Sweden, with What Makes It Go (1998), pursued similar routes to disorienting pop muzak.

Germany had a crowded scene of its own.

Stereo Total, the project of Berlin-based vocalist and electronic wizard Brezel Goering, concocted a goofy, anarchic, exuberant, multi-ethnic (and multi-linguistic) fusion of new wave, punk-rock, disco music and synth-pop, bridging girl-groups, funk, Giorgio Moroder and the Ramones, which turned Monokini (1997) into the sonic equivalent of a Marx Brothers movie.

Beanfield (1998) proved that the heart of Munich-based Michael Reinboth, better known as Beanfield, was in jazz fusion, but his subconscious was still entangled in the genres of his childhood.

Le Hammond Inferno, the project of Berlin-based producers and disc-jockeys Marcus Liesenfeld and Holger Beier, copied Pizzicato Five on Easy Listening Superstar (1999).

Post-pop 1993-98

Radiohead, the most hyped and probably the most over-rated band of the decade, upped the ante for studio trickery. They had begun as third-rate disciples of the Smiths, and albums such as Pablo Honey (1993) and The Bends (1995) that were cauldrons of Brit-pop cliches. Then OK Computer (1997) happened and the word "chic" took on a new meaning. The album was a masterpiece of faux avantgarde (of pretending to be avantgarde while playing mellow pop music). It was, more properly, a new link in the chain of production artifices that changed the way pop music "sounds": the Beatles' Sgt Pepper, Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon, Fleetwood Mac's Tusk, Michael Jackson's Thriller. Despite the massive doses of magniloquent epos a` la U2 and of facile pathos a` la David Bowie, the album's mannerism led to the same excesses that detracted from late Pink Floyd's albums (lush textures, languid melodies, drowsy chanting). Since the production aspects of music were beginning to prevail over the music itself, it was just about natural to make them "the" music. The sound of Kid A (2000) had decomposed and absorbed countless new perfumes, like a carcass in the woods. All sounds were processed and mixed, including the vocals. Radiohead moved as close to electronica as possible without actually endorsing it. Radiohead became masters of the artificial, masters of minimizing the emotional content of very complex structures. Amnesiac (2001) replaced "music" with a barrage of semi-mechanical loops, warped instruments and digital noises, while bending Thom Yorke's baritone to a subhuman register and stranding it in the midst of hostile arrangements, sounding more and more like an alienated psychopath. Their limit was that they were more form than content, more "hype" than message, more nothing than everything.

Radiohead inspired the "post-pop" generation of 1997-98: Six By Seven, whose The Things We Make (1998) was basically a neurotic version of the "Madchester" sound of the Stone Roses; Coldplay, whose Parachuttes (2000) was mainly a display of dynamic and emotional ranges; Travis; Dream City Film Club; etc.

Alt-pop
Pop renaissance

During the first half of the 1990s, pop music vastly outnumbered underground/experimental music. It was the revenge of melody, after a quarter of a century of progressive sounds. A cycle that began with the demise of the Beatles and the rise of alternative/progressive rock, and that continued with the German and Canterbury schools of the 1970s, and then punk-rock and the new wave, and peaked with the alt-rock and college-pop of the 1980s, came to an abrupt, grinding halt in the 1990s.

The more fashionable and rewarding route was, however, the one that coasted the baroque pop of latter-day Beach Boys, Van Dyke Parks, Big Star and XTC, the one that coupled catchy refrains and lush arrangements. The single most important school may have been San Francisco's, which had originated in the 1980s with the Sneetches. Jellyfish, featuring guitarist Jason Falkner, wrote perhaps the most impeccable melodies of the time. Bellybutton (1990), a milestone of naive, bubblegum melodic music inspired by Merseybeat and later Beach Boys, was both cartoonish and shimmering, while the arrangements on Spilt Milk (1993) were almost baroque.

Other devoted followers were Imperial Teen, led by former Faith No More's keyboardist Roddy Bottum, the Mommyheads, MK Ultra, Overwhelming Colorfast, Smash Mouth, Orange Peels, masters of the retro` on Square (1997), Beulah, with Handsome Western States (1997), etc.

In Seattle, the melodic tradition of the Green Pajamas and the Young Fresh Fellows was continued by Juan Atkins' project, 764-Hero, with Get Here And Stay (1999), and by Super Deluxe with Famous (1995).

Elsewhere, similar sounds were produced by Velvet Crush in Rhode Island; Material Issue in Chicago, with International Pop Overthrow (1991); Rembrandts in Los Angeles; etc.

The Eggs, in Virginia, were among the most creative, particularly on their second album, Exploder (1993), that featured exotic instruments, synthesizer, trombone, and oboe.

New York-based Fountains Of Wayne, on the other hand, became America's prime Brit-poppers through Fountains Of Wayne (1996) and Utopia Parkway (1999).

Quite unique was the style of the Ben Folds Five in North Carolina, because keyboardist and vocalist Folds was an unusual disciple of Todd Rundgren and Elton John, best heard on the ballads of Ben Folds Five (1995).

In Oklahoma, Tyson Meade's Chainsaw Kittens launched a revival of glam-pop with Violent Religion (1990), a concentrate of Aerosmith, New York Dolls, T. Rex, Cheap Trick, Patti Smith, Stooges, Velvet Underground, etc. Glam-pop's comeback continued with Sponge in New York, and Running With Scissors in Seattle.

In Texas, the hyper-pop muzak of Tim DeLaughter's Tripping Daisy evolved from the sugary Bill (1992) to the grandiose and baroque Jesus Hits Like The Atom Bomb (1998).

Canada's most successful pop bands were the Barenaked Ladies, revealed by Gordon (1992), and the Crash Test Dummies, with God Shuffled His Feet (1993).

Non-pop 1990-95

The Pixies invented the most creative form of pop of the 1980s, one that conveyed the fractured tics of hardcore punk-rock and the enigmatic dynamics of the new wave into a melodic format that was not straightforward at all but sounded like it. The greatest disciples of the Pixies' late quirky-pop sound were the Breeders, a supergroup featuring the Pixies' bassist Kim Deal (now on guitar) and the Throwing Muses' guitarist Tanya Donelly. Pod (1990) explored a broad range of tones, from the ecstatic nursery-rhyme of a naive little girl to the harsh, syncopated riff of a hard-rock band. The band continued to blur daydreaming and nightmare on Last Splash (1993), having replaced Donelly with Kim's twin sister Kelley, an even more powerful post-feminist statement that employs an even wider repertory of "voices" (girl-groups, jangling folk-rock, country, even grunge). Donelly went on to create Belly
and craft the charming and subtly primitive Star (1993), while the twins remained more faithful to the eccentric rhetoric of the Pixies, Kim with the Amps and Pacer (1995), and Kelly with the Kelly Deal 6000 and Go To The Sugar Altar (1996).

Boston was also the home base of one of the greatest bands of the decade, Morphine, a guitar-less trio whose style borrowed heavily from blues and jazz but shared with the Pixies the same casual, detached approach to melody. Three masterpieces established them among the masters of the "noir" atmosphere. Good (1992) highlighted their ability to turn ballads and rockers into metaphysical dialogues between bass and saxophone. The languid crooning of former Treat Her Right's bassist Mark Sandman, who chiseled one of the most evocative voices of the era, added another layer of meaning, a Tom Waits-like mourner and Nick Cave-like preacher floating inside the stark, unreal, heavy fog of the music. The trio contrived melodies that offered a quiet vivisection of post-industrial anxiety. Sandman refined the way he rode (like a surfer) the gloomy and occasionally even lugubrious lines of Dana Colley's saxophone on Cure For Pain (1993), a less claustrophobic and more accessible work, featuring drummer Billy Conway (also ex-Treat Her Right). Yes (1995) followed the route that seemed less congenial to the trio, by emphasizing rhythm over melody. Less depressed and distressed, it almost sounded like a return to rock'n'roll and rhythm'n'blues of the 1950s. Their representation of reality provided an anti-spectacular synthesis of transcendental and mundane elements, additionally soaked into premonitions of a merciless destiny. After the mediocre Like Swimming (1997), Morphine's last album, The Night (2000), released after Sandman died of a heart attack on-stage in 1999, turned out to be both their most introspective and their most orchestrated work (piano, cello, horns, organ, choir).

Georgia was still a favorable turf for alternative pop. Magnapop, the band of vocalist Linda Hopper and guitarist Ruthie Morris, played in a style halfway between folk-rock and hard-rock on Magnapop (1992). Toenut delivered unsettling tunes on Information (1995).

Los Angeles' Madder Rose was an oddly schizophrenic band that relied on the contrast/friction (rather than the amalgam/fusion) of Billy Cote's abrasive guitar and Mary Lorson's sweet vocals. Bring It Down (1993) and Panic On (1994) were poetic, idyllic works whose mood fluctuated between autumnal singalongs and tormented rockers. They converted to trip-hop with Tragic Magic (1997) and reinvented themselves with the surreal stylistic melange of Hello June Fool (1999).

North Carolina, which had become one of the main centers for alternative rock, was also one of the venues in which musicians truly tried to speak new melodic languages.

The brand of power-pop concocted by the Archers Of Loaf on Icky Mettle (1993) and Vee Vee (1995) mixed the eccentric dynamics of the Pixies and the anthemic tone of the Replacements, and added a generous dose of Television's guitar noise. Archers Of Loaf's guitarist/vocalist Eric Bachmann, disguised as Barry Black (1995), revealed his real self (and ambitions) with a program of all-instrumental chamber music that was both demented and virtuoso. His next project, Crooked Fingers, capitalized on that experiment for a chaotic and eclectic repertory of carefully-arranged, dark, pensive ballads, particularly on their second album Bring On The Snakes (2001).

Other notable albums of the North Carolina school were Small 23's True Zero Hook (1993) and Spatula's Medium Planers and Matchers (1995).

In Los Angeles, Franklin Bruno's Nothing Painted Blue experimented with an introverted and intellectual form of power-pop on their second album Power Trips Down Lovers Lane (1993).

By bridging the Pixies' eccentric pop with new wave's eccentric dance music, Wisconsin's Garbage, a trio of veteran producers (including Butch Vig on drums) fronted by sexy/trashy vocalist Shirley Manson, obtained the success that had eluded the Pixies with their Garbage (1995).

Vancouver's Superconductor, led by Carl Newman, experimented with a bizarre six-guitar line-up on the loud and tuneful Hit Songs For Girls (1993) and the rock opera Bastardsong (1996).

Holland was perhaps the most fertile place for college-pop, outside the USA. The Dutch contingent was led by Daryll-Ann (1), who pursued an implosion of country-rock and folk-rock stereotypes on the lyrical Weeps (1996), and Bettie Serveert, who served cold clever melodies on Palomine (1992).

Lounge-pop 1990-95

A brief fad in America was "lounge-pop", that was rediscovered in Rhode Island by Combustible Edison: the soundtrack to their "Combustible Edison Heliotropic Oriental Mambo and Foxtrot Orchestra", partly collected on I Swinger (1994), was its manifesto, while their third disc, The Impossible World (1998), wed it to the other big fad of the time, trip-hop.

In Canada, Zumpano, the new project of singer/guitarist Carl Newman, fully acknowledged that zeitgeist on their second album, Goin' Through Changes (1996), adopting lounge music and easy-listening within the alt-rock framework.

New York's Ivy, fronted by the breathy vocals and exotic accent of French-born singer Dominique Durand, delivered bittersweet vain ballads on Realistic (1995). Los Angeles' Sukia (born Ross Harris) played futuristic lounge music for keyboards, horns, drum machines and samplers on Contacto Espacial Con El Tercer Sexo (1996). In Sweden, the Cardigans, who wrapped Nina Persson's soft, sensual, dreamy phrasing around sophisticated, lush, lounge-pop arrangements on Life (1995).

North Carolina's Squirrel Nut Zippers harked further back in time, to the ballroom blues-jazz combos of the 1940s, on Hot (1996).

Two Georgia bands flirted with easy-listening: Jody Grind, whose vibrant jazzy vocalist Kelly Hogan propelled One Man's Trash Is Another Man's Treasure (1990), and the Opal Foxx Quartet, with the elaborate The Love That Won't Shut Up (1993).

Seattle's Satchel, featuring Pigeonhed's vocalist Shawn Smith, crafted elegant pop-soul-jazz ballads, bordering both Steely Dan and Prince, on EDC (1994).

Joey Burns and John Convertino of Calexico highlighted the melancholy country and blues meditations of The Shadow Of Your Smile (1995), by the Friends Of Dean Martinez, a work centered on the atmospheric picking of Naked Prey's guitarist Bill Elm.

The Aluminum Group pushed easy-listening into the age of post-rock with collections such as Plano (1998).

Folk-pop 1995-97

College-pop continued to strive throughout the 1990s. The new trend, though, was to follow the route opened by Tom Petty and R.E.M., the hybrid of power-pop and folk-rock that, mutatis mutandis, is what the Byrds taught in the 1960s. Just add a touch of populism. Bands that played in this style included: Minnesota's Hang Ups, with their second album So We Go (1997); Ohio's Throneberry, with Sangria (1994); Texas' Fastball, with their second album All The Pain Money Can Buy (1998); Chicago's Fig Dish, with That's What Love Songs Often Do (1995); San Diego's Supernova, with Ages 3 And Up (1995); Los Angeles' Possum Dixon, with Star Maps (1996); New York's late bloomers Nada Surf, with Let Go (2003) and The Weight Is A Gift (2005); Florida's Matchbox 20; etc.

Elephant 6, 1996-98

The breakthrough in this quest for the perfect melody came from the south, from Georgia and Louisiana, where a group of bands (the "Elephant 6" collective) started the single most influential school of the decade in pop music. Robert Schneider, founder of the movement and founder of the Apples In Stereo, was the Phil Spector of this generation: the songs on Tone Soul Evolution (1997) were miracles of pop metabolism, incorporating one century of melodic tricks.

Will Hart's Olivia Tremor Control struck an elegant balance between retro' Sixties sound and state-of-the-art production techniques on Dusk at Cubist Castle (1996) and Black Foliage (1999), which were, first and foremost, tours de force of eccentric and oneiric pop arrangements. Each song was a mini-collage of oddities and spaced-out harmonies, and the albums in their entirety could be viewed as one giant, frantic collage, a work of pop-art a` la Andy Warhol.

Neutral Milk Hotel, Jeff Mangum's creature, codified that style on In the Aeroplane Over The Sea (1998), one of the most perfect pop albums of all times.

Elf Power's A Dream In Sound (1999), their best album, was fundamentally bubblegum music: cheesy pop for brainless people. Nonetheless, it was the elegance and the decorum that still made it unique even within that garbage can.

The works by Of Montreal, or Kevin Barnes, such as The Gay Parade (1999), were whimsical collections of carefully-crafted pop tunes assembled and sequenced in a way to compose a flamboyant psychedelic vaudeville. Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? (2007) even set existential depression to the beat of dance music.

These bands raised dramatically the qualitative standard of pop songs, a fact clearly visible in popsters of the next generation: Ladybug Transistor, the project of New York-based vocalist Gary Olson, particularly with the sumptuous arrangements of Beverley Atonale (1997) and The Albemarle Sound (1999), featuring guitarist Jeff Baron and keyboardist Sasha Bell; Art DiFuria's Photon Band, from Pennsylvania, with the sophisticated and encyclopedic All Young In The Soul (1998); Flake in New Mexico, with Flake Music (1997); Marcy Playground in Minnesota, with Marcy Playground (1998); Superdrag in Kentucky, with Regretfully Yours (1996); Spoon in Texas, with Girls Can Tell (Merge, 2001), etc.

Noise-rock's epitaph 1995-97

In the mid-1990s noise-rock picked up steam again. The new generation was led by creative outfits that reinvented rock music by embedding twisted melodies into atonal structures and, sometimes, irregular rhythms. Frequently, their songs were aural puzzles soaked in the history of rock music. Occasionally, their method straddled the line between trance and dissonance. Significant albums in this genre to come out of New York included: Poem Rocket's Felix Culpa (1996), Lynnfield Pioneers' Emerge (1997) , Fantastic Spikes Through Balloon (1996) by Skeleton Key, In An Expression Of The Inexpressible (1998) by Blonde Redhead.

Firewater was a noise super-group formed by Cop Shoot Cop's vocalist Tod Ashley, Jesus Lizard's guitarist Duane Denison, Motherhead Bug's pianist/trombonist Dave Ouimet, Soul Coughing's percussionist Yuval Gabay and and Laughing Hyenas' drummer Jim Kimball. Ashley's tormented soul dominates Get Off The Cross (1997) and The Ponzi Scheme (1998), wandering in the paleo-gothic purgatory inhabited by the likes of Tom Waits and Nick Cave.

Teen-pop 1995-99

But the real million-sellers in the USA were the "teen pop" sensations of the south: Florida's Backstreet Boys, whose Backstreet Boys (1995) sold some 13 million copies in five years, Oklahoma's Hanson, Louisiana's Britney Spears, whose Baby One More Time (1999) sold ten million copies in just one year, New York's Christina Aguilera, whose Christina Aguilera (1999) boasted more robust vocals and an explicit sexual image, Florida's N'Sync, whose second album No Strings Attached (2000) sold more than one million copies on the first day it was released and spawned the career of Justin Timberlake, whose solo debut Justified (2002) sold even more.

Grunge
The golden age of Seattle

Grunge was one of the big phenomena of the 1990s, although it was largely confined to the United States. Grunge was essentially a revival of 1970s' hard-rock. However, it was also identified with the musical renaissance of Seattle, that suddenly became one of the world's centers for rock music, and "grunge" came to include just about any band that played in that city.

The road had been opened in the late 1980s by Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Melvins and Mudhoney, with four distinctive styles that involved "hard" vibrations. Those were the four cardinal points of Seattle's grunge. Nirvana had turned grunge into a slot machine.

Alice In Chains perfected a form of gloomy pop-metal and of power-ballad with Facelift (1990) and especially the stark melodrama of Dirt (1992), the intimate portrait of a drug addict. Layne Staley's psychotic vocals and Jerry Cantrell's sharp riffs transformed their confessions into bloodsheds.

Followers of their bittersweet hard-rock included My Sister's Machine, with Diva (1992), Truly, with Fast Stories (1995), and the most successful band of the second generation, the Foo Fighters, formed by Nirvana's drummer David Grohl, Germs' guitarist Pat Smear and Sunny Day Real Estate's rhythm section, with the even poppier Foo Fighters (1995), which was truly a Grohl solo album.

A multitude of derivative bands appeared after Nirvana's 1991 success: Candlebox, Sweet Water, Green Apple Quickstep, Love Battery, etc.

Few bands truly experimented with the format. Hammerbox were possibly the most imaginative: their fusion of punk, country, blues, funk and metal elements on Numb (1993) was unrivaled.

GodHeadSilo, the duo of bassist Mike Kunka and drummer Dan Haugh, played nightmares not sounds. The gargantuan pieces of Scientific Supercake (1994) were catalogs of terrifying sounds borrowed from Chrome, Unsane and Melvins. Skyward In Triumph (1996) did not sound human at all, submerged by an irrational noise of galactic riffs, demonic screams and crushing cadences.

An even more claustrophobic atmosphere was penned by Hammerhead with the ugly, post-hardcore sludge of Ethereal Killer (1993).

Atomic 61 wed the Melvins' apocalyptic sensibility to Jimi Hendrix's blues-rock on Tinnitus In Extremis (1993).

Grunge around the world

Nearby Oregon had Sprinkler and Pond.

Everclear was the project of Art Alexakis, a sincere populist, bard of the misfits, who expressed teenage angst via a mythological review of provincial life on Sparkle And Fade (1995) and especially So Much For The Afterglow (1997), the latter embellished with layers of keyboards, horns, strings and choirs. His mission peaked (morally, if not artistically) with the solemn and touching concept album Songs From An American Movie (2000), whose lush arrangements were almost symphonic.

Southern California, long the main center for heavy-metal, jumped on the bandwagon with Scott Weiland's Stone Temple Pilots, who virtually cloned Pearl Jam and Soundgarden on Core (1993) and Purple (1994), and Blind Melon, two of the most successful grunge bands of the 1990s, but also two of the most derivative. More original were perhaps Failure on Magnified (1994).

Tool was the most innovative band to emerge from grunge's second generation. Undertow (1993) announced their sinister, threatening and (in a subtle way) explosive blend of Led Zeppelin, grunge, heavy-metal and progressive-rock. The lengthy and brainy suites of Aenima (1996) displayed a shimmering elegance that was almost a contradiction in terms, but that was precisely the point: Tool's art was one of subtle contrasts and subdued antinomies, one in which existential rage and titanic will competed all the time. It was also a diary of primal angst, and the lyrical level truly paralleled the instrumental level. Lateralus (2001) expanded on that two-level approach, with tracks that, musically, were multi-part concertos or mini-operas, and, lyrically, were Freudian sessions that elicited all possible interior demons.

An even more original assimilation of progressive-rock's language was carried out by a San Diego band that relocated to England, God Machine, on Scenes From The Second Storey (1993).

Helmet, formed by Band Of Susans' guitarist Page Hamilton, were the undisputed leaders of New York's grunge. Strap It On (1990) defined their sound: stormy, dense and dark; a dull, continuous, torrential noise that created a manic tension.

Quicksand, formed by Gorilla Biscuits' guitarist Walter Schreifels, fused hardcore and grunge in a more straightforward manner on Manic Compression (1995).

Surgery were to Helmet what the Rolling Stones were to the Kinks. The supercharged blues-rock frenzy of Nationwide (1990) and the savage and incendiary sound of EP Trim 9th Ward Highrollers (1993) had no class and no artistic pretenses: they simply displayed animal instincts.

Barkmarket coined a form of "progressive grunge", an explosive mixture of Jesus Lizard and Sonic Youth that relied on David Sardy's uncontrolled histrionics (reminiscent of Mick Jagger at his worst) and guitar bacchanals a` la Surgery to craft the chaotic, incendiary atmospheres of Vegas Throat (1991). And Gimmick (1993) added sound effects and samples to an already frantic cacophony.

Austria's H.P. Zinker (relocated to New York) offered a jazzy version of grunge on Beyond It All (1990).

Chicago had actually co-pioneered the genre with Urge Overkill, particularly on their second album, Americruiser (1990), a compromise between their experimental debut and the melodic style that would make them famous. Bands such as Hum and Soil kept it alive.

Out of Chicago also came the only hard-rocking band that could compete with the popularity of Seattle's grunge: the Smashing Pumpkins. Gish (1991) crossed the boundaries of grunge, progressive-rock and acid-rock, unifying the power of riffs and the subtlety of dynamics. Siamese Dream (1993) gave the idea psychological depth and dramatic emphasis: languid melodies were delivered in a neurotic register by Billy Corgan while James Iha's guitar screeched a wall of noise. They were more "recitations" than songs, and the band's achievement was to strike a balance between elegance and savagery. The monumental Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness (1995) sounded like a series of uncontrolled urges to experiment with all sorts of formats (symphonic, acoustic, bubblegum, glam, easy-listening, avantgarde). The common denominator of these schizophrenic fits was the atmosphere, a disorienting blend of fairy tale and Freudian confession.

In a matter of a few years, pretty much every state in the USA got its own grunge heros: Massachussetts (Anastasia Screamed), Kansas (Paw), etc.

Scarce, formed in Rhode Island by guitarist/vocalist Chick Graning on the ashes of Anastasia Screamed, penned the memorable Deadsexy (1995), one of the most melodic and melodramatic grunge albums of the era.

Soon, a few crossover experiments tried to expand the horizons of the genre. Detroit's Big Chief fused grunge with funk, blues, hip-hop and soul on Face (1991); and Minneapolis' Walt Mink added jazz and psychedelia on Miss Happiness (1992).

In the south, grunge merged with the local tradition of "southern boogie" and with the countless flavors of blues, soul and gospel: Alabama's Verbena, with Souls For Sale (1997); Georgia's Collective Soul, with Hints Allegations And Things Left Unsaid (1994); Texas' Toadies, with Rubberneck (1994); Oklahoma's Nixons; etc. A band from the south, Florida's Creed, was actually the sensation of the third generation, thanks to the Pearl Jam imitations of My Own Prison (1997) and Human Clay (1999).

England's contingent was not as numerous and not as significant, but could still count on Bivouac, Terrorvision, Bush, the most successful thanks to Sixteen Stone (1994), and Fudge Tunnel, the most devastating with Hate Songs In E Minor (1991).

British bands that eskewed Brit-pop and played virulent hard-rock included the Manic Street Preachers, with Generation Terrorists (1992); 50 Tons Of Black Terror's Gutter Erotica (1997) was an album of brutal, convoluted, harsh music in the tradition of Jesus Lizard.

Notable Australian albums of grunge included Magic Dirt's Friends In Danger (1997), and Silverchair's Frogstomp (1995); whereas Blinker The Star were the stars of Canada's grunge.

Hip-hop of the 1990s

Generally speaking, the rule for hip-hop music of the 1990s was that behind every successful rap act there is a producer. Rap music was born as a "do it yourself" art in which the "message" was more important than the music. During the 1990s, interest in the lyrics declined rapidly, while interest in the soundscape that those lyrics roamed increased exponentially. The rapping itself became less clownish, less stereotyped, less macho, and much more psychological and subtle. In fact, rappers often crossed over into singing. Hip-hop music became sophisticated, and wed jazz, soul and pop. Instrumental hip-hop became a genre of its own, and one of the most experimental outside of classical music.

East-Coast rap

The most significant event of the early 1990s was probably the advent of Wu-Tang Clan, a loose affiliation of rappers, including Gary "Genius/GZA" Grice, Russell "Ol' Dirty Bastard" Jones, Clifford "Method Man" Smith and Dennis "Ghostface Killah" Coles, "conducted" (if the rap equivalent of a classical conductor exists) by Robert "RZA" Diggs, the musical genius behind Enter the Wu-Tang (1993), a diligent tribute to old-school rap. It was RZA's three-dimensional sound experience and his cerebral gutter beats (and occasional philosophical/mystical tone-poems) that gave meaning to the voices of those rappers, although the sumptuous arrangements of Wu-Tang Forever (1997) threatened to take away precisely that meaning. This "clan" (not "gang") spun off a number of successful solo careers. Both Ol' Dirty Bastard's Return to the 36 Chambers (1995), Method Man's Tical (1994), Raekwon's Only Built 4 Cuban Linx (1995) and GZA/Genius' Liquid Swords (1995), the most dramatic and cinematic of the bunch, were produced by RZA. However, when the Wu-Tang Clan began a rapid artistic decline, it was Ghostface Killah who emerged as the voice of his generation with the brutal, death-obsessed cinematic storytelling of Supreme Clientele (2000) and Fishscale (2006).

The Wu-Tang clan were one of the few East Coast acts that stood up to the past standards of the city's hip-hop. A number of New Jersey acts, in particular, cast a doubt on the future of hip-hop: the duo P.M. Dawn, with Of the Heart of the Soul of the Cross (1991), Naughty By Nature, with Naughty By Nature (1991), Kris Kross (the pre-puberal duo of Chris "Daddy Mack" Smith and Chris "Mack Daddy" Kelly), produced by teenager Jermaine Dupri, with the disco energy of Totally Krossed Out (1992), and the trio of the Lords of the Underground, with Here Come the Lords (1993), produced by Marley Marl. Washington multi-instrumentalist Basehead (Michael Ivey), with Plays With Toys (1992), was also crossing over into pop and soul territory. Trevor "Busta Rhymes" Smith's The Coming (1996) was as bizarre as accessible (basically an extension of the absurdist style of Public Enemy's William "Flavor Flav" Drayton). The nonsensical dialectics of Das Efx (Andre "Dre" Weston and Willie "Skoob" Hines) on Dead Serious (1992) was only functional to creating novelty acts.

Main Source's Breaking Atoms (1991), Poor Righteous Teachers' second album Pure Poverty (1991), permeated by Islamic philosophy, Mecca and the Soul Brother (1992) by producer Pete Rock (Phillips) & rapper C.L. Smooth (Corey Penn), Reggie "Redman" Noble's Whut? Thee Album (1992), Enta Da Stage (1993) by short-lived trio Black Moon, and New Kingdom's tribal-psychedelic Heavy Load (1993) were among the few albums that dared to experiment. East Coast hip-hop was losing to the West Coast. If nothing else, Nasir "Nas" Jones' Illmatic (1994) and Kendrick "Jeru the Damaja" Davis's The Sun Rises in the East (1994) briefly brought back party-rap's original sound.

New York's duo Organized Konfusion (Larry "Prince Poetry" Bakersfield and Troy "Pharoahe Monch" Jammerson) refined the dramatic/poetic skills of rap music, from the ghetto vignettes of Organized Konfusion (1991) to the psychologial hip-hopera The Equinox (1997)

Philadelphia's The Goats, led by Oatie Kato (Maxx Stoyanoff-Williams), orchestrated the "hip-hopera" Tricks of the Shade (1992), a concept album built around the evils of the American way of life, with both samples and a live band, deep grooves and a canvas of jazz, funk and rock.

"Prince Paul" Huston, the producer of De La Soul's 3 Feet High and Rising and the equally psychedelic My Field Trip To Planet 9 (1993) by Justin Warfield, penned Gravediggaz's gothic 6 Feet Deep (1994) with Wu-Tang Chan's Robert "RZA" Diggs, and the solo albums Psychoanalysis: What Is It? (1997) and especially the concept album A Prince Among Thieves (1999).

Philadelphia-born Roots' collaborator Ursula Rucker was a black spoken-word artist who coined a new form of art with her single Supernatural (1994), a dance hit created by a-capella vocals. After being a mere novelty on other people's songs, she emancipated her voice and her stories of black women on Supa Sista (2001).

Alien to the street culture of much hip-hop, New York's J-Live (Justice Allah) was one of the MCs who turned rhymed storytelling into a veritable art, both on The Best Part (1996), released five years after being recorded, and All Of The Above (2002).

Gangsta-rap

On the West Coast, "gangsta-rap" was the dominant theme. Schoolly D had invented it in 1984, but, starting with Ice-T in 1986, it was in Los Angeles that the form found its natural milieu. In 1992, when racial riots erupted (following the police beating of a black gangster), Los Angeles was said to have 66 gangs of teenagers, mostly black, with daily shootings among them. They reached a temporary truce in april. It is not a coincidence that "gangsta rap" became a national phenomenon in the following twelve months. Gangsta-rap was not so much about gangster lives as about a metaphorical, solemn, doom-laden recreation of the noir/thriller atmosphere of the urban drug culture. It was more than a mere depiction of their lives, just like psychedelic music had been more than a mere reproduction of the hallucinogenic experience. Gangsta rap was about the mythology and the metaphysics of the gang life, with sexual and criminal overtones. As Greg Kot wrote, "The gangster rappers depict a world in which gangbangers and crack-heads fester in a cesspool of misogyny, homophobia and racism". Invariably dismissing women as teasers or sluts, these rappers indirectly revealed the sordid and desperate conditions of the women of the ghettos. Their justification was that they were not promoting that kind of violence, but merely documenting it: gangsta-rap was a documentary of daily life in the ghetto. Furthermore, the arrogance of these self-appointed super-heroes was often accompanied by a fatalistic mood: gangsta-rap was not about immortality, albeit about survival. N.W.A., or "Niggaz With Attitude", formalized "gangsta-rap" on Straight Outta Compton (1988), and two of its former members, O'Shea "Ice Cube" Jackson with AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted (1990), a total immersion in a nightmarish atmosphere, and Andre "Dr Dre" Young with The Chronic (1992), featuring rapper Calvin "Snoop Doggy Dogg" Broadus, and later with 2001 (2000), gave it its masterpieces. The latter, heavily influenced by George Clinton's psychedelic funk, also coined a subgenre called "G Funk".

Houston's Geto Boys, featuring young rapper Brad "Scarface" Jordan, were one of the first crews from the South to become known nation-wide, thanks to the the terrifying gangsta-rap of their second album Geto Boys (1990). Robert-Earl "DJ Screw" Davis, who died at 30 of an overdose, became a Houston legend by slowing down ("screwing") rap hits into psychedelic, dilated melodies.

Gangsta-rap became mainstream via albums such as Doggystyle (1993) by Los Angeles native Calvin Broadus, better known as Snoop Doggy Dogg, produced by Dr Dre, and Me Against The World (1995), the third album from Oakland's 2Pac (aka Tupac Shakur, born Lesane Parish Crooks), produced by Sam Bostic, which was followed by All Eyez on Me (1996), the first double album of hip-hop music.

As gangsta-rap generated sales, rappers found it almost obligatory to spin the usual litany of hard-boiled tales of drugs, sex and murder.

One of the main sources of creativity for the Los Angeles scene was the the Freestyle Fellowship crew, responsible for the elaborate collages of To Whom It May Concern (1991) and especially Inner City Griots (1993). The second album, A Book Of Human Language (1998), by Aceyalone, a founding member of the "Freestyle Fellowship" crew, was lavishly arranged by Matthew "Mumbles" Fowler, and retained a literate approach that contrasted with the old "gansta" style. Magnificent (2006) featured beats by Jon "RJD2" Krohn.

Los Angeles was also the birthplace of Latino hip-hop, which debuted with Escape From Havana (1990) by Cuban-born Mellow Man Ace (Sergio Reyes) and Hispanic Causing Panic (1991) by Kid Frost (Arturo Molina). Kid Frost's La Raza (1990) and Mellow Man Ace's Mentirosa (1990) became the reference standards for all subsequent Latin rappers. The artistic peak of West-Coast rap was probably reached by a semi-Latino group, Cypress Hill, the project of producer Lawrence "Muggs" Muggerud and rapper Louis "B Real" Freeze, with their hyper-depressed trilogy of Cypress Hill (1992), Black Sunday (1993) and Temples of Boom (1995). The large Latino collective Ozomatli offered ebullient salsa-funk-rap on Ozomatli (1998), featuring wizard turntablist Cut Chemist (Lucas MacFadden).

Oakland was the headquarter of most black rappers from the San Francisco Bay Area. The main acts were the crew Digital Underground, the brainchild of Greg "Shock G" Jacobs and the main hip-hop purveyors of George Clinton's eccentric "funkadelia", notably on Sex Packets (1990); and rapper Del tha Funkee Homosapien (Teren Delvon Jones), also inspired by the P-funk aesthetics on I Wish My Brother George Was Here (1991). The Mystic Journeymen, formed by rappers Pushin' Suckas' Consciousness (PSC) and Vision The Brotha From Anotha Planet (BFAP), were important not so much for their 4001: The Stolen Legacy (1995), but as founders of the Oakland collective "Living Legends".

San Francisco produced some of the most virulent agit-prop rap of all times: the Beatnigs, with Beatnigs (1988), Consolidated, with The Myth Of Rock (1990), and the Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy, with Hypocrisy Is The Greatest Luxury (1992).

Gangsta-rap reached the East Coast with Onix's Bacdafucup (1992) and The Notorious B.I.G. (Christopher "Biggie Smalls" Wallace)'s Ready to Die (1994), produced by Sean "Puffy" Combs and others. Fat Joe (Joseph Cartagena), the first major Latino rapper from the Bronx, also embraced the gansta-rap aesthetic, notably on his second album Jealous One's Envy (1995). Fat Joe was the most notorious member of New York's rap collective D.I.T.C. (Diggin' In The Crates), formed by Joe "DJ Diamond D" Kirkland and first tested on Diamond D's Stunts, Blunts & Hip Hop (1992). The other notable member, Lamont "Big L" Coleman (shot to death in 1999), released perhaps the best of their albums, Lifestylez Ov Da Poor & Dangerous (1995), produced by Anthony "Buckwild" Best.

Progressive-rap

Progressive rap of the kind pioneered by Public Enemy thrived with works such as Arrested Development's 3 Years 5 Months and 2 Days In The Life (1998), the product of Atlanta-based rapper Todd "Speech" Thomas and disc-jockey Timothy "Headliner" Barnwell; Movement Ex's Movement Ex (1990), a concentrate of stereotyped conspiracy theories from Los Angeles; Oscar "Paris" Jackson's second album Sleeping With the Enemy (1992), from the Bay Area; Public Enemy associate Sister Souljah (Lisa Williamson)'s 360 Degrees of Power (1992); Brand Nubian's One For All (1990); X-Clan's To the East Blackwards (1990) from New York, KMD's Mr Hood (1991), featuring rapper Daniel "Zen Love" Dumile (later known as MF Doom), and Return Of The Boom Bap (1993) by former Boogie Down Productions mastermind KRS-One (Lawrence Krisna Parker). These groups harked back to the radical, militant, Afro-nationalist ideology of the Black Panthers and the Nation of Islam. They basically represented the "positive" alternative to gangsta-rap: instead of advocating rape and murder, they confronted issues of both local and global politics. Even feminism found its hip-hop voice: Yolanda "Yo-Yo" Whitaker, who debuted with Make Way for the Motherlode (1991) and founded the "Intelligent Black Woman's Coalition" to promote self-esteem among women.

This subgenre reached a fanatical peak with Steal This Album (1998) by Oakland's duo The Coup, that reads like Mao's "Red Book" or a Noam Chomsky pamphlet.

Jazz-hop

This was also the decade of "jazz-hop" fusion. Jazz-hop fusion had distinguished precedessors. Some consider Miles Davis' On The Corner (1972) the precursor of hip-hop. For sure, in the 1990s the Last Poet, a Harlem-based trio of former jail convicts converted to Islam (led by Jalal Mansur Nuriddin), were using "spiel" (as rap was called in those days) over a jazz background: their political sermons inspired by Malcom X relied on the arrangements of jazz producer Alan Douglas on The Last Poets (1970), which became a hit, and developed into "jazzoetry" on Chastisement (1972).

Within the rap nation, jazz-hop was pioneered by: Grandmaster Flash's remixes of jazz master Roy Ayers; scratcher Derek "D.ST" Howells's collaboration with jazz pianist Herbie Hancock, Rockit (1983); the Jungle Brothers' Straight Out the Jungle (1988), possibly the first example of full-fledged jazz-hop fusion; And Now The Legacy Begins (1991), the eclectic multi-stylistic manifesto of Toronto-based duo Dream Warriors (with the prophetic My Definition of a Boombastic Jazz Style); A Tribe Called Quest's The Low End Theory (1991), which featured guest musician Ron Carter; Chuck D Ridenbour's big-band tribute to Charlie Mingus (1992). Jazz returned the favor with post-bop saxophonist Greg Osby's 3D Lifestyles (1993), with Miles Davis' very last recording, Doo-Bop (1992), and with the "acid-jazz" scene of San Francisco (Broun Fellinis, Alphabet Soup).

Besides being one of the first groups to follow in the footsteps of Public Enemy's militant hip-hop, Gang Starr, rapper Keith "Guru" Elam and producer Christopher "DJ Premier" Martin, pioneered the mature exploitation of jazz on Step In The Arena (1990) and Daily Operation (1992), and then ventured beyond jazz-hop on Moment of Truth (1998). Martin's extensive use of jazz sampling and percussion loops revolutionized the way "raps" ought to be orchestrated.

Jazz-hop became the sensation of 1993 with Guru's own Jazzmatazz Volume 1 (1993), US3's Hand on the Torch (1993), for which British producer Geoff Wilkinson mined the Blue Note catalog, the Digable Planets' Reachin' (1993), from Boston, Pharcyde's dadaistic, carnivalesque Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde (1993), from Los Angeles, and Plantation Lullabies (1993) by Washington's Me'Shell Ndege' Ocello (Mary Johnson). The trend was amplified in the following years by albums such as One Step Ahead of the Spider (1994), the third album by Dallas' white rapper Mark Griffin, better known as MC900 Ft Jesus, the Fun Lovin' Criminals' Come Find Yourself (1996).

Philadelphia's Roots approached jazz not via samples but through live instrumentation, led by the rhythm section of drummer Ahmir-Khalib "?uestlove" Thompson and bassist Leon "Hub" Hubbard and by keyboardist Scott Storch, on Do You Want More (1994), the album that introduced spoken-word artist Ursula Rucker. A quantum jump in arrangements (notably James "Kamal" Gray's electronic keyboards) made Phrenology (2002) a case in point for the marriage of technology, composition and performance, transforming hip-hop music into avantgarde architecture; and its successors Game Theory (2006) and Rising Down (2008) refined their invention (catchy, agitprop, beat-based, cross-stylistic music) by wedding those lush production values with dark, high-energy vibrations.

The horizon further expanded with Chicago's Common Sense (Lonnie Rashied Lynn), who evolved from the mellow jazz-hop of Resurrection (1994) to Electric Circus (2003), an experiment reminiscent of psychedelic and progressive-rock, and with New York's Dante "Mos Def" Smith, who reacted to gangsta-rap by bring back the serious-minded philosophy of the "Native Tongues" posse while at the same time accomodating rock, soul and funk on the phantasmagoric Black on Both Sides (1999).

Basically, hip-hop music had fragmented along three seismic faults of rebellion: one could vent negro anger as a gangsta, as an Afronationalist militant or... by playing jazz music.

Hip-hop domination

By the mid 1990s, hip-hop had dramatically evolved from an art of "messages" that were spoken in a conversational tone over an elementary rhythmic base to an art of cadenced speech in an emphatic and melodramatic tone over an intricate rhythmic collage. Regardless of the "message" that was now being broadcasted, the sense of black self-affirmation had moved to the forefront. The main continuity with the original form of Grandmaster Flash was in the "urban" setting of the music: except for free-jazz, no other form of black music had been so viscerally tied to the urban environment.

During the 1990s, hip-hop spread outside of its traditional bases (New York and Los Angeles), reaching the far corners of the globe.

Acid-rap, a morbid style related to Gravediggaz's horrocore, was coined by Detroit's rapper and producer Esham (Rashaam Smith), both on his solo album Boomin' Words From Hell (1990), recorded when he was 15, and on the harsh and disturbing Life After Death (1992), credited to his group NATAS ("Satan" spelled backwards).

Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik (1994) by Atlanta's Outkast, the duo of Andre "Dre" Benjamin and Antwan "Big Boi" Patton, was representative of the rise of southern hip-hop, with its emphasis on soul melodies and pop arrangements. Outkast turned hip-hop into a new form of space funkadelia on their sumptuous kaleidoscopes of aural ecstasy, Aquemini (1998) and Stankonia (2000) Another product of the Atlanta school was Goodie Mob's Soul Food (1995), fronted by vocalist Thomas "Cee-Lo Green" Callaway and credited with starting the "Dirty South" movement"; while Master P assembled the No Limit posse in New Orleans.

Pre-Life Crisis (1995) by Nashville's rapper, multi-instrumentalist and producer Count Bass D (Dwight Farrell) was the first rap album to feature all live instruments.

New Orleans's Master P (Percy Miller) was the leading enterpreneur of unadulterated gangsta-rap. He turned it into the hip-hop equivalent of a serial show, with releases being manufactured according to Master P's script at his studios by a crew of producers. His own albums Ice Cream Man (1996) and Ghetto D (1997) were the ultimate stereotypes of the genre. In 1998, his musical empire had six albums in the Top-100 charts.

Atlanta's producer Jonathan "Lil Jon" Smith and his East Side Boyz coined a fusion of hip-hop and synth-pop called "crunk", from the title of his debut, Get Crunk Who U Wit (1996).

The first star of East Coast's Latino rap was Christopher "Big Punisher" Rios, a second-generation Puertorican of New York who died of a heart attack shortly after climbing the charts with Capital Punishment (1998).

In Britain, Fundamental, the brainchild of Aki "Propa-ghandi" Nawaz, attempted an original and brutal fusion of hip-hop, industrial music and world-music on Seize The Time (1994), propelling his agit-prop raps with a style reminiscent of Tackhead, Consolidated and Public Enemy. And Asian Dub Foundation, a London-based sound system of ethnic Indian musicians halfway between Tackhead and Clash, concocted the militant ethnic-punk-folk-dance music of Rafi's Revenge (1998).

Not even Roots Manuva (Rodney Smith) was a true rapper, as the oneiric production of Brand New Second Hand (1999) owed to drum'n'bass and trip-hop, and his Jamaican roots creeped out on Run Come Save Me (2001).

Irish communist rappers Marxman sounded like the British version of Public Enemy on 33 Revolutions Per Minute (1992), but without the musical talent.

MC Solaar (Senegal-born Claude M'Barali) catapulted French hip-hop to the forefront of the international scene with the brilliant Qui Seme le Vent Recolte le Tempo (1991) and Prose Combat (1994).

Assalti Frontali, the leading hip-hop posse of Italy, unleashed the confrontational manifestos Terra di Nessuno (1992) and the hardcore-tinged Conflitto (1996).

In 1996 two rap singles reached the #1 spot in the pop charts. But also in the same year the Bay Area's Tupac Shakur/ 2Pac and (a few months later) The Notorious B.I.G. were murdered, two events that highlighted the violence inherent in the genre and in the industry.

A brief commercial fad was the opulent, or "jiggy", style served by producer Sean "Puffy" Combs on his own No Way Out (1997), credited to Puff Daddy, and on Money Power & Respect (1998) by rap trio LOX.

Whether it was a female response to gangsta-rap or a reaction to the new teenage idols, female rappers stepped up to the crude vocabulary of the men: New York's Kimberly "Lil' Kim" Jones, with Hard Core (1996), Philadelphia's Eve Jihan Jeffers, with Let There Be Eve (1999), Chicago's Shawntae "Da Brat" Harris, the first female rapper ever to score platinum with Funkdafied (1994), produced by Jermaine Dupri, and Miami's "Trina" (Katrina Laverne Taylor), with Da Baddest Bitch (2000), were representative of this raunch, aggressive, obscene, materialist, vulgar and profane tone.

In the second half of the decade, hip-hop artists became more conscious of the essence of hip-hop: it's the process, not the structure that makes a song a hip-hop song. Its process is a process of deconstruction, and can be applied to just about anything that has ever been recorded. The new awareness in the process resulted in a new awareness of the importance of sampling. The role of the sampling device in transforming both the sampled and the recipient material became more and more obvious to a generation of post-Malcom X African-Americans who, politically speaking, had been raised to challenge and transform stereotypes. Hip-hop artists became semiotic artists, artists who employed sonic icons to create a fantastic universe grounded in the real universe. The same process led to a rediscovery of melody (even pop crooning) and then to a rediscovery of live instruments, whose warm and humane sound linked back to the rural roots of hip-hop's urban African-Americans. The metamorphosis of hip-hop was also due to its own commercial success, which, de facto, removed it from the streets and moved it to the much more sophisticated lifestyle of Beverly Hills villas and Manhattan high-rise condos.

The obvious weakness of the entire hip-hop movement was in the lyrics, which were mostly naive, stereotyped, clumsy; and, in fact, did not age well.

Sophisticated hip-hop

The "sophisticated" age of hip-hop can be made to start with the Fugees, a trio from New Jersey (Lauryn Hill, Prakazrel "Pras" Michel, Wyclef "Clef" Jean) whose The Score (1996) fused hip-hop with jazz, rhythm'n'blues and reggae. Even more sophisticated was Wyclef Jean's first solo project, The Carnival (1997), a virtual tour of the black world, from Cuba to New Orleans to Jamaica to Africa, boasting eccentric arrangements.

Shawn "Jay-Z" Carter, the most commercially successful hip-hop artist of the era, epitomized the state of the art, from the gangsta-rap landmark Reasonable Doubt (1996) to the eclectic double album The Blueprint - The Gift & the Curse (2002), produced by Kanye West, to the post-modern concept American Gangster (2007).

New York rap was also resurrected by the success of Earl "DMX" Simmons' It's Dark and Hell Is Hot (1997).

Los Angeles' trio Abstract Tribe Unique offered a lyrical blend of soul and jazz on Mood Pieces (1998).

Ditto for Philadelphia-born Bahamadia (Antonia Reed), whose Kollage (1996) was a smooth, laid-back exercise in recasting the soul-jazz ballad into the context of rap music.

Chicago's hip-hop duo All Natural (rapper David "Capital D" Kelly and dj Tony "Tone B Nimble" Fields), members of the "Family Tree" posse, offered passionate raps on No Additives No Preservatives (1998).

At the turn of the century New York unleashed the creative geniuses of the AntiPop Consortium, whose Tragic Epilogue (2000) created a new genre ("digital hip-hop"?) by wedding rap with the new aesthetics of "glitch" music, and of Ian Bavitz, alias Aesop Rock, whose albums Float (2000) Bazooka Tooth (2003) overflowed with eccentric arrangements and haunting textures. Sensational delivered nightmarish, stoned, warped, non-linear rapping over lo-fi beats on Loaded With Power (1997).

New York-based spoken-word artist and hip-hop producer Mike Ladd was more interested in sculpting a musical background to his poetry than in beats and rhymes on Easy Listening 4 Armageddon (1997) and especially Welcome to the Afterfuture (1999).

The most significat stylistic revolution of New York rap came with Dalek, the project of rapper Will Brooks and producer Alap "Oktopus" Momin. The five lengthy songs of Negro Necro Nekros (1998) and the electronic ethnic ambient noise hodgepodges of From Filthy Tongue of Gods and Griots (2002) delivered a baroque psychedelic version of Public Enemy's creative chaos. Dalek thrived halfway between the neurotic and the transcendental, the same way that industrial music did in the late 1970s. Absence (2005) was explosive like a shrapnel, dense like a lava stream and, still, elegant like a peacock's tail. But this was barely hip-hop at all. It was just layers of sounds and noises.

Instrumental hip-hop

Crucial for the development of an atmospheric pseudo-dance genre was instrumental hip-hop.

Instrumental hip-hop was largely legitimized by a Los Angeles native resident in London, DJ Shadow, born Josh Davis. A legendary turntablist, Davis used prominent bass lines and scratches to detonate his extended singles Entropy (1993) and In/Flux (1993), and basically bridged classical music and hip-hop on elaborate, multi-part compositions such as What Does Your Soul Look Like (1995). Endtroducing (1996) was possibly the first respectable album of all-instrumental hip-hop, entirely composed on the sampler but nonetheless lushly orchestrated.

The dub-tinged soundscapes of New York's Skiz "Spectre" Fernando were best deployed on the imposing gothic, post-apocalyptic trilogy of The Illness (1995), The Second Coming (1997) and The End (1999), each of them the hip-hop equivalent of a William Blake poem.

With DJ Shadow and Spectre, instrumental, sample-based hip-hop became a genre of its own. Other instigators were Japanese dj DJ Krush, whose jazzy style shone on Strictly Turntablised (1994) and Ki-Oku (1998), featuring trumpeter Toshinori Kondo; and Herbalizer, London-based disc-jockeys Jake Wherry and Ollie "Teeba" Trattles, whose most daring experiment was Very Mercenary (1999).

San Francisco-based disc-jockey and virtuoso of the mixing board Dan "the Automator" Nakamura sculpted Dr Octagon (1995), a collaboration with rapper Kool Keith and turntablist Richard "Q-Bert" Quitevis, Handsome Boy Modeling School's So How's Your Girl (1999), with Prince Paul, and the science-fiction concept album Deltron 3030 (2000), with rapper Del Tha Funkee Homosapien and turntablist Kid Koala.

DJ Shadow also helped create a new artistic figure: the turntablist. As more and more genres adopted the turntable as an instrument, it was inevitable that "virtuosi" began to appear. Atlanta's DJ Faust was first to record an all-scratching album, Man Or Myth (1998). While he never realized a significant record, drum'n'bass specialist DJ Craze (Nicaraguan-born Arith Delgado) stunned the crowds of Miami with his acrobatic routines at the end of the decade.

New York's quartet of turntablists X-Ecutioners, featuring turntablists Robert "Swift" Aguilar and Anthony "Roc Raida" Williams, marked a nostalgic return to the era of virtuoso scratching with the elaborate performances of X-Pressions (1997), while Rob Swift's solo albums Soulful Fruit (1997) and the jazz tour de force of The Ablist (1999) were creating a new place in music for the technique.

The most influential dj collective of all times, Invisibl Skratch Piklz, consisted of turntablists from the San Francisco Bay Area and the Sacramento area of Latino and Philipino descent: Richard "Q-Bert" Quitevis, who also released the instrumental sci-fi concept album Wave Twisters (1998), "Mixmaster" Mike Schwartz, who also released Anti-Theft Device (1998) with producer Naut Humon (of Rhythm And Noise), Philippines-native Dave "D-Styles" Cuasito of the "Beat Junkies" crew, who debuted solo with Phantazmagorea (2002), a collection of songs composed entirely from scratching, Ritche "Yogafrog" Desuasido, "Mixmaster Mike" Schwartz, Jon "Shortkut Cruz, Lou "DJ Disk" Quintanilla, etc. Starting with Invasion of the Octopus People (1996), this collective of scratch virtuosi developed a separate art of DJ-ing.

Live Human, a San Francisco-based trio led by turntablist Carlos "DJ Quest" Aguiler, played sophisticated jams and adopted a technique of live sampling to continuously reinvents their compositions during live performances. The improvised music of Live Human Featuring DJ Quest (1997), bridged the gap between hip-hop and jazz better than any fusion or crossover project.

Canadian turntablist Kid Koala (Eric San), a spiritual disciple of Coldcut's sound collages, downplayed his virtuoso show on Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (2000) with an irriverent anarchic cartoonish humour.

Jason "DJ Logic" Kibler contributed to redefine the turntablist as a jazz improviser on Project Logic (1999) and especially Anomaly (2001). DJ Logic seamlessly integrated the noise of his turntable with the instruments of his jazz combo (flute, saxophone, organ, violin, organ, trumpet).

Other notable albums of abstract instrumental hip-hop included: Peanut Butter Breaks (1994), by San Jose-based dj Chris "Peanut Butter Wolf" Manak, Soulmates (2000), by Los Angeles' Elvin "Nobody" Estela, Neutrino (2004), by Japanese duo Neutrino (Atsuhiro Murakami and Hideki Kuroda), etc.

Detroit's white producer Dabrye (Tadd Mullinix) created a new instrumental format out of hip-hop, funk, jazz and electronica on One/Three (2001).

In Los Angeles, Busdriver's white producer Alfred "Daedelus" Roberts painted the disjointed murals of Invention (2002), setting collages of samples to hip-hop beats, mixing sci-fi electronica and orchestral kitsch; an art that he refined and culminated with the elegant retro parade of Exquisite Corpse (2005), where the samples of orchestral music of the 1930s came to constitute the musical equivalent of a collective stream of consciousness.

Inspired by New York's "illbient" scene, a number of djs aimed for a hip-hop that could transcend hip-hop, that is for a new (ambient, psychological, free-form) form of art founded on the marriage of poetry and sound. Ohio-born dj Boom Bip (Bryan Hollon), a self-described "anti-dj", well impersonated the sound sculptor and collage assembler of the new wave of hip-hop with the mind-boggling exercise in hip-hop counterpoint of Seed to Sun (2002).

RJD2, the project of white Ohio-based producer Ramble Jon Krohn, turned Deadringer (Def Jux, 2002) into a tour de force of cinematic collages of samples and wicked stuttering beats, dilating and deforming Sixties soundtracks, smooth jazz, soul themes, gloomy atmospheres.

Lucas "Cut Chemist" MacFadden rediscovered the joyful childish art of audio collage on The Audience's Listening (2006).

James Yancey upped the ante of instrumental samples-based (and schizophrenically fragmented) hip-hop with Donuts (2006), credited to both his nicknames J Dilla and Jay Dee.

White rap

During the 1990s, white rap acts caught up with blacks. Initially, white musicians such as Beck didn't quite get the whole point of rapping. Thus, for example, Everlast's Whitey Ford Sings The Blues (1998) merely used hip-hop as a rhythmic background for their folk-style meditations. On their debut album G. Love & Special Sauce (1994), Philadelphia's G. Love & Special Sauce, led by guitarist and vocalist Garrett Dutton, bridged vintage talking blues and contemporary rap.

Blaxpoitation of rap began in earnest with the most celebrated white rapper of the era, Marshall Mathers, aka Eminem, whose The Slim Shady (1999) and The Marshall Mathers LP (2000) unleashed angry rants at American society and resonated with the masses of disaffected white kids from the suburbia.

The whole model of the "singer songwriter" was revolutionized by the advent of white rappers such as Eminem: they introduced not only the syncopated rhyming but also the brutal subjects of rap music to an audience of middle-class white kids.

One of the most influential figures at the turn of the millennium was white producer El-P, aka El Producto, born Jaime Meline in New York. He founded Company Flow, whose Funcrusher Plus (1997) and especially the instrumental Little Johnny From The Hospital (1999) were the most were the most bombastic, ebullient and explosive works of the time, and crafted the soundscape of Cannibal Ox's The Cold Vein (2001), a project risen from the ashes of Company Flow (Vast Aire and Vordul Megilah), before releasing his first solo album, the neurotic sci-fi concept Fantastic Damage (2002). Throughout his work, EL-P harked back to the anthemic, ebullient and explosive mix of Public Enemy.

El-P's influence was visible on Rjyan "Cex" Kidwell's fusion of hip-hop, pop and avantgarde electronics on Being Ridden (2003).

cLOUDDEAD, a trio of white hip-hop artists from the Oakland-based "Anticon" collective (producer David "Odd Nosdam" Madson and rappers Adam "Doseone" Drucker and Yoni "why?" Wolf), transcended the canon of hip-hop music on the six-movement cLOUDDEAD (2001) and Ten (2004). They offered hip-hop distorted through the lenses of a dystopian vision or through the nervous breakdown of an urban werewolf. The sound effects constituted the core, not just the periphery, of the music, at times even reminiscent of ambient music and industrial music. Doseone also fronted Subtle, a sextet featuring guitarist Jordan Dalrymple, keyboardist Dax Pierson, clarinetist Marty Dowers, cellist Alexander Kort and electronic percussionist Jeffrey "Jel" Logan. Despite the jazz-like line-up, A New White (2004) was devoted to progressive rap-rock fusion with a fixation for the catchy Sixties. Having mastered the technique of mixing hard beats and dense textures, Subtle interjected psychedelic, glitch, illbient, hip-hop, industrial, pop and even atonal chamber music into Doseone's frantic, demented, acrobatic rapping on the better choreographed For Hero For Fool (2006). Subtle's trilogy of concept albums, continued by the more melodic Exiting Arm (2008), chronicled the life of a rapper, Hour Hero Yes.

Tim "Sole" Holland, the main brain behind the "Anticon" collective, unfolded his erudite stream of consciousness with punk fervor over a fluctuating layer of samples and live instruments on Bottle Of Humans (2000) and Selling Live Water (2003).

Another white member of Oakland's "Anticon" posse, Brendon "Alias" Whitney wed introspective lyrics and atmospheric downtempo electronics on The Other Side of the Looking Glass (2002), and moved towards noir jazz with the instrumental album Muted (2003).

Anticon also nursed the talent of frenzied rapper Sage Francis, Paul Franklin, the best lyricist of his generation, whose Personal Journals (2002) and A Healthy Distrust (2005) became the classics of "emo hip-hop", his interference of political and personal discourses enhanced by a new generation of beatmakers and producers.

Canadian hip-hop producer and rapper Richard "Buck 65" Terfry was, at heart, an existential hobo whose laments relied on piano and guitar as much as on the traditional hip-hop arsenal. The 45-minute long piece Language Arts (1997) and the concept album Vertex (1999) displayed a unique art of stark storytelling and philosophizing, mixing folk into hip-hop.

The border between vocal and instrumental tracks was blurred in the wasteland sculpted by Canadian dj Robert Sixtoo Squire, a member of the "Anticon" collective, on the lengthy jams The Canada Project, off Songs I Hate and Other People Moments (2001), Duration Project, off Duration (2002), The Mile-End Artbike, off Antogonist Survival Kit (2003), Storm Clouds & Silver Linings and Boxcutter Emporium, off Chewing On Glass & Other Miracle Cures (2004). The guesting MCs are merely part of the murky, downtempo, post-industrial production, just like the samples, the electronics, the fractured beats and the live instrumentation.

Atlanta's white producer Prefuse 73, Scott Herren, also active as post-rocker Savath & Savalas, heralded laptop-based hip-hop with Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives (2001), a tour de force of fractured, warped, incoherent stream of consciousness that mixed glitch music, deconstructed vocals and jazz patterns. Two albums later, Herren gave his project a more organic and humane face by employing a vast assortment of voices on Surrounded By Silence (2005).

Northern State is a trio of college-educated white female rappers from New York (Julie "Hesta Prynn" Potash, Correne "Guinea Love" Spero and Robyn "DJ Sprout" Goodmark) that rediscovered the Beastie Boys sound on Dying In Stereo (2003).

Party Fun Action Committee, featuring Aesop Rock's producer Tony "Blockhead" Simon, penned the goofy hip-hopera Let's Get Serious (2003).

White rapper Streets (Mike Skinner), became the English equivalent of Eminem with Original Pirate Material (2002), although his music was grounded on "garage" and his lyrics were frequently sung.

San Francisco's Gold Chains, aka Topher LaFata, mixed rock, reggae and techno on Gold Chains (2001).

Atmosphere, the project of Minneapolis-based rapper Sean "Slug" Daley and producer Anthony "Ant" Davis, coined an introspective "emo-rap" on God Loves Ugly (2002).

All in all, white hip-hop music was more influential on white popular music than on hip-hop proper: it grafted the production, rhythmic and rhyming techniques of black hip-hop music onto the old singer-songwriter genre (whether political, introspective or sociological). The political "discourse" of white hip-hop remained fundamentally different from the discourse of black hip-hop. The former was conditioned by the tradition of Euro-American political idealism, which, instead, was never truly part of the Afro-American discourse, which has been traditionally centered on civil rights. Ditto for analytic/existential introspection, which was never truly part of the black repertoire (the blues was a kind of atmospheric introspection, and, in any case, a community-wide introspection, an "inter-spection"). Even the most extreme cases (such as Eminem) displayed a psychoanalytic quality that was generally missing in black hip-hop. Ditto for the sociological analysis, which was more rational than antagonistic: white rappers displayed an analytic approach to refounding society as opposed to the cynicism and fatalism of black rappers. To summarize, white hip-hop and black hip-hop had different purposes and functions. Ultimately, it was a matter of human geography: the suburbs as opposed to the ghettos. White people had an "American Dream" that is still very much part of their subconscious (whether one succeeded or failed): black people's "dream" was still Martin Luther's dream, a wildly different kind of dream.

Urban soul

"Urban" was the nickname grafted to the smooth and sophisticated rhythm'n'blues ballad of the late 1980s, best personified by Janet Jackson (Michael's sister) and Whitney Houston. Jackson debuted with Control (1986), crafted by producers Jimmy Jam (James Harris) and Terry Lewis that offered urban soul music tinged with hip-hop beats to propel her sensual whisper. Houston exploded with Saving All My Love (1985), How Will I Know (1985), Greatest Love Of All (1985), I Wanna Dance With Somebody (1987), Didn't We Almost Have It All (1987), One Moment In Time (1988).

Urban soul came to dominate pop music as well, thanks to the stars of Shalamar's singer Jody Watley (from Los Angeles), Brandy Norwood (also from the Los Angeles area) and Macy Gray (born Natalie McIntyre in Ohio and based in Los Angeles), revealed by the moribund growl of I Try (1999), an rousing ballad composed with keyboardist Jeremy Ruzumna, bassist David Wilder and guitarist Jinsoo Lim. The fact that black female artists such as Whitney Houston and Janet Jackson came to dominate the charts and set new sale records was, if nothing else, proof that black artists and female artists had made tremendous progress in being accepted by a world that used to worship only male white idols such as the Beatles and Elvis Presley.

Urban soul became a much more rhythmic affair in 1988, after Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis produced Janet Jackson's Control (1986), Antonio "L.A." Reid and Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds produced the Pebbles' Pebbles and after Teddy Riley produced Keith Sweat's Make It Last Forever. Finally, Teddy Riley's own group Guy and Bobby Brown's second album, Don't Be Cruel (1988), also produced by L.A. Reid and Babyface, fused urban soul with hip-hop to create "new jack swing". Bobby Brown had beeen a member of teenage-group New Edition, whose biggest hit, Cool It Now (1984), was probably the first to use rapping in a pop-soul context. Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis topped everybody else with Janet Jackson's second album, Rhythm Nation 1814 (1989). Later, the style was perfected by producer Sean "Puffy" Combs on Mary J. Blige's What's the 411? (1992), and by producers/writers Tim "Timbaland" Mosley and Melissa "Missy" Elliott on the second album by teen-idol Aaliyah (Haughton), One In A Million (1996).

The most successful of the new jack swing artists were Philadelphia's Boyz II Men, who established their "hip-wop" style (new jack swing plus four-part harmonies a` la doo-wop) with Cooleyhighharmony (1991), produced by Michael Bivins of the New Edition, and churned out colossal hits such as the Babyface-penned End of the Road (1992), that broke a record held by Elvis Presley since 1956, I'll Make Love to You (1994), another Babyface creation (which even beat the previous record), On Bended Knee (1994), produced by Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis (a hit which beat their own record), and One Sweet Day (1995), a duet with Mariah Carey (which, again, broke their own previous record). The era of new jack swing ended with Usher (Raymond)'s My Way (1997), produced by Jermaine Dupri, Babyface and Sean "Puffy" Combs, and by multi-instrumentalist Robert "R" Kelly, whose double album R (1998) marked a revival of classic soul music. Kelly later premiered his campy, cartoonish television soap hip-hopera Trapped In The Closet (2005-07) that looked like a parody of the whole scene.

The spiritual message and the Caribbean-pop-rap fusion of London-born Des'ree Weekes came to focus on I Ain't Movin' (1994).

Assembled in 1988 by Los Angeles writers/producers Denzil Foster and Thomas McElroy (both former Club Nouveau), the female quartet En Vogue rejuvinated the concept of the "girl group" for the video age with their second album Funky Divas (1992). However, the new vanguard of female rhythm'n'blues groups was represented by TLC, the brainchild of producer Dallas Austin, that debuted with Ooooooohhh... (1992). They, in turn, inspired Houston's Destiny's Child (featuring the rising star of Beyonce Knowles), who came to dominate the charts at the turn of the century.

The Minneapolis sextet Mint Condition was the most competent combo of mainstream rhythm'n'blues throughout the 1990s, from Breakin' My Heart (1991) to What Kind of Man Would I Be (1996).

A revival of soul music, updated to the technology of the hip-hop era, was heralded by D'Angelo's Brown Sugar (1995), Maxwell's Urban Hang Suite (1996), a sumptuous Marvin Gaye-style romantic concept album, and by Texas-born singer-songwriter Erykah "Badu" Wright's Baduizm (1997). In fact, it had been predated by, yet again, the influential production duo of L.A. Reid and Babyface, for example on Toni Braxton's two massive bestsellers, Toni Braxton (1993) and Secrets (1996), the latter containing one of the most famous ballads of all times (Un-break My Heart, composed by Diane Warren). The British equivalent of Badu was also the most talented of the batch, as far as vocals go, Amy Winehouse, who debuted with Frank (2003), a painful exhibition of a teenager's turbulent lifestyle.

Outkast's Andre 3000 (Benjamin) rediscovered Prince's erotic funk-soul music on The Love Below (2003).

The Fugees' vocalist Lauryn Hill delivered in a versatile, booming voice the elegant and sincere allegories of The Miseducation Of (1998), across a broad stylistic range.

Virginia's singer-rapper-songwriter Melissa "Missy" Elliott and Virginia's producer Tim "Timbaland" Mosley (members of the hip-hop production crew "Da Bassment") proved to be a lethal combination: Elliott's sultry vocals, gymnastic raps and female-centric lyrics coupled with Timbaland's stuttering, digital grooves created a mood that was simultaneously sensitive, confrontational, hedonistic, stark and futuristic on Supa Dupa Fly (1997). The duo veered towards a format that mixed freely intimate ballads, dancefloor tracks and angry raps on So Addictive (2001).

At the turn of the century, Kelis Rogers inherited the crown of Queen Latifah and Missy Elliott with her feminist-tinged fusion of hip-hop and rhythm'n'blues on Kaleidoscope (1999), aggressively produced by The Neptunes (Chad Hugo and Pharrell Williams).

Missouri's laid-back pop-rapper Nelly (Cornell Haynes) became the genre's biggest seller with Country Grammar (2000), Nellyville (2002) and the double album Sweatsuit (2004).

Songwriter and pianist Alicia "Keys" Cook dramatically increased the level of musicianship with her Songs in A Minor (2001).

This was the age of superproducers The Neptunes (Chad Hugo and Pharrell Williams) and Tim "Timbaland" Mosley, both based in Virginia Beach, both masters of the new digital technology based on the "Pro Tools" software introduced in 1991. Both owed a lot to Teddy Riley, the Harlem producer who had made Virginia Beach the Mecca of the new sound in the first place, when he opened his "Future Recording Studios" there in 1991. The Neptunes were emblematic of the cold and thin sound of the digital age (as opposed to the warm and thick sound of classic pop, soul and rock music). Both could work on just about any kind of material, as proven by their co-production of white teenage idol Justin Timberlake's Justified (2002).

Timbaland pioneered the technique of custom-creating the beat via digital keyboards instead of adding a break-beat to a sample. Timbaland's strategy of musical estrangement (stuttering beats in alien timbres, unstable melodies that warp the conventions of singing along) was first experimented on Aaliyah's second album One In A Million (1996), and even more in the single Are You That Somebody (1998), whose arrangement bordered on glitch music; and blossomed on Missy Elliott's Supa Dupa Fly (1997) and So Addictive (2001), albums that were canvases on which the producer laid ever more creative beat patterns. Timbaland was, in fact, the first major hip-hop producer to cross over successfully into pop, crafting two million sellers: Nelly Furtado's Loose (2006) and Justin Timberlake's second album Future Sex/ Love Sounds (2006), albums credited to mediocre singers that the producer turned into sonic extravaganzas.

Hip-hop 2000

As white hip-hop became more competitive, black hip-hop reached a creative crisis that forced the new generations to focus on sound manipulation rather than on messages. At the turn of the century, hip-hop music was borrowing from other musical genres as well as recycling its own vocabulary of breaks, samples, and themes. New technology allowed producers to wrap everything into an original art of atmosphere/ambience sculpting. The "message" was becoming less and less important. The sociopolitical landscape was also radically changed by the 2001 terrorist attacks against New York and Washington: the debate shifted from class conflict to religious conflict, which contributed to neutralize the original sociopolitical fuel of hip-hop music.

Virginia-based production team The Neptunes (Chad Hugo and Pharrell Williams), already among the most successful hip-hop producers, formed N.E.R.D. with rapper Sheldon "Shay" Haley. In Search Of (2001), remixed the following year with live instrumentation, and especially Fly or Die (2004) indulged in a neurotic melange of sonic stereotypes and production techniques of metal, funk, soul and pop. They also produced the albums by Clipse (1), the duo of Virginia brothers Gene "Malice" and Terrence "Pusha" Thornton, two of the sonic jewels of the decade: Lord Willin' (2002) and Hell Hath No Fury (2006).

Northern Californian duo Blackalicious (rapper Tim "Gift of Gab" Parker and producer Xavier "Chief Xcel" Mosley) crafted a lyrical and nostalgic style with Nia (2000).

London's Dylan Mills, better known as Dizzee Rascal, a member of the "Roll Deep Crew", promoted a new genre ("grime"), an abrasive version of "garage" (itself a variant of drum'n'bass), with Boy in Da Corner (2003). The other British "next big thing" of the era was Sri Lankan-born agit-prop chanteuse Maya Arulpragasam, or M.I.A. for short, whose Arular (2005) simply mixed hip-hop, reggae and pop, while fostering a hard-line ideology that embraced both the political and the sexual, part Jello Biafra and part Madonna. Kala (2007) was less immediate but more visceral, a giant cauldron of artificial, natural, social and musical sounds.

The decadence of West-Coast rap was well represented by the groups that were supposed to rejuvinate it, and that, in fact, failed to: Dilated Peoples and Jurassic 5, whose enthusiastic and amusing Quality Control (2000) and especially Power in Numbers (2002) amounted de facto to a revival of old-fashioned rap (despite Cut Chemist's presence). Even Madvillain's Madvillainy (Stones Throw, 2004), the much publicized collaboration between New York-based rapper Daniel "MF Doom" Dumile (the former "Zen Love" of KMD) and Los Angeles-based producer Otis "Madlib" Jackson, was mostly an impressive tour de force of production techniques; the same skills that Jackson had already displayed on several of his own recordings, notably Quasimoto's The Unseen (2000) and Yesterdays New Quintet's Angles Without Edges (2001), frequently blurring the border between psychedelic, jazz and hip-hop music. MF Doom, on the other hand, lent his rapping skills also to Dangerdoom's The Mouse And The Mask (2005), a collaboration with Danger Mouse.

New York's producer Brian "Danger Mouse" Burton, better known for mixing together vocals and beats from Jay Z's Black Album and snippets from the Beatles' White Album to create his Grey Album (2004), formed Gnarls Barkley with Goodie Mob's vocalist Cee-Lo Green. The soul, pop and hip-hop hybrid of their St Elsewhere (2006) signaled a shift towards a reappropriation of the past.

Other significant albums released at the turn of the century included: Seven Eyes Seven Horns (1999), by producer Phillip "Scaramanga" Collington, who worked on Kool Keith's Dr Octagon project; Walter "Killah Priest" Reed's spiritual tour de force Heavy Mental (1998), from New York; Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson's Power of the Dollar (1999), from New York, a catchy product for the masses, produced by "Trackmasters" (i.e. the duo of Jean-Claude "Poke" Olivier and Samuel "Tone" Barnes), from a former crack dealer destined to become a rap superstar (Get Rich or Die Tryin' in 2003 and The Massacre in 2005 set records of sales); Supreme Clientele (2000) and The Pretty Toney Album (2004), by Wu-Tang Clan's member Dennis "Ghostface Killah" Coles; the Metabolics' M-Virus (1999), a New York duo produced by Bimos; Christopher "Ludacris" Bridges' Back For The First Time (2000), from Atlanta; Coming Forth By Day - The Book Of The Dead (2000), by New Jersey's jazz-hop crew Scienz of Life; Let's Get Ready (2000), the fifth album by New Orleans rapper Mystikal, a pupil of Master P who adopted a James Brown-ish persona; People Under the Stairs' second album Question in the Form of an Answer (2000), a collection of jams almost entirely created from funk and jazz samples, the project of Los Angeles Mike "Double K" Turner and Chris "Thes One" Portugal, bent on reappropriating the D.I.Y. aesthetics of early party-rap; Black Mamba Serums (2004), by former Company Flow rapper Justin "Bigg Jus" Ingleton; Ty Upwards' Awkward (2001), an original Afro-funk-jazz-rap fusion from Britain; The End of the Beginning (2003), by veteran Los Angeles rapper Murs, a former member of 3 Melancholy Gypsies (or 3MG) and Mystik Journeymen's "Living Legends" collective, produced by 9th Wonder; Little Brother's The Listening (2003), the North Carolina-based brainchild of 9th Wonder; Dudley Perkins' A Lil Light (2003), another oneiric production by Madlib; etc.

The new auteurs included: Kansas City's Aaron "Tech N9ne" Yates, with the horrorcore rap-rock fusion of The Calm Before The Storm (1999), Anghellic (2001) and Absolute Power (2002); New York's Terrence "Tes" Tessora, with the apocalyptic post-industrial soundscapes of the Take Home (2000) and x2 (2003); New York's Talib Kweli, with Quality (2002); Canada's K-OS (Kheaven Brereton), with Exit (2003); etc.

On the lighter side, Los Angeles' rapper Regan "Busdriver" Farquar, mixed goofy energetic scat-tinged rapping and eclectic beats on Temporary Forever (2002).

Chicago's Kanye West produced Jay-Z, Talib Kweli and Alicia Keys and then fashioned one of the most personal concepts of the era, the soul-infected The College Dropout (2004). Hyper-chromatic three-dimensional arrangements turned Late Registration (2005) into a stately hip-hop fresco and a distillation of the genre's existential legacy.

The combination of Gershwin "BlackBird" Hutchinson, a versatile West Coast rapper and singer, and the quasi-psychedelic imagination of producer Paris Zax yielded Bird's Eye View (2005). In turn, Paris Zax's all-instrumental Unpath'D Waters (2005) was a solid attempt at fusing hip-hop and acid-rock.

Boston's white rapper Edan Portnoy fused acid-rock and hip-hop on Beauty And The Beat (2005), the same way Sly Stone fused acid-rock and funk music four decades earlier.

The idea of combining hip-hop and live instruments was explored in novel settings. For example, the Dakah Hip Hop Orchestra, organized in 1999 in Los Angeles by saxophonist Geoff Gallegos with up to 60 players and MCs, blended hip-hop, jazz and classical music on the 12-song cycle of the Unfinished Symphony (2004).

The master of diction and free-form rapping was New Orleans' Lil Wayne (Dwayne Carter), who had debuted with Tha Block Is Hot (1999), produced by Mannie Fresh (Byron Thomas), but reinvented himself on the trilogy of Tha Carter (2004), Tha Carter II (2005) and Tha Carter III (2008).

The new star of soul music was Raheem DeVaughn, who debuted with The Love Experience (2005) and broke through with the more traditional Love Behind the Melody (2008).

Roots-rock in the age of alt-country
Alt Country

The revolution in roots-rock that began in the late 1980s in Chicago with Souled American and Uncle Tupelo continued in the 1990s and began a new genre altogether. Those bands had rediscovered country and folk music for the hardcore generation: their descendants dumped hardcore for the most spartan and traditional of sounds.

Uncle Tupelo bred two offshoots. Jay Farrar's Son Volt were mostly a vehicle for their leader's philosophizing: Trace (1995) was a concept album that analyzed the collective subconscious of the people of the Mississippi river. Jeff Tweedy's Wilco expanded Uncle Tupelo's vocabulary towards the Byrds' folk-rock, Neil Young's mournful ballads, the Rolling Stones' drunk rhythm'n'blues, the Band's domestic gospel-rock, Bob Dylan's Blonde On Blonde and Big Star's baroque pop on their second album, Being There (1996). Jay Bennett's keyboards helped pen arrangements that left their roots way behind. Summer Teeth (1999), the natural evolution of that idea, was thus a studio product that relied heavily on electronic sounds, and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002), their most experimental album, was a majestic nonsense of eccentric arrangements, skewed melodies and lyrical meditations that bridged the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds and Radiohead's OK Computer while also delivering a very poignant meaning.

Kentucky's Will Oldham, who also recorded under the monikers Palace Brothers, Palace Songs, Palace Music, Palace and Bonnie Prince Billy, virtually jumpstarted the "alt-country" movement with There Is No One What Will Take Care Of You (1993), an album that displayed the qualities of independent alternative rock while playing old-fashioned country music. Oldham's acoustic folk was not terribly emotional: Days In The Wake (1994) was perhaps his most personal statement.

The acoustic revival spread to Kentucky, where Freakwater had been already active. A collaboration between Eleventh Dream Day's drummer Janet Bean and Catherine Ann Irwin, two singer/songwriters who seemed little concerned with the alternative/avantgarde rock of their time, Freakwater began in the vein of primitive folk music but evolved with Old Paint (1995) to deliver a bleak vision of humankind in a stark, neutral style.

Alt-country, or (from Uncle Tupelo's classic album) "no-depression folk", ruled the second half of the decade, and influenced even bands that had little to do with the acoustic revival. Notable albums of the time were: Tales Of Brave Ida (1994), by New York's Ida (the songwriting duo of Daniel Littleton and Elizabeth Mitchell); Milk And Scissors (1996), by Chicago's Handsome Family; Egg Fusion (1996), by Kentucky's Retsin, i.e. songwriters Tara Jane O'Neil and Cynthia Lynn Nelson; Dog Days (1995), by Mississippi's Blue Mountain; Let Me Bring You Down (1996), by Two Dollar Guitar (the project of Jad Fair's associate Tim Foljhan); etc.

North Carolina's Whiskeytown, a punkier Uncle Tupelo (or a countryfied Replacements) that relied on the combined talents of Vocalist Ryan Adams, violinist Caitlin Cary and guitarist Mike Daly, penned perhaps the best of the batch, Strangers Almanac (1997),

Los Angeles' Grant Lee Buffalo, led by Shiva Burlesque's guitarist Grant Lee Phillips, penned Fuzzy (1993), whose style was power-pop that sounded like folk music, an odd hybrid of American Music Club, Woody Guthrie and Big Star.

Seattle's Citizens' Utilities, on the other hand, crafted a baroque form of country-rock, relying on three-part vocal harmonies as much as on tension-filled dynamics and eccentric instrumental touches, with Lost And Foundered (1996), No More Medicine (1997), their most poignant work, and Sunbreak (1999).

Boston's Scud Mountain Boys were almost slo-core on Massachusetts (1996), but vocalist Joe Pernice later formed Pernice Brothers and turned to pop orchestration on Overcome By Happiness (1998).

Boston's Willard Grant Conspiracy played elegant, evocative and melancholy country music on the introspective monolith 3am Sunday @ Fortune Otto's (1996) that evolved into the solemn and depressed ballads of Mojave (1999), which often sounded like Chris Isaak interpreting Neil Young's Harvest or Bob Dylan's Knocking On Heaven's Door.

The alt-country movement spawned singer-songwriters such as Chicago's Robbie Fulks, with Country Love Songs (1996); and Tennessee's Josh Rouse, with Dressed Up Like Nebraska (1998).

Chamber Folk

In the mid 1990s a new evolution of roots-rock led to a form of "chamber folk", a folk/country style that employed an expanded instrumentation and loitered at the border between noise-rock and post-rock.

Tennessee's Lambchop can be credited with proving the viability of the idea. The pieces on I Hope You're Sitting Down (1994) were artful disguises of a gentle and downbeat minstrel (guitarist/frontman Kurt Wagner) in a maze of keyboards, horns and strings. The music was more often funereal than exuberant, and the atmosphere was the equivalent of "film noir" in a Nashville setting. How I Quit Smoking (1996) was a more private affair, but still wrapped in arrangements that were pastoral, neoclassical, nostalgic, dreamy. If sometimes Lambchop's albums sacrificed substance for elegance and occasionally veered into a bland hybrid of country and soul balladry, ever more formidable ensembles helped to craft the rock opera Nixon (2000) and collections such as Damaged (2006) that were poetic but formulaic, austere but diluted, gentle but superficial, transcendental but mundane: this intermediate state became the metaphysical location of Wagner's art. As Wagner's skills as an arranger matured, the most effective instrument on his crowded songs became his rough voice, simply because it was the ultimate antithetic sound to the gentle symphony that lay underneath.

Nebraska's Lullaby For The Working Class, led by vocalist/guitarist Ted Stevens and multi-instrumentalist Mike Mogis, used an arsenal of acoustic instruments to pen fragile, post-modernist folk songs that expanded on Palace Brothers' melancholy alt-country concept. The sounds of the instruments were scattered like ambient sounds on Blanket Warm (1996), turning each song into an impressionistic painting. The sound of I Never Even Asked For Light (1997) was sleepy and abstract, often hypnotic, as it lulled elusive melodies in a sea of warm tones; and Song (1999) further reduced the pace, plunging in a serene slumber. The effect fell halfway between Van Morrison's Astral Weeks and Hindemith's kammermusik.

Los Angeles' Geraldine Fibbers, fronted by former Ethyl Meatplow's vocalist Carla Bozulich, bridged the gap with urban culture in the desolate, hyper-realistic stories of Lost Somewhere The Earth And My Home (1995). The subversive power-pop of Butch (1997), featuring jazz guitarist Nels Cline, embedded rootsy melodies into alien structures.

Chicago's Pinetop Seven, Darren Richard's project, specialized in majestic and post-apocalyptic ballads arranged in a sophisticated style encompassing a wide range of settings, especially on their third album Bringing Home The Last Great Strike (2000).

Ohio's Mysteries Of Life, featuring Antenna's rhythm section of Jacob Smith and Freda Boner, offered another imitation of Van Morrison's neoclassical folk-soul with Keep A Secret (1996).

Quite unique was the baroque, new-age sound of Louisiana's Subdudes.

Country-rock

Modern country-rock was best represented by Detroit's Volebeats, whose eclectic and schizophrenic style, that incorporated surf music, world music, Ennio Morricone and many other influences, was best immortalized on their fourth album Solitude (2000).

Ohio's Ass Ponys concocted one of the most original variants on country-rock on Mr Superlove (1990), that was rustic in principle but afflicted by urban neurosis in practice.

Boston's Blood Oranges fused bluegrass and grunge on The Crying Tree (1994).

Colorado's Sixteen Horsepower attacked the sonic icons of America's rural traditions (whether Louisiana's zydeco or Kentucky's bluegrass) from the vintage point of California's "acid" folk-rock on Sackcloth & Ashes (1996); and the painstakingly orchestrated elegies of Low Estate (1997) shifted the focus towards David Eugene Edwards' noble empathy.

Among the works that renovated the country style with the impetus and eccentricity of alternative rock were: Bottle Rockets (1993), by Missouri's Bottle Rockets; Toreador Of Love (1993), by Oregon's Hazel, featuring guitarist Peter Krebs; Play Cell (1994), by San Francisco's Tilt; For The Sake Of Argument (1995), by Kentucky's Stranglmartin; The Medicine Is All Gone (1998), by Idaho's Caustic Resin; Too Far To Care (1997), the third album by Texas' Old 97's.

At the same time, cow-punks mutated into something even weirder. Chicago's New Duncan Imperials applied Bonzo Dog Band's aesthetics to the country and blues tradition on Hanky Panky Party Voo (1990); Pennsylvania's Strapping Fieldhands applied the Holy Modal Rounders aesthetics (atonal guitars and grotesque vocals) to Appalachian folk music on Discus (1994).

The Grifters, the project of Tennessee songwriters Scott Taylor and David Shouse, were the terrorists of alt-country: So Happy Together (1992) was to roots-music what Sonic Youth's noise-rock had been to classic rock, a barbaric psycho-industrial bacchanal that rarely coalesced, a merry-go-round of drunk vocals, atonal guitars and erratic rhythms. Just a bit less grotesque and abrasive, One Sock Missing (1993) still evoked the specters of Captain Beefheart, Red Crayola and Pussy Galore. A better structured and bluesier approach surfaced on Crappin' You Negative (1994) and the EP Eureka (1995) achieved a synthesis of sorts, offering "tunes" that were both catchy and demonic. Not surprisingly, Ain't My Lookout (1996) and Full Blown Possession (1997) ended up sounding like the Rolling Stones.

Ohio's Moviola struck a balance between country-pop and heavily-distorted acid-rock on The Year You Were Born (1996).

Punk-rock and bluegrass were fused by Bad Livers in Ohio, for example on the intimidating Hogs On The Highway (1997); by Split Lip Rayfield in Kansas, for example on the grotesque In The Mud (1999); and by Blue Rags in North Carolina.

Folk-rock

Several San Francisco-based groups significantly updated the folk-rock canon: X-Tal, with Reason Is 6/7 Of Treason (1990), Harm Farm, with Spawn (1990). Bedlam Rovers, best on Wallow (1993), Tarnation, with Gentle Creatures (1995). Best of this batch were Swell, who derailed the archaic structures of blues and country music with extravagant dynamics and arrangements. Swell (1991) and especially Well? (1993) were festivals of the irregular, coupled with existential lyrics.

But the most successful were the Counting Crows, whose style on August And Everything After (1993) was a humbler take on classic roots-rock (Van Morrison-ian vocals, Byrds-ian guitar jangle and gospel organ a` la Band)

Cracker, led by former Camper Van Beethoven's vocalist David Lowery, unleashed the virulent roots-rock of Kerosene Hat (1993).

Sacramento's Cake toyed with country, blues, tex-mex, funk, reggae and salsa stereotypes dressing them up on Motorcade Generosity (1994) with quirky arrangements and an eclectic sense of humour that evoked Camper Van Beethoven and Primus.

Third Eye Blind looked for a middle path between hard-rock and folk-rock on Third Eye Blind (1997).

A South Carolina band, Hootie & The Blowfish, which debuted with the charming Cracked Rear View (1994), was responsible with the Counting Crows for the continuing popularity of folk-rock. They were also the first rock band fronted by a black vocalist (Darius Rucker) to attain mainstream success.

Louisiana's Better Than Ezra, led by Kevin Griffin, attained a higher standard of philosophical depth with Deluxe (1995).

Other folk-rock acts included Boston's Wheat, with the graceful, melancholy folk-rock of Medeiros (1997) and Hope And Adams (1999), Los Angeles' Wallflowers, with Bringing Down The Horse (1996), and Ohio's Appalachian Death Ride, with Appalachian Death Ride (1996) and especially the visceral, anthemic Hobo's Codebook (2003). The New York-based Tower Recordings collective (including Tim Barnes and Pat Gubler) harked back to English pagan folk on albums such as Furniture Music For Evening Shuttles (1998).

Soul-rock

Southern blues-rock was still alive and kicking, and actually staged a powerful comeback with Georgia's Black Crowes, whose tasty imitation of the Rolling Stones and the Faces (but more soul-rock than blues-rock) on Shake Your Money Maker (1990) was briefly a sensation.

British folk-rock

Folk-rock in England had never died, but had certainly gotten close to utter insignificance with generic acts such as Levellers and Bluetones. At the turn of the decade, Fire & Ice's baroque Runa (1996) and Scott 4's hip-hop tinged Recorded In State LP (1998) helped revitalize the genre.

An original variant of roots-rock was experimented by Gomez on Bring It On (1998), an album that relied on studio-production technique more than on traditional songwriting.

Scotland boasted much more original purveyors of folk-rock. Belle And Sebastian, one of the leading bands of the second half of the decade, rediscovered Donovan's gently whispering vocals, and his naive blend of melodic and poetic elements. Tigermilk (1996) focused on the intense pathos of low-key tunes, an apparent oxymoron that Stuart Murdoch's recitation and necolassical arrangements with piano, flute, harpsichord and cello (Isobel Campbell) turned into a new form of art. His fragile, modest style acquired a shimmering look and feel on If You're Feeling Sinister (1997). Many more instruments contributed to the magic of The Boy With The Arab Strap (1998) and Fold Your Hands Child (2000), but the lush arrangements rarely interfered with Murdoch's heart-wrenching lullabies.

Appendix Out, the project of singer songwriter Ali Roberts, focused on elegant and cadaveric music for dramatic meditations on the spartan The Rye Bears A Poison (1997) and on the more seductive Daylight Saving (1999), a marvel of discrete chamber arrangements.

Arab Strap, the project of vocalist Aidan Moffat and multi-instrumentalist Malcolm Middleton, indulged in the moody and disorienting atmospheres of Philophobia (1998).

The Corrs, an Irish group, were by far the most commercially successful folk-rock act of the decade, but hardly an artistic event.

Pan-ethnic music

World-music got more and more sophisticated, but fewer and fewer artists offered original ideas. Notable among creative works that used ethnic styles were Rapid (1997), by Hungary's Kampec Dolores, Mlah (1990), by the French acoustic mini-orchestra Les Negresses Vertes, Allegria (1990), by French combo the Gypsy Kings, Phydair (1992), by Belgium's Raksha Mancham, Monostress 225L (1992), by French steel band Les Tambours Du Bronx, and The Rhythm Of The Ritual (1994), by Belgium's Hybryds.

Perhaps the most creative world-music ensemble in the world was the Polish ensemble Atman, whose Personal Forest (1993) and Tradition (1999) were collages of surreal blends of Eastern and Western music, in the vein of the Third Ear Band and the Incredible String Band. Atman's multi-instrumentalist Marek Styczynski and vocalist Anna Nacher started a new project, Projekt Karpaty Magiczne, or Magic Carpathians Project, devoted to an ambient, cosmic, jazz version of Atman's pan-ethnic music on Ethnocore II (2001).

One of the effects of globalization was that traditional ethnic music was being rapidly abandoned by the new generations for modern USA-style pop ballads or melodic rock music. The biggest stars in both China and India were singers of original material modeled after USA's pop melodies (and often set to electronic rhythms). Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East were perhaps the areas that best incorporated the traditional instruments and rhythms. However, globalization was creating a more and more uniform musical landscape across the globe. For example, Chinese superstar Han Hong, a Tibetan female singer who debuted on album in 1983, sang pop ballads over western rhythms. Even traditional songs and "classical" music were often performed with string orchestra and drums. Basically, ethnic music as such was rapidly disappearing and being replaced by music rooted in western ideas of melody, harmony and rhythm.

In Brazil, Vinicius Cantuaria, influenced by the American new wave, offered a personal synthesis of "Tropicalia", mellow jazz and soul music on Sol Na Cara (1997) and Tucuma (1999).

A young singer from Colombia, Shakira Mebarak, became one of the best-sold Latin artists of all times first with Donde Est n los Ladrones? (1998) and then with Laundry Service (2001), both characterized by a sprightly fusion of Latin, Arab and rock music, as well as by her guttural singing. The stylistic melange progressed from the relatively earthly Whenever Wherever (2001) to La Tortura (2005) to the sophisticated rhythmic collage of Hips Don't Lie (2006).

The Age of Emocore
Emocore

While magazines kept publicizing the "death of punk-rock", hardcore became a pervasive movement that did not leave any town (or country) untouched. As if galvanized by its own death, the movement took on a life of its own and became a genre within the genre. In the 1990s that genre, in turn, spawned a number of sub-genres.

First and foremost, there was "emocore", the style invented in the late 1980s by Rites Of Spring and the Washington contingent. Their "emotional" hardcore alternated quiet and furious musical parts, admitted moody arrangements, indulged in time changes and mid-tempo rhythms, leveraged emotional singing that could whisper as well as shout within the same song, and was not limited to the short/fast format of hardcore. In other words, it was almost the negation of hardcore.

While the genre was, by definition, rather loose, bands that fell into the category during the 1990s included: San Francisco's Jawbreaker, with Unfun (1990); Oregon's Heatmiser, the group of songwriter Elliott Smith and bassist Sam Coomes (formerly of Donner Party), with Dead Air (1993); Los Angeles' Weezer, the most successful of the batch, with Weezer (1994); Seattle's Sunny Day Real Estate, the vehicle for songwriter Jeremy Enigk (the prototypical anguished voice of emocore), with the lengthy and elaborate compositions of Diary (1994) and How It Feels To Be Something On (1998); Los Angeles' Sense Field; Wisconsin's Promise Ring, with 30 Degrees Everywhere (1996); Illinois' Braid, with The Age Of Octeen (1996); Texas' And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead with And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead (1997); Texas' At The Drive In, featuring guitarist Omar Rodriguez and singer Cedric Bixler, with In Casino Out (1998); the Get Up Kids, with Four Minute Mile (1998), which were among the most successful; Kentucky's Elliott, with False Cathedrals (2000); Kansas' Appleseed Cast, with Mare Vitalis (2000), Buffalo's Snapcase, with Designs for Automotion (2000); Chicago's Alkaline Trio, with Goddamnit (1998); Arizona's Jimmy Eat World, with Clarity (1999), the most popular at the turn of the decade; etc. All of them emphasized melody over fury, and emotions over rebellion.

Seaweed moved from the popcore of Weak (1992) to the grunge, metal and punk hybrid of Four (1993) to the power-ballads of Spanaway (1995), showing a maturity that was unusual within the hardcore scene; and then vocalist Aaron Stauffer, a worthy heir to the melodic/populist tradition of Bob Mould (Husker Du) and Paul Westerberg (Replacements), formed Gardener with Screaming Trees' bassist Van Conner, which released the natural evolution of Seaweed's sound: the romantic New Dawning Time (1999).

Rainer Maria relied on the male/female vocal harmonies of Kyl Fischer and Caithlin DeMarrais, and on complex dynamics for the psychological studies of Past Worn Searching (1998).

New Jersey's Wrens invented a form of "emo-pop" with Secaucus (1996) and perfected it to a manic degree on Meadowlands (2003).

Emocore represented the terminal point of the trajectory of punk-rock that started in 1976. Back then punk-rock was nihilistic: it boasted that it had no meaning, that it had no interest in society, that it had no emotion. However, shortly thereafter, punks began to show political awareness. Punk-rock acquired a meaning (whether left-wing or right-wing), displayed not indifference for society but a deep-seated anger, and basically transferred the power of the music to the public level. Not only did emocore had a meaning, but that meaning was now highly private, retreating from social sphere to the individual sphere. Not only did emocore display emotions, but it was highly emotional. Despite the similarity in tone, emocore represented almost the exact opposite of what punk-rock aimed to be in 1976.

Washington's progressive hardcore

Washington was still the home of a highly-creative hardcore scene, the epitome of "progressive hardcore".

Nation Of Ulysses concocted the explosive, theatrical agit-prop sound of Plays Pretty For Baby (1992), an album that was the Clinton-age equivalent of MC5 and Public Enemy. The band's cacophony was tamed by hysterical vocalist Ian Svenonius in an epic way. Guitarist Tim Green moved to San Francisco and formed the Fucking Champs, while Svenonius reformed the band with a slightly different line-up and a new name, Make-Up: Destination Love (1996), a conceptual exercise of community-based music, and the more organic In Mass Mind (1998) experimented with a deranged gospel-funk-rock sound borrowed from Gang Of Four, Pop Group and Contortions.

Shudder To Think became the King Crimson of hardcore with Get Your Goat (1992) and Pony Express Record (1994), featuring new guitarist Nathan Larson, that were full of sophisticated and eccentric nuances.

Jawbox, led by former Government Issue's bassist Jay Robbins, created an opus that was both melodic and electic, charged with pathos as well as neurosis, on Grippe (1991) and Novelty (1992), only to increase the doses of electricity on For My Special Sweetheart (1994).

Edsel not only applied the noise-rock lessons of Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr and My Bloody Valentine on Everlasting Belt Co (1993) but continued to evolve it until they reached the level of polish, adulteration and elasticity of Techniques Of Speed Hypnosis (1995)

Lungfish were the vehicle for Daniel Higgs' sociopolitical philophizing. His favorite medium was the tension-filled and almost messianic simplicity of Pass And Stow (1994), and eventually he and his cohorts fell under the spell of Indian ragas and Buddhist trance on Indivisible (1997) and Artificial Horizon (1998).

Circus Lupus experimented with post-hardcore ideas that were as adventurous and irregular as Minutemen's and Saccharine Trust's on Super Genius (1992), displaying a technical prowess that was virtually unmatched. Circus Lupus' vocalist Chris Thomson and guitarist Chris Hamley started Monorchid to pursue a sound that was even more jarring and feverish, as documented on Let Them Eat (1997).

Branch Manager's Branch Manager (1995) Smart Went Crazy's Now We're Even (1996) were among the albums of hardcore punk-rock that were almost progressive-rock. Avail, instead, went straight for the hearts with Over the James (1998).

In the meantime, Chisel, on Set You Free (1997), and especially Dismemberment Plan, on Emergency and I (1999), a sci-fi concept album enhanced with all sorts of studio witchcraft, fused progressive hardcore with new wave and power-pop.

No other scene in the world mustered so many talents as Washington's.

Ska-core

The fusion of ska and punk-rock, pioneered in Britain in the late 1970s, became extremely popular everywhere in the USA during the 1990s.

The San Francisco Bay Area was one of the epicenters of the ska-punk revolution. Operation Ivy were part of Berkeley's legendary "Gilman Street" scene, but their album Energy (1989) stretched beyond punk-rock, encompassing ska and surf. From their ashes, two groups were born. Their guitarist, Tim "Lint" Armstrong, formed Rancid, and proceeded to sell the idea to the masses. Rancid (1993) and especially Let's Go (1994) disguised the rebellious spirit of hardcore under the appearance of exuberant wit, irresistible rhythms and catchy refrains. It was Clash's recipe for a new generation; and the less threatening potion of And Out Come The Wolves (1995) found an even bigger audience. The other group, Dance Hall Crashers, boasted two female singers and favored joyful fanfares played with a naive verve more akin to girl-groups of the Sixties than hardcore of the Nineties, particularly on Lockjaw (1995).

The phenomenon was also pioneered in Boston by Mighty Mighty Bosstones, who penned amusing collections such as Question The Answers (1994).

Elsewhere, Florida's Less Than Jake delivered the explosive Pezcore (1994); Kansas' Gadjits the infectious At Ease (1997); New York's Slackers the eclectic Redlight (1997); Washington's Pietasters the soul-inflected Willis (1997); Chicago's Lucky Boys Confusion the multi-faceted Growing Out Of It (1998); etc.

Los Angeles became the capital of ska-core thanks to Bradley Nowell's Sublime, who coined one of the most anthemic styles on 40 Oz To Freedom (1992); No Doubt, fronted by a female vocalist (Gwen Stefani), who broke through with Tragic Kingdom (1995); Voodoo Glow Skulls, with generic packages such as Band Geek Mafia (1998); Hepcat, Reel Big Fish, Suicide Machines, etc.

Best in England were probably Citizen Fish, born from the ashes of the Subhumans, and best in the rest of Europe were probably Sweden's Millencolin. Irish expatriates Black 47 fused Celtic music, ska, punk-rock, rap and rhythm'n'blues, starting with Fire Of Freedom (1993).

Punk-pop

Hardcore climbed the charts (twenty years after it was invented by the Ramones) with "popcore", the new variation on Buzzcock's punk-pop. It was, again, San Francisco that bridged the gap between the charts and the punks.

By capitalizing on the style pioneered in the mid 1980s by Mr T Experience, Green Day became one of the money-making machines of the decade, thanks to the infectious hooks and riffs of Dookie (1994) and to the generic pop of Time Of Your Life (1997) and Minority (2000).

The success of Green Day helped unveil a crowded scene: A.F.I., No Use For A Name, Pansy Division, leaders of "queer-core", etc.

The Seattle scene, which had been primed by the Fastbacks, yielded several of the best pop-core bands.

Rusty Willoughby's Pure Joy belonged to the generation of the Fastbacks, but emerged only with Carnivore (1990). Willoughby and the Fastbacks's drummer Nate Johnson formed Flop, who revisited the deceptive simplicity of Cheap Trick and the Buzzcocks on impeccable packages such as Flop & The Fall Of The Mopsqueezer (1992) and especially Whenever You're Ready (1993).

Other purveyors of fast and loud bubblegum included: Pop Sickle, Fitz Of Depression, MXPX, etc.

Although its bands (Descendents, Bad Religion and the likes) had inspired Green Day, in the 1990s Los Angeles was, de facto, a colony of San Francisco, recycling whatever was successful up north. Pennywise led the charge with Pennywise (1991), and a sound that, while respectful of the masters of "beach punk", was also more pensive and atmospheric, eventually achieving the depth of Unknown Road (1993). Many of the Los Angeles bands of this generation surfaced after Green Day's breakthrough, but had been roaming the city's clubs for years: Face To Face, with Don't Turn Away (1992); Joykiller, formed by T.S.O.L.'s veterans; F.Y.P.; etc. Most successful of them all were Offspring, that competed with Green Day's mass appeal on Smash (1994).

The Humpers sounded more sincere than the average of these clones of Screeching Weasel, because their Positively Sick On 4th Street (1992) harked back to the original style of the Ramones and the New York Dolls.

The Streetwalkin' Cheetahs rediscovered catchy punk-rock for the "street" generation on Overdrive (Alive, 1997).

Chicago, the city where Screeching Weasel had preached the gospel of punk-pop, boasted perhaps the greatest of punk-poppers, Pegboy. Formed by Naked Raygun's guitarist John Haggerty and other hardcore veterans, they crafted a sound that was frantic and barbaric, but that, at the same time, carried hummable tunes. Every single beat of Strong Reaction (1991) was "wrong" in a unique way that made it just about "perfect", delivering a dynamite emotional punch straight to the core of Haggerty's stories. Abandoning the excesses of that stormy and visceral style, Pegboy penned Earwig (1994), hell's version of Green Day.

Rick Valentin's Poster Children started out with the brainy noise-rock of Tool Of Man (1992), featuring drummer John Herndon, but converted to a more accessible style on Junior Citizen (1995).

Another bastion of punk-pop was located in North Carolina: Mac McCaughan's Superchunk resurrected the original spirit of punk-rock, but without the negative overtones (the Ramones rather than the Sex Pistols). The exuberant mood of their second album, No Pocky For Kitty (1991), was almost the anti-thesis of hardcore. Mac McCaughan's alter-ego, Portastatic, originally formed to vent the more introspective side of his art, eventually merged with Superchunk's punk-pop, and possibly obscured it, on The Summer of the Shark (2003) and Bright Ideas (2005).

Punk-pop became a unifying idiom for America's teenagers: Canada's Cub, with Betti-Cola (1993); Washington's Tuscadero, with Pink Album (1994); Alabama's Shame Idols, with I Got Time (1995); etc.

New Hampshire's Queers, delivered a barrage of catchy, pummeling refrains on Love Songs For The Retarded (1993), coupled with outrageously decadent sex/drugs lyrics, and eventually turned their career into a tribute to the Ramones.

Towards the end of the decade the genre became as mainstream as pop muzak thanks to groups such as Florida's New Found Glory, that had started out with the "old school" sound of Nothing Gold Can Stay (1999), and Kansas City's Get Up Kids, that had started out with Four Minute Mile (1998). Both later achieved stardom with a much watered-down version of punk-pop.

England's punk-pop elite basically comprised five bands: Leatherface, whose Mush (1991) was perhaps the greatest album of this generation, Senseless Things, Ned's Atomic Dustbin , Mega City Four, Seers. While they probably did not deserve the notoriety granted to them by the British press, their sound at least tried to counter the avalanche of Brit-pop. However it was, instead, Brit-pop that eventually influenced (in an evil way) punk-rock and led to the crass commercial sounds of Fretblanket and Idlewild, perhaps the best of the bunch with Hope Is Important (1999).

Australia fared much better with The Living End, whose The Living End (1998) launched the new stars of the genre.

California garage-punk

An eclectic punk-rock style was pioneered in San Diego by Pitchfork, the band of guitarist John Reis and vocalist Rick Farr, who recorded Eucalyptus (1990) and went on to form Drive Like Jehu, one of the most innovative punk bands in the world. They first turned angst into a shimmering cascade of emotions on Drive Like Jehu (1991), and then proceeded to compose the soundtrack of a nervous breakdown on Yank Crime (1994), one of the most catastrophic and excoriating albums of the time, whose vocabulary was so complex and effective that guitar-based punk songs began to sound like hyper-dramatic mini-symphonies.

Rocket From The Crypt, the new band formed by Drive Like Jehu's guitarist John "Speedo" Reis, embodied the quintessence of both 1960s' garage-punk and 1990s' hardcore. Paint As A Fragrance (1991), a parade of lethal, abrasive, turbo-charged acts of fury, was only the appetizer for Circa Now (1993), an anthemic synthesis of wild rock'n'roll that evoked the Fleshtones as well as the Heartbreakers. Their art of riffs was so recklessly retro` that albums such as Scream Dracula Scream (1995) and RFTC (1998) sounded like collections of covers.

Albums such as aMiniature's Plexiwatt (1992) and Fluf's Mangravy (1993) laid the foundations for the scene that eventually yielded the commercial success of Tom Delonge's Blink 182 with Enema Of The State (1999).

In San Francisco, Zen Guerrilla blended punk's demented speed with black music (blues, soul and rhythm'n'blues) on the roaring Positronic Raygun (1998), the fervent Trance States In Tongues (1999) and the visceral Shadows On The Sun (2001). Clikatat Ikatowi were among the most innovative on their Orchestrated and Conducted (1996).

Jazzcore

"Jazzcore" thrived in the background, but the idea that had been of Minutemen, Universal Congress, Saccharine Trust and others fueled the creative work of numerous bands. The Los Angeles school was continued by Bazooka, saxophonist Tony Atherton's hardcore adaptation of the ideas of Frank Zappa, Albert Ayler and Thelonious Monk, particularly on Perfectly Square (1993); and by Trash Can School, whose Sick Jokes And Wet Dreams (1992) harked back to the visceral blues-punk sound of Pop Group and Birthday Party.

Utah's Iceburn fused the languages of progressive-rock, jazz, metal and harcore on Firon (1992) and on the monumental Hephaestus (1993). The latter's brainy jams opened a number of stylistic avenues that the band would take a decade to fully explore. Poetry Of Fire (1995) introduced elements of classical music and atonal avantgarde, not to mention Indian ragas, while veering towards the loose structures of free-jazz, a metamorphosis that continued on Iceburn Collective's Meditavolutions (1996), featuring the suite Sphinx, one of their most terrible and accomplished works, and was completed with the three lengthy group improvisations of Polar Bear Suite (1997).

San Diego's Creedle unleashed Silent Weapons For Quiet Wars (1994), inspired by John Zorn's hyper-kinetic nonsense jazz.

New York's Stratotanker offered atonal punk-jazz on Baby Test The Sky (1996) that evoked the unlikely wedding of Captain Beefheart and Miles Davis.

Oregon's Irving Klaw Trio wed the spastic dementia of Red Crayola and Captain Beefheart with the avant-jazz architecture of Frank Zappa and Can on Utek Pahjoo Mogol (1997).

The Minutemen were still an important reference point for the dissonant, angular hardcore of combos such as Maryland's Candy Machine, for example on A Modest Proposal (1994), and Virginia's Kepone, mostly on Ugly Dance (1994).

Sweden's Refused, featuring vocalist Dennis Lyzxen, gave their spiritual and artistic testament with their third album The Shape of Punk to Come (1998), whose title paraphrased Ornette Coleman's jazz masterpiece. Their militant jazzcore bridged the generation of the 1980s and the generation of post-rock.

Old school

More or less straightfoward hardcore punk-rock was still pervasive, from New York's crowded scene (Daisycutter, Action Swinger), to Los Angeles' super-crowded scene (Dead Fucking Last, Dave Smalley's Down By Law, Michael "Popeye" Vogelsang's Farside, Dallas Don Burnet's Lutefisk, Ten Foot Pole, Total Chaos, Lagwagon, Guttermouth).

Best in New York (and most faithful to the Ramones and the Sex Pistols) were D Generation, with D Generation (1994); and Electric Frankenstein, with The Time is Now (1995); while Chavez became contenders for the title of greatest Mission Of Burma disciples with the huge hard-rock riffs of Gone Glimmering (1995).

Seattle boasted two of the best revival bands. Supersuckers indulged in Ramones-ian verve on The Smoke Of Hell (1992), and Zeke unwound a breathless parade of lightning-speed bullets on their second album Flat Tracker (1996).

Boston's Dropkick Murphys were the Pogues of the 1990s, detonating traditional Irish songs and even appropriating the sound of bagpipes.

Ohio's Gaunt, with rapid-fire collections such as Kryptonite (1996), were also among the best disciples of the Ramones and the Clash.

New York also boasted a vigorous "straight-edge" movement that included: Shelter, the new band of Youth Of Today's singer Ray Cappo; Karl Buechner's Earth Crisis; H2O.

England was awash in the sweet sound of Brit-pop and could hardly host a hardcore scene. However, bands such as Daisy Chainsaw and Tiger lived up to the heritage of England's great punks, while others added new flavors to that ferocious sound. Silverfish propelled (and, at the same time, sabotaged) angry young girl Lesley Rankine's roars and wails with an anthemic and seismic mixture of unrefined adrenaline and concentrate vitriol on Fat Axl (1991) and Organ Fan (1992). Skunk Anansie, a multi-racial group fronted by bold black lesbian feminist Deborah Anne "Skin" Dyer, unleashed a politicized blend of funk, blues, hardcore, reggae, hip-hop and metal on albums such as Stoosh (1996).

Norway's glam-punks Turbonegro recorded one of the most impressive hardcore albums of the decade, Apocalypse Dudes (1998), that sounded like a hardcore version of Alice Cooper and Kiss.

Post-hardcore

In the second half of the decade, the influence of avantgarde hardcore bands such as Fugazi, Henry Rollins and Jesus Lizard led to a "post-hardcore" style that was convoluted, jittery, sinister, ugly.

Seattle's Unwound, the vehicle for Justin Trosper's epileptic sermons, learned the lessons of Sonic Youth, Fugazi and Jesus Lizard and applied them to the brutal, harrowing vision of Fake Train (1993), broadening the lexicon of hardcore with techniques that borrowed from the blues as well as from the avantgarde, while maximizing the emotional impact. It was music that transpired angst and alienation, music of harsh tones, agonizing tempos, demonic vocals. Unwound's essay in intolerable tension continued with New Plastic Ideas (1994) and The Future Of What (1995), that channelled Trosper's hellish angst into a Morse code of ghastly shrieks and gut-wrenching riffs. while flirting with jazz and avantgarde manners, Repetition (1996) and Challenge For A Civilized Society (1998) clarified the subtle mission of the band: a sound that was as loud as the sense of confusion and insecurity of their generation.

Phatom 309's vocalist/guitarist John Forbes recorded the raw and vulgar Sahara Of The Bozart (1992) with Dirt and then the frenzied and dark Put The Creep On (1994) with Mount Shasta.

Texas bred a school of musicians who blended elements of different local schools of the 1980s: hardcore (e.g., Poison 13), psychedelic (e.g, Butthole Surfers) and industrial (e.g., Pain Teens). Crust crafted Crust (1991) and especially Crusty Love (1994), a chaotic, claustrophobic and cacophonous post-industrial symphony. Drain, the side-project of Butthole Surfers' drummer King Coffey, mixed Red Crayola, John Cage and nursery-school mayhem on Pick Up Heaven (1992). The music of Pistol Swing (1993) by Johnboy sounded like a chain reaction inside a nuclear reactor, a repulsive magma of manic impulses and subhuman hallucinations.

Several bands from Illinois and Minnesota straddled the line between hardcore and grunge: Janitor Joe, on Big Metal Birds (1993); Tar, on Jackson (1991); Calvin Krime, on You're Feeling So Attractive (1998).

New Jersey's Rye Coalition fused emocore and hard-rock, Fugazi and AC/DC, starting with Hee Saw Dhuh Kaet (1997). A similar maturation was displayed by Florida's Hot Water Music on Fuel for the Hate Game (1996).

Ohio's Terrifying Experience, the project of Guided By Voices' guitarist Mitch Mitchell, experimented with progressive hardcore on Supreme Radial (1999). So did Los Angeles' Stanford Prison Experiment, that tried to bridge that style and funk-metal on The Gato Hunch (1995).

Seattle's Juno specialized in open-ended structures with a wide range of dynamics on This is the Way It Goes And Goes And Goes (Desoto, 1999) and A Future Lived in Past Tense (2001).

From grindcore to stoner-rock
A metal nation

If the 1980s had been the golden age of heavy metal, the age when heavy metal was accepted by the masses and climbed the charts, the 1990s saw the fragmentation of the genre into rather different styles, that simply expanded on ideas of the 1980s.

As usual, pop-metal, the genre that appealed to the masses, was, artistically speaking, the least significant variant of heavy metal. It spawned stars such as Los Angeles' Warrant, with Cherry Pie (1990); Boston's Extreme, specialized in "metal-operas" a` la Queen such as Pornograffiti (1990); and Pennsylvania's Live, with Throwing Copper (1994); etc.

Los Angeles had to live with remnants of its "street-scene" (Guns N' Roses, Jane's Addiction), although they sounded a lot less sincere and a lot less powerful than the original masters. Ugly Kid Joe, Life Sex And Death, Dishwalla, Ednaswap, etc.

Glam-metal staged a comeback of sorts in Florida with Marilyn Manson, the product of Brian Warner's deranged mind. Propelled by the brutal sounds of keyboardist Madonna Wayne-Gacy and guitarist Daisy Berkowitz, Warner's theatrical exhibition of degenerate, depraved animal instinct wed Alice Cooper's scum-rock and Nine Inch Nails' industrial-hardcore on Portrait Of An American Family (1994). By borrowing the energy of speed-metal, Antichrist Superstar (1996) sold the gimmick to the masses.

Prog-metal

Progressive-metal was more capable of producing new ideas. Notable USA albums of the 1990s in the style of Queensryche and the likes included: Last Decade Dead Century (1990), by Michigan's Warrior Soul; Wonderdrug (1994), by New York's Naked Sun; etc.

Dream Theater, formed at Boston's prestigious Berklee College of Music, established a new standard for progressive metal. Their second album, Images And Words (1992), constructed lengthy melodic fantasias that relied on symphonic magniloquence (Kevin Moore on keyboards), fluid instrumental passages (John Petrucci on guitar), haphazard rhythms (Mike Portnoy on drums) and romantic emphasis (James Labrie on vocals). At the same time breathless and catchy, rock and neoclassical, impulsive and brainy, this style became even more elaborate on Awake (1994), although it lost some of its bite, which got further diluted in the seven-movement suite A Change Of Seasons (1995). At the same time colossal pieces such as Octavarium (2005) became compendia of the prog-rock vocabulary.

Likewise in Europe there were few significant prog-metal contributions, such as the symphonic metal of Land Of Broken Hearts (1993) by Denmark's Royal Hunt. However, two groups stood out.

Sweden's Opeth the brainchild of vocalist, guitarist and composer Mikael Akerfeldt, penned majestic gothic fantasias that alternate between acoustic melodic passages and anthemic quasi-grindcore attacks, notably Forest of October from Orchid (1995), the monumental Black Rose Immortal from Morningrise (1996), Blackwater Park from Blackwater Park (2001), and Deliverance from Deliverance (2002).

Switzerland's Alboth!, a piano-bass-drums trio, invented a new genre at the border between jazz and industrial metal, between Cecil Taylor and Young Gods. The jackhammer rhythms and torrential piano clusters of Liebefeld (1992) and Ali (1996) were both visceral and sophisticated.

Death metal

The terrifying sound of grindcore and death-metal continued to thrive in the USA thanks to New York's Brutal Truth, with Extreme Conditions Demand Extreme Responses (1992), Buffalo's Cannibal Corpse, with Tomb of the Mutilated (1992), Louisiana's Acid Bath, with When The Kite String Pops (1994). But Death's Human (1991) led to a "technical" renewal of the field, of which the main proponents were New York's Suffocation on their Effigy of the Forgotten (1991).

However, thanks to the creative work of three American groups, "death-metal" was rapidly mutating into something at the same time more terrible and more musical.

Type O Negative in New York achieved the most shocking fusion of metal, industrial and gothic languages. With vocalist Peter "Steele" Ratajczyck convincingly impersonating a psychopath who uttered nihilist, racist, sexist, fascist invectives, keyboardist Josh Silver molding grandiose sonic architectures, and guitarist Kenny Hickey highlighting the turpitude of the stories with excoriating noises, the terrifying vision of Slow Deep And Hard (1991) acquired a metaphysical dimension besides and beyond its hyper-realistic overtones, bridging the philosophical themes of sex and death the way a black mass would do. Moral ambiguity translated into musical ambiguity, as anthemic choruses wavered like funereal dirges, epic riffs shrieked like agonizing spasms in the struggle for survival, and homicidal fantasies peaked with evil apotheosis. Contrasts and juxtapositions blurred the difference between hell and paradise. Each song was structured as a sequence of movements, each movement arranged in a different fashion, and the sequence leading to unrelenting suspense. They sounded like Wagnerian mini-symphonies composed in Dante's Inferno and supercharged with fear and despair. The apocalypse subsided on Bloody Kisses (1993), a more sincere fresco of urban violence.

Today Is The Day, in Tennessee, straddled the border between grindcore, noise-rock, death-metal, hardcore, progressive-rock and industrial music. The visceral nightmares of Supernova (1993) were full of sonic experiments and stylistic twists, but Willpower (1994) went beyond the "ambience" to extract sheer angst from Steve Austin's screams and the trio's assorted cacophony. Each song sounded like a natural catastrophe, each song was the soundtrack of an irrational state of mind. Scott Wexton's sampling machines (replacing the bass player) bestowed an electronic flavor to Today is The Day (1996). The effect was to enhance the progressive-rock part of the equation, a fact that helped sustain the stylistic collage of Temple Of The Morning Star (1997): no less macabre and emphatic, the music also felt surreal and cathartic. It was still the sound of a psychological torture, but one that mirrored some kind of supernatural beauty. After the brief bursts of super-charged grindcore and religious fervor packed on In The Eyes Of God (1999), Austin unleashed the orgy of experimentation of the satanic monolith Sadness Will Prevail (2002), running the gamut from eerie piano ballads to Jimi Hendrix-style cacophony to Middle-Eastern music for radio distortion.

Fear Factory, in Los Angeles, painted their harrowing mural of urban decadence with an emphasis on rhythm: thrashing, grinding beats spread like neurotransmitters inside the nervous system of the cyberpunk manifesto Soul of a New Machine (1992). Songs evolved rather than just erupt. The music of Demanufacture (1995), featuring Front Line Assembly's keyboardist Rhys Fulber, seemed to come from another world, saturated with blasphemous truths about this world. Its cascading bombshells kept morphing into cingulate beasts and emanating poisonous miasmas.

This triad pretty much subverted the conventions of the genre, and created a new kind of music, tailored for the issues and the mood of the cyberpunk generation.

A rare attempt to fuse death-metal with progressive-rock and even jazzcore was carried out by Florida's Cynic on their lone album, Focus (1993).

At the turn of the century, the scene was further destabilized by the arrival of South Carolina's Nile, the new champions of highly technical and innovative death-metal. Their experiments with keyboards, percussion and ethnic instruments peaked with lengthy pieces such as The Dream Of Ur, off Black Seeds Of Vengeance (2000), and Unas Slayer of Gods, off their supreme In Their Darkened Shrines (2002) that also included the 18-minute four-movement juggernaut In Their Darkened Shrines.

Metalcore

The connection between hardcore and heavy-metal had been kept alive by New York's Biohazard, especially on Urban Discipline (1993), and Boston's Converge, with a series of recordings from Petitioning the Empty Sky (1996) to the explosive Jane Doe (2000). Hatebreed, from Connecticut, established "metalcore" as a major genre with Satisfaction Is the Death of Desire (1997) and The Rise of Brutality (2003). Towards the end of the decade, variants on the same theme were worked out by Missouri's Coalesce, who vomited the formidable metal-punk maelstrom of Give Them Rope (1998), and by Massachusetts' Cave In with Beyond HypotermiaHearts Once Nourished With Hope And Compassion (1997), from Florida, managed to sound both catchy and inventive.

Scandinavian black metal

More or less independently of death-metal, a new school of "black metal" arose out of northern Europe, particularly Scandinavia. Notable works included: Entombed's Left Hand Path (1990). Darkthrone's A Blaze In The Northern Sky (1991); Immortal's Battles In The North (1994); Mayhem's De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas (1994).

Enslaved were emblematic: they employed medieval and epic arias inspired to the Scandinavian folk tradition in lengthy majestic songs of dark, piercing, intense agony enhanced with synthesizers and piano on Vikingligr Veldi (1994), transitioning towards progressive-rock on Eld (1997). etc. And add, in England, Cradle Of Filth's Dusk and Her Embrace (1997).

A force of nature was Norway's Emperor, whose In The Nightside Eclipse (1994) stood as a concentrate of violence (thanks to lightning-speed drumming, satanic shrieks and frantically distorted guitar), but also as a metaphysical (and symphonic) inspection in the otherworld.

Norway's Satyricon, who had already experimented with a fusion of folk music and dark metal on Dark Medieval Times (1993), while their "metal opera" Nemesis Divina (1996) stuck to the basics, erecting a dense and intricate wall of guitar distortions and epileptic beats.

Burzum, the project of former Mayhem's Christian "Count Grishnackh" Vikernes (who was in prison for murder), coined an original ambient version of dark metal with the four massively droning, distorted, glacial tracks of Hvis Lyset Tar Oss (1994). On the other hand the instrumental monolith Rundtgaing Av Den Transcendentale Egenbetens Stotte, off the more eclectic Filosofem (1996), was just a sparse, drum-less, riff-less, drone-less electronic soundscape. Besides providing the demonic vocals, Grishnackh played all the instruments, mixing romantic keyboards with extremely distorted guitars, setting the music to demented rhythms, and screaming the lyrics like a damned burning in hell.

Among the more experimental acts, Ved Buens Ende, also from Norway, wed black metal and post-rock on Written In Waters (1995), and Arcturus, again from Norway, reinvented the genre with La Masquerade Infernale (1998). New standard for the genre were also set by In The Woods' Omnio (1997), Borknagar's The Archaic Course (1998) Carpathian Forest's Black Shining Leather (1998).

Black-metal bands inspired by the Scandinavian masters abounded in other countries: Poland's Graveland, with Thousand Swords (1995), Germany's Nargaroth, with the satanic mass Herbstleyd (1998) and the four colossal suites of Geliebte Des Regens (2003), etc.

Ulver created an "electronic black metal" with the colossal Themes From William Blake's The Marriage Of Heaven & Hell (1998) and Blood Inside (2005), that introduced elements of techno, industrial, ambient and trip-hop music as well as sampled snippets of jazz, blues, classical music, continuously recasting black metal into wildly different frameworks.

A new trend in black metal was orchestral/electronic arrangements: Norway's Dimmu Borgir, with Stormblast (1996), Japan's Sigh, with Hail Horror Hail (1997), Finland's And Oceans, with The Dynamic Gallery Of Thoughts (1998). Tiamat, Therion, and Amorphis pursued a neoclassical version of death metal, which preferred the sound of keyboards. Norway's Theatre of Tragedy even adopted operatic vocals. Haggard introduced symphonic arrangements.

Finland's prolific Circle, a mostly instrumental combo fronted by bassist, vocalist and keyboardist Jussi Lehtisalo, adopted a stance that wed progressive-rock, metal riffs, repetitive patterns a` la Steve Reich's minimalist music, "motorik" rhythms a` la Neu, and mystical trance on Andexelt (2000) and Guillotine (2003), while Miljard (2006) removed the "metal" element altogether indulging in quasi new-age atmospheres.

Prog-metal staged a comeback in Scandinavia with the super-technical style of Norway's Solefald, which turned Pills Against the Ageless Ills (2001) into a brainy exercise of fusion-metal, and with Pain Of Salvation's One Hour By The Concrete Lake (1999) in Sweden.

Doom metal

"Doom-metal" (a slow, gothic, baroque exaggeration of Black Sabbath's deadly grooves) became more and more popular in England thanks to a number of progressively more sophisticated groups. Paradise Lost, that debuted with Paradise Lost (1990), were the least creative of the founding fathers, but Cathedral, featuring vocalist Lee Dorrian (ex-Napalm Death), invented a new format with the lengthy and stately elegies of Forest Of Equilibrium (1991), whose relation with progressive-rock was evident in colossal suites such as The Voyage of the Homeless Sapiens (1994) and The Garden (2006). My Dying Bride perfected that format with an almost baroque grandeur on The Angel & The Dark River (1995). Solstice's second album New Dark Age (1998) mixed epic riffs with Celtic and medieval influences.

America's doom-metal had fewer and lesser adherents: Los Angeles' Obsessed stand out.

The greatest heirs to the throne of doom-metal were still British. Electric Wizard, led by singer/guitarist Justin Osborn, inflated the heaviness of doom-metal to the point that music did not flow anymore: it just boomed; a long, dull, oppressive sound. Electric Wizard (1995) blended the holy triad of stoner-rock (Black Sabbath, Blue Cheer and Hawkwind) in a new form that was an implosion of each of them, but its twin album Come My Fanatics (1997) was even more powerful (even heavier, duller, darker and more sluggish), a tidal wave of gloomy sounds. The colossal-oriented approach led to Dopethrone (2000), whose extended tracks towered over an even more apocalyptic wasteland.

During the second half of the decade, bands such as England's Orange Goblin, with Frequencies From Planet Ten (1997), and Sweden's Katatonia, with Discouraged Ones (1998), and especially Beyond Dawn, with Revelry (1998), offered other variants on the stereotype.

Super-doom

The Melvins had pioneered a different style, a style that manically emphasized and extended the psychedelic grooves of Black Sabbath. Their "super-doom" grunge was continued in Seattle by Earth were the most extreme of Seattle's "doom-rockers". The titanic instrumental tracks of the EP Extra-Capsular Extraction (1991) and the album(1993) relied on colossal drones and heavy rhythms seen through the distorted lense of Dylan Carlson's neurosis. Earth's music sounded like the casual jamming of extraterrestrial monsters. It merged elements of LaMonte Young's avantgarde minimalism and Eastern music's transcendental ecstasy and drenched them into gothic-scifi atmospheres. They were not "songs", they were hyper-psychedelic states of mind. Phase 3 (1995) and the more accessible Pentastar - In The Style Of Demons (1996) continued Carlson's virtual sampling of historical riffs of hard-rock in a more earthly setting. Compared with their evil symphonies, Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music was classical music.

Karp packed a mad carnival of cacophonous maelstroms, spasmodic psychodramas, rowdy voodoobilly and monolithic trance on Moustaches Wild (1994).

Earth's main followers were Sunn O, the new project of Engine Kid's guitarist Greg Anderson and Khanate's bassist Stephen O'Malley, particularly on the four monumental concertos for bass and guitar only of Zero Zero Void (2000), even heavier and slower than Earth. By the time they perfected their formula with Black One (2005), via the super-heavy drones and sinister monoliths of cacophony of Flight Of The Behemoth (2002) and White2 (2004), the whole project sounded like the doom-metal equivalent of Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music. Their compositions were studies on how to combine the sound of a guitar and a bass to produce infinite loops of proto-riffs, moebius strips of distorted drones. Rarely had music sounded so ugly and hostile.

Super-doom was not limited to the Pacific Northwest.

Louisiana's Eyehategod, who debuted with the ferocious In the Name of Suffering (1990), opened the way to an entire "sludge-core" scene in the South dedicated to truculent, feedback-laden, deep-groove rock music. Texas' Sweet Pea, with Chicks Hate Wes (1996), were among the many that followed suit.

Georgia's Harvey Milk drained the loud, slow, brutal and mean-spirited creatures of My Love Is Higher (1996) of any emotions, carving a niche between Type O Negative, Swans and Melvins.

Stoner rock

"Stoner-rock" was an evolution of Blue Cheer's brutal hard-psychedelic-blues sound: super-distorted, super-heavy and super-loud.

The genre was first pioneered in southern California by Kyuss. Wretch (1991), basically, expanded on Chrome's hurricanes from the perspective of hard-rock (Chrome without the new-wave frills), but Blues For The Red Sun (1992) was a majestic work in a completely new dimension, a collection of disturbing symphonies for bulldozers and bombers, with disorienting interludes worthy of acid-rock. The waves of feedback and the cascades of melting steel coming from Josh Homme's guitar, the vibrant eloquence of John Garcia's crooning, the seismic bass of Nick Oliveri and the tribal drums of Brant Bjork, combined to produce the effect of high-tension electroshocks, breakneck gallops and incandescent lava. Welcome To Sky Valley (1994), on the other hand, was almost baroque in the way it fused all those elements into a uniform and organic one, like an act of vanity from a bunch of cannibals.

Stoner-rock thrived in the San Francisco Bay Area. Sleep, the band of vocalist Al Cisneros and guitarist Matt Pike, bridged doom-metal and stoner-rock with the slow, dark, booming dirges of Volume One (1992). And then it fell prey to a Black Sabbath obsession on Sleep's Holy Mountain (1993). Everything came into focus (i.e., to a virtual standstill) with the cryptic lumbering hour-long suite of Jerusalem (1998), originally recorded in 1995 and reissued in its 63-minute entirety as Dopesmoker (2003), one of the most austere attempts at scoring the deepest torments of the human psyche, a turgid mass of convoluted guitar monologues and werewolf howls which actually sounded like one deep coma.

The second epicenter of stoner-rock was New York, where Monster Magnet, led by guitarists David Wyndorf and John McBain (and later Ed Mundell), concocted a crazy variant of Hawkwind's space-rock on Spine Of God (1991). It almost sounded like a parody of (soon to be called) stoner-rock, but the sound actually became heavier on Superjudge (1993), although Jimi Hendrix's soul-blues blood ran through its veins. These cathartic baths in guitar distortions dissolved into the heavily arranged (mellotron, strings, sitar) Dopes To Infinity (1995) and the more conventional grunge sound of Powertrip (1998).

Ed Mundell's Atomic Bitchwax offered a more experimental version of Monster Magnet's sound on Atomic Bitchwax (1999). Boston's Nightstick even added elements of free-jazz and avantgarde noise to the "Black Sabbath meets Blue Cheer" formula on Ultimatum (1998).

Southern California remained throughout the decade one of stoner-rock's main centers, as proven by works such as Fu Manchu's In Search Of (1996), Unida's Coping With The Urban Coyote (1999), the new project of Kyuss' vocalist John Garcia, and Nebula's Charged (2001).

Queens Of The Stone Age, the new band formed by Kyuss' guitarist Josh Homme and bassist Nick Oliveri, offered a consumable version of Kyuss (shorter songs, emphasis on the melody, streamlined dynamics) on Queens Of The Stone Age (1998). After the stylistic experiments of Rated R (2000), they achieved a sort of hard-rock classicism on Songs For The Deaf (2002), featuring Foo Fighters's drummer Dave Grohl and Screaming Trees' vocalist Mark Lanegan, the ideal balance of Cream and Nirvana.

Outside the USA, the main stoners and super-doomers were Japan's Boris, whose terrifying monoliths Absolutego (1996) and Amplifier Worship (1998) indulged in the art of transforming colossal riffs into lengthy, dark and extremely dense drones. The five-movement symphony At Last - Feedbacker (2004) oscillated from dark to gentle to manic to ethereal and back, emphasizing texture over atmosphere.

Funk-metal

The real money machine of the 1990s was funk-metal. In the 1980s bands such as Red Hot Chili Peppers and Primus had coined a style that was a hybrid of funk and hard-rock. Earlier, Run DMC had already experimented with a fusion of rap and heavy-metal. These two simple ideas made up the scaffolding of much heavy-metal of the 1990s.

Los Angeles was funk-metal's home turf: Infectious Grooves, the side-project of Suicidal Tendencies' vocalist Mike Muir, with The Plague That Makes Your Booty Move (1991); Eleven, with Eleven (1993); Sugar Ray, with Brownies And Lemonade (1995); etc.

Rap-metal was also headquartered in Los Angeles. Rage Against The Machine, the band that launched the style worldwide, realized one of the most important leitmotivs of the decade: a fundamental unity of purpose between the music of black urban rebels and the music of white urban rebels. Rage Against The Machine (1992), one of the most violent albums of the time, a worthy heir to MC5's homicidal fury, sustained seismic shocks after seismic shocks thanks to Tom Morello's guitar explosions (from Hendrix-ian glissandoes to Page-esque hard-rock riffs), Zack de la Rocha's visceral and frantic rapping and ultra-syncopated hail-like rhythms. The sinister and morbid atmosphere of Evil Empire (1996), virtually a philosophical essay on willpower, and the passionate call to arms of The Battle of Los Angeles (1999) reached new depths although they lost most of the bite.

Elsewhere, funk-rock's stars included New York's Scatterbrain, the new band by Ludichrist's vocalist Tommy Christ and guitarist Glenn Cummings, with Here Comes Trouble (1990); Holland's Urban Dance Squad, with Mental Floss For The Globe (1990); Nebraska's 311, with 311 Music (1993); England's Senser, with Stacked Up (1994); Seattle's Presidents Of The USA, with Presidents Of The USA (1995); New York's Orange 9mm, with Driver Not Included (1995); etc.

Angst-metal

Rap-metal turned into something completely different, halfway into the decade, with the advent of Korn. Jonathan Davis embodied the post-yuppie pessimism at the turn of the century, and made a career of focusing on the anxieties of disaffected teenagers of the middle-class. Thus the tone of Korn (1994) was bleak, and, while not as aggressive as other funk-metal bands, it had few rivals in terms of dramatic tension. It was only fitting that Life Is Peachy (1996) and Follow The Leader (1998) were confused and insecure albums, compensating a lack of songwriting skills with an emphasis on mood swings and claustrophobic atmospheres.

The intense, macabre, excruciating, self-flagellating music of Korn became the dominant factor. The "post-Korn generation" that dramatically changed the landscape of heavy metal included: Sacramento's Deftones, first with the harrowing psychodramas of Adrenaline (1995) and then with the sinister and titanic White Pony (2000); Michigan's Kid Rock (born Bob Ritchie), with Devil Without A Cause (1998); Florida's Limp Bizkit, with Three Dollar Bill Yall (1997), driven by Fred Durst's furnace of angst and anger and derailed by DJ Lethal's beats, scratches and samples, and with the ambitious and experimental Significant Other (1999); Sacramento's Simon Says; Boston's Staind; San Diego's P.O.D.; and two more bands from Florida, Cold and Puya. And the usual truckload from Los Angeles: Incubus, with Science (1997); Orgy, with Vapor Transmission (2000); etc.

The Armenian-American outfit System Of A Down was perhaps the most revolutionary of the Los Angeles acts, concocting with System Of A Down (1998), Toxicity (Sony, 2001) and Mezmerize (2005) a sonic experience that was both extremely complex and extremely violent, evoking the punk barricades of the late 1970s with visceral, vibrant political anthems while upping the ante of prog-metal with disorienting rhythmic and melodic turns.

Soul Fly, the brainchild of former Sepultura frontman Max Cavalera, heralded an even bolder degree of stylistic fusion (dub, drum'n'bass, hip-hop) with Soulfly (1998) and especially Primitive (2000).

Post-metal

By reinterpreting Dazzling Killmen for the crowd of metal-heads, New Jersey's Dillinger Escape Plan, with the unstable metal-jazz compounds of Calculating Infinity (1999), virtually invented a subgenre, a new form of prog-rock with the "heaviness" of metal-punk.

Canada's Strapping Young Lad, the brainchild of veteran vocalist Devin Townsend, reached a new level of sonic savagery on City (1997) while coining an influential huge, gloomy sound with industrial overtones.

Sweden's Meshuggah better categorized it as a subgenre of post-rock with the angular and intricate compositions of Destroy Erase Improve (1995) and especially Chaosphere (1998), indulging in off-kilter time signatures and polyrhythmic assaults. The EP I (2004) was a seamless 21-minute orgy of post-metal ideas, with lots of loops, guitar drones, polyrhythmic progressions and abstract interludes, without surrendering the frenzy of death-metal.

Ranking among the most creative bands of their generation, Discordance Axis played grindcore influenced by Japanese noisecore on brief albums such as Jouhou (1998) and especially The Inalienable Dreamless (2000).

The Neurosis-sanctioned confluence of grindcore and industrial music, was explored by San Diego-based Tarantula Hawk, on their first album Tarantula Hawk (2000), and by Australia's Berzerker, on their second album Dissimulate (2002).

Other post-metal albums at the turn of the century included: Spiral Architect's A Sceptic's Universe (1999), sleek jazz-metal from Norway, Botch's second album We Are The Romans (1999), from Seattle, Candiria's fourth album 300 Percent Density (2001), rap-jazz-metal fusion from New York, Mudvayne's more accessible L.D. 50 (2000), from Illinois, and PsyOpus' Ideas of Reference (2004), from New York.



Gothic rock
Nordic gothic

The gothic brand of punk-rock ("dark-punk"), that had seen the light in the heydays of the new wave, redefined gothic rock as a deeper and stronger mood than the one originally served by Black Sabbath and Alice Cooper. Gothic rock was, first and foremost, an attitude, and remained such during the 1990s. In the 1990s, that attitude was refined by a generation of musicians that could take advantage of improved studio technology and electronic instruments.

Somewhat surprisingly, the leadership moved from Britain to the United States. Britain's gothic was limited to late purveyors of apocalyptic folk such as Rose McDowall's Sorrow, for example on Under The Yew Possessed (1993), and Micheal Cashmore's Nature And Organisation, for example on Beauty Reaps The Blood Of Solitude (1994).

Germany's gothic school was far more imposing. Aurora, formed by Project Pitchfork's members Peter Spilles and Patricia Nigiani, crafted two of the eeriest and most powerful works in the genre: The Land Of Harm And Appletrees (1993), typical of their bleak and majestic overtones, overflowing with memorable melodies and eclectic arrangements (symphonic, acoustic, danceable, dirge-like, and so forth). The apocalyptic lieder of Dimension Gate (1994) covered an even broader territory, evoking both medieval religious music and ancestral tribal music, mimicking at the same time cosmic, techno and new-age music, sounding like a meeting of Popol Vuh and Dead Can Dance in Sven Vath's studio.

Das Ich, i.e. vocalist Stefan Ackermann and multi-instrumentalist Bruno Kramm, composed Staub (1994), a symphonic work of heroic proportions.

However, it was Sweden that came to rule European gothic. Roger Karmanik, the mastermind of Brighter Death Now and the founder of the Cold Meat Industry label, was the inspirator of Sweden's gothic scene. Deutsch Nepal's Deflagration Of Hell (1991) was still under the influence of industrial music (the genetic source of this scene), but soon Scandinavia coined an original language: the "sound constructivist" school, that merged elements of ambient, gothic and industrial music, and, in general, relied on atmospheric keyboards and sometimes classical instruments to create terrifying visions of the otherworld; a genre that often sounded closer in spirit to classical music than to rock music. The works of In Slaughter Natives, such as Sacrosancts Bleed (1992), were feasts of excesses, relying on heavy-metal guitar and stormy beat-boxes as well as Gregorian litanies, Wagnerian choirs, martial drumming, etc. Love Is Colder Than Death's Teignmouth (1991) bridged the ancestral and the modern, the middle ages and cybernetics, ecstasy and hedonism, via a sequence that led from monk psalms, funereal tempos and organ drones to disco beats and bombastic arrangements. Mortiis, the brainchild of Emperor's bassist Haavard Ellefsen, transposed Klaus Schulze's symphonic grandeur and Brian Eno's majestic ambient ecstasy into gothic music, particularly with the two lengthy suites of The Songs Of A Long Forgotten Ghost (1993). Ordo Equilibrio, the project of multi-instrumentalist Tomas Pettersson, specialized in the glacial, desolate electronica first pioneered on Reaping The Fallen (1995). Arcana refined the neoclassical, symphonic style on Dark Ages Of Reason (1996).

The master of nordic landscapes was Peter Andersson, known as Raison D'Etre, experimented with both the "industrial folk" style of Prospectus I (1993), a set of psalms for string section and percussion instruments, and the "dark ambient" style of Within The Depths Of Silence And Phormations (1995), his most daring collage of samples, drones, monk-like chanting and futuristic electronics; a progression that led to the six neoclassical and mystical suites of In Sadness Silence And Solitude (1998).

Sweden's composer Henrik "Nordvargr" Bjorkk specialized in teerrifying melodrama, first with the band Maschinenzimmer.412, better known as MZ.412, best represented by In Nomine Dei Nostri Satanas Luciferi Excelsi (1995), then with the projects Folkstorm, Toroidh and Hydra Head 9, that explored different sides of psychological violence, and finally with bleak electronic works released under his own name, such as I End Forever (2004), that, ultimately, aimed at concocting the sound of fear. Vitagen (2005), on which he mastered the techniques of musique concrete, applied the same philosophy of terror to post-industrial droning music.

An impressive gothic work also came from Switzerland: The Pleasures Received In Pain (1999), by Der Blutharsch.

American gothic

In the United States, gothic rock was anchored around the Projekt label, founded by Black Tape For A Blue Girl's mastermind Sam Rosenthal, which mainly recruited bands in Arizona and California and promoted a similar, "classical-oriented" approach to atmospheric music.

Lycia, the brainchild of guitarist and vocalist Michael Van Portfleet, achieved a solemn and profound synthesis of cosmic electronics, synth-pop, psychedelic-rock, and industrial music. Ionia (1991), featuring Dave Galas on keyboards, coined Van Portfleet's favorite setting of ghostly vocals floating in a soundscape of electronically-processed guitar tones and glacial orchestral counterpoints. A heavily-layered instrumental backbone sustained the emotional tension of the formally impeccable A Day In The Stark Corner (1993): on one hand, a lyrical, idyllic, dreamy undercurrent that percolated every fibre of the music; and, at the same time, a haunting and harrowing sense of despair, hinting at inescapable supernatural forces. The monumental The Burning Circle And Then Dust (1995), with Tara Vanflower on vocals, completed the moral Calvary of the previous works: a less catastrophic atmosphere revealed an ocean of somber melancholy, a foreign sense of beauty that underlined a process of self-discovery. This album codified Lycia's message, halfway between a philosophical treatise, a religious prophecy and the last thoughts of a dying man. By now free of the semiotic burden of his two masterpieces, Van Portfleet proceeded to sculpt the abstract ballads of Cold (1996), in a vein that evoked Dead Can Dance and that amounted, de facto, to a repudiation of his gothic roots.

Arizona's contingent also featured: Michael Plaster's Soul Whirling Somewhere, whose Soul Whirling Somewhere (1996) was a cosmic and neoclassical update of Dead Can Dance's sound, a fragile polyphony of ethereal madrigals bridging Constance Demby's symphonic new-age music and Harold Budd's celestial ambient music; Lovesliescrusching, whose Xuvetyn (1996) bordered on ambient music; Julianna Towns' Skinner Box, also influenced by Dead Can Dance on The Imaginary Heart (1991).

Remnants of the army that followed Christian Death in Los Angeles included Faith And The Muse and Cradle Of Thorns (1), who penned the barbaric psychodramas of Feed Us (1994), woven around the contrast between the death-metal growl of a male singer and the operatic contralto of his female counterpart, and propelled by a mixture of disco-music, punk-rock and industrial rhythms.

Johnny Indovina's Human Drama rose above the gothic scene of Los Angeles. A mostly-acoustic work, The World Inside (1991), introduced not only fairy-tale atmospheres and neoclassical passages but also the archaic undercurrent that resurfaced on Songs Of Betrayal (1995), a philosophical meditation that achieved anthemic overtones as well as plunged into suicidal dejection. These works were so heavily arranged that each song sounded like a symphonic poem, when it was not as spare and austere as a chamber sonata.

Offshoots of that school were to be found in Chicago, such as Padraic Ogl's Thanatos and such as Thomas-Carlyle Ayres' Arcanta; in New York, such as Rasputina, a trio of female cellists who played minor-key waltzes, sounding like the Penguin Cafe` Orchestra fronted by Nico on Thanks For The Ether (1996), and such as Alan Dollgener's Reverb Sleep, who only released the electronic collages of a nightmarish, ghastly intensity of Fish Dream (1995) before dying of AIDS; in Georgia, such as Sunday Munich; and in San Francisco, such as Switchblade Symphony, and such as Children Of The Apocalypse, who delivered the exoteric Ta 'Wil (1997).

In Australia, Darrin Verhagen's Shinjuku Thief assembled collages of industrial, ambient, jazz and dance elements on Bloody Tourist (1992) and achieved the magniloquent orchestral gothic of The Witch Hammer (1993).

Drum'n'bass
Jungle

Dance music of the 1990s largely rejected the simple, jovial, hedonistic approach to body movement that had ruled since James Brown invented funk music in the 1960s. Disco-music and techno/house had simply imported new technologies (both for rhythm and arrangements) into the paradigm of funk. The 1990s continued that process, but further removing the "joy" of dancing from the beats, and, in fact, replacing it with fits of acute neurosis. One of the most important ideas to come out of Britain was "jungle" or "drum'n'bass", a syncopated, polyrhythmic and frantic variant of house, a fusion of hip-hop and techno that relied on extremely fast drum-machines, epileptic breakbeats and huge bass lines.

Precursors of jungle included, in the USA, Bug In The Bassbin (1989), the rhythmic workout of Carl Craig's Innerzone Orchestra, and, in Britain, Perfecto's Baz De Conga (1989). The experiments of Plaig and Meat Beat Manifesto also laid the foundations of jungle.

Jungle saw the light in 1992 in London with tracks such as Leakage Trip's Psychotronic, Nebula II's Flatliners and Johnny Jungle's Johnny, followed by Andy C's Valley Of The Shadows (1993) and Ed Rush's Bloodclot Attack (1993), while Omni Trio's Renegade Snares (1993) and especially LTJ Bukem's Music (1993) invented "ambient jungle" (a calmer, introverted version of that hyperkinetic dance music). The name originated from the London club that first promoted the new style, the "Jungle". Jungle (the style) spread like wildfire through other club venues, such as "Roast, "Roller Express", "Telepathy", "Desire", "A Way Of Life", "Jungle Rush", "Jungle Fever", "Thunder And Joy", "Thrust", etc. In 1994, the style began to be called "drum'n'bass", and in 1995 Goldie turned it into a mass phenomenon. The London club "Rage", thanks to disc-jockeys Fabio and Grooverider, became the epicenter of drum'n'bass.

Few genres of popular music underwent so many changes and reached such ambitious heights as jungle did. Within a few years, jungle musicians were already composing abstract and ambient pieces, integrating breakbeats with pop vocals, adopting jazz improvisation.

The golden era of drum'n'bass

4 Hero, the duo of Dego MacFarlane and Mark Mac, coined a sort of "armchair jungle", a groundbreaking marriage of fusion-jazz and ambient music that even employed lush strings and free-form electronics, With the sci-fi concept album Parallel Universe (1994) and with the ambitious Two Pages (1998).

The first star of jungle, Goldie, born Conrad Price, made his name with the extended singles Terminator (1993) and Timeless (1994), which were mini-symphonies of hardcore techno, and the groundbreaking Timeless (1995), that used breakbeats to construct atmospheric music. Thanks to his skills at sound manipulation, he turned songwriting into sound painting. And the hour-long composition Saturnzreturn (1998) removed any boundaries to his studio explorations.

Another milestone for "ambient jungle" was the tour de force of Waveform (1996), by T Power (Marc Royal).

Roni Size, the leader of Bristol-based dj collective Reprazent and one of the first "auteurs" of drum'n'bass, blended jungle's breakbeats with live instruments and singing on the monumental double disc New Forms (1997), and reconciled dance music's suite format with the traditional song format of pop/soul music.

Other musicians who merged drum'n'bass with jazz were Photek, born Rupert Parkes, with Modus Operandi (1997), and James Hardway (real name David Harrow), with Deeper Wider Smoother Shit (1996).

Major additions to the drum'n'bass canon came from varius directions. Fila Brazillia, the duo of Steve Cobby and Dave McSherry, were perhaps the most adventurous in cross-fertilizing different genres, particularly on their later albums, such as Power Clown (1998) and A Touch Of Cloth (1999). Adam Fenton's Colours (1997) was also an album of diverse stylistic experiments. Boymerang, the new project of former Bark Psychosis frontman Graham Sutton, sculpted Balance Of The Force (Regal, 1997), a conceptual work of art that straddled the boundaries between pop, jazz and avantgarde. The imaginary soundtrack Exorcise The Demons (1999) qualified Source Direct, i.e. veterans Jim Baker and Phil Aslett, as jungle's equivalent of Barry Adamson.

In the meantime, new styles continued to emerge from London clubs, such as "techstep" (a fast, brutal fusion of techno and jungle probably invented by DJ Trace in 1994), "speedgarage" (mainly a production technique, developed by Armand Van Helden in 1996, of huge breakbeats and bass lines, which he himself defined as "a cross between house and drum'n'bass"), "two-step garage" (interplay of frantic breakbeats and velvety soul vocals, emerging in 1997) and "drill'n'bass" (very fast drum'n'bass). Garage music (only vaguely related to Larry Levan's "garage" of the 1980s, and closer to the style perfected by DJ Tony Humphries of New Jersey's "Zanzibar" club) was refined by groups such as the Dreem Teem and Tuff Jam, and began to climb the British charts with Shanks & Bigfoot's Sweet Like Chocolate (1999) and Dj Luck & Mc Neat's A Little Bit of Luck (2000).

Germany's Panacea, i.e. Mathias Mootz, borrowed elements from death-metal and industrial music for the "drill'n'bass" sound of Low Profile Darkness (1997).

Animals on Wheels, the brainchild of British electronic musician Andrew Coleman, employed a kaleidoscopic assembly of jazz samples, frantic breaks and downtempo electronica on Designs And Mistakes (1997) for his brand of drill'n'bass.

Japan's Bisk, born Naohiro Fujikawa, introduced a very ornate, baroque, manically-crafted style on albums such as Strange Or Funny-haha (1997).

Propellerheads, i.e. Alex Gifford and David Arnold, led "big beat", the subgenre of drum'n'bass that assimilated tribal African beats, with Decksandrumsandrockandroll (1998).

Avantgarde jungle

Thanks to ever more intricate beats and to free structures borrowed from jazz, Jungle music rapidly became the foundations for a new kind of avantgarde music, "conceptual jungle", pursued by the most austere of the genre's visionaries.

Spring Heel Jack, the project of John Coxon and Ashley Wales, subverted the rules of ambient jungle with the symphonic extravaganzas There Are Strings (1995) and especially 68 Million Shades (1996). The experiments with jazz and minimalism of Busy Curious Thirsty (1997) blossomed on Treader (1999), a wild excursion into 20th century classical music. Most of its tracks sounded like symphonic poems: lush, thematic orchestral narratives built out of samples, loops and echoes. The jazz elements became predominant with Disappeared (2000), a work that alternated calculated geometry and Wagnerian intensity. Storming, Foetus-like spasms crushed a steady flow of sonic debris, while elsewhere melodic fragments morphed into alien structures. Masses (2001) completed their conversion to avantgarde jazz with a chamber concerto performed by the sensational ensemble of Matthew Shipp (piano), Evan Parker and Tim Berne (saxophones), Roy Campbell (trumpet), Daniel Carter (flute and saxophones), Ed Coxon (violins), Mat Maneri (viola), William Parker (bass). And Amassed (2002), featuring Han Bennink (drums), Ed Coxon (violin), John Edwards (bass), Evan Parker (saxophone), Paul Rutherford (trombone), Matthew Shipp (piano), Kenny Wheeler (trumpet), and the "shoegazing" guitar of Spiritualized's Jason Pierce, was one of the most exhilarating stylistic orgies of modern jazz, straddling not one stylistic border but pretty much all possible borders.

Tom Jenkinson, better known as Squarepusher, coined a cubistic version of drum'n'bass on Hard Normal Daddy (1997): a wild assembly of manic breakbeats, spirited electronica and disjointed samples concocted a whirling cacophony a` la Morton Subotnick. Visceral intensity and impeccable fluidity coexisted and enhanced each other. Each piece on Go Plastic (2001) was, de facto, a treatise on a new form of Dadaistic, disjointed, beat-based music in which the drum-machine became the equivalent of a jazz instrument for a creative solo improvisation while approaching the abstract intensity of chamber electronic music (basically, musique concrete imbued with punk frenzy).

Brazilian-born Amon Tobin well impersonated the classical composer in the hip-hop age. Instead of composing symphonies for orchestras, Tobin glued together sonic snippets using electronic and digital equipment. Adventures in Foam (1996), released under the moniker Cujo, and especially his aesthetic manifesto and masterpiece, Bricolage (1997), unified classical, jazz, rock and dance music in a genre and style that was universal. Tobin warped the distinctive timbres of instruments to produce new kinds of instruments, and then wove them into an organic flow of sound. Tobin kept refining his art of producing amazingly sophisticated and seamless puzzles on Permutation (1998), Supermodified (2000) and, best of his second phase, Out From Out Where (2002). Once he had exhausted the possibilities of instruments and samples, Tobin turned to found sounds and field recordings as the sources for The Foley Room (2007), without basically changing style. In effect, Tobin carried out several philosophical debates at once (e.g., on the irrelevance of the message, on the irrelevance of time), while entertaining his audience with catchy numbers of an extra-terrestrial music hall. Tobin was debating on the meaning of music itself, on the nature of composition, on the viability of communication, on the ultimate constituents of sound. His neglect for form was a new kind of form, a form that had reduced form to the annihilation of form. The dualism of content versus form was resolved by the post-modernists as a non-issue: Tobin redefined it as a process, a process of form-abatement by which content is created, as if content and form were the same substance, and more of one meant less of the other one.

Matt Elliot's Third Eye Foundation evolved from the atmospheric blend of guitar textures and jungle breakbeats of Semtex (1995) to the sample-based disorienting puzzles of Ghost (1997) and especially You Guys Kill Me (1998).

Twisted Science, the project of disc-jockey Jon Tye, was to techno what Sonic Youth were to rock'n'roll: a scaffolding of hard-core techno was brutalized by layers of abrasive electronica, distorted hip-hop beats, jungle polyrhythms and industrial cacophony on Blown (1997).

Witchman, born John Roome, contaminated drum'n'bass with gothic, techno, industrial, dub and ambient music on Explorimenting Beats (1997).

Faultline, the brainchild of clarinet player and studio wizard David Kosten, fused chamber music, industrial techno and free-form noise on the melancholy multi-part sonatas of Closer Colder (1999).

Klute (Tom Withers) indulged in intricate and psychotic arrangements on Casual Bodies (1998).

Andrea Parker, a classically trained cellist, a disc jockey and an electronic composer with a penchant for analog synthesizers, mixed string orchestrations, hip-hop beats and heavy bass to create the highly seductive music of Kiss My Arp (1999).

Neotropic, the project of female electronic dance musician Riz Maslen, offered a dreamy, deconstructed version of trip-hop and drum'n'bass on 15 Levels Of Magnification (1996), although the tracks floated weightless (and beat-less) in the fragile, haunting electronic soundscapes of La Prochaine Foix (2001).

Icarus, the London-based duo of Ollie Bown and Sam Britton, dislocated beats and melodies on Fijaka (1998) while adopting a digital and minimalist aesthetics that would lead to pieces such as Three False Starts, off I Tweet the Birdy Electric (2004), at the border between ambient, jazz, concrete and glitch music.

New York's progressive jungle

Jungle came to the US in the second half of the decade, thanks to British expatriates such as DJ Dara Gilfoyle, sculptor of the cerebral, sinister, post-industrial soundscapes of Rinsimus Maximus (1997). New York became the main center for American jungle. We, featuring Gregor "DJ Olive" Asch, demolished the cliches of dub, trip-hop, drum'n'bass and jazz on As Is (1997). Datach'i, Joseph Fraioli's brainchild, spun the chaotic high-speed digital novelties of 10110101 (1999) and the hyper-kinetic pandemonium of We Are Always Well Thank You (2000). Dylan Group, i.e. percussionist Adam Pierce and dj Dylan Cristy, retooled drum'n'bass for the post-rock generation with the jazzy, vibraphone-driven It's All About (1997) and the more relaxed More Adventures In Lying Down (1999), even expanding into progressive-rock with Ur-Klang Search (2000). Dylan Group's multi-instrumentalist Adam Pierce also had his own project, Mice Parade, that was even more adventurous on The Meaning Of Boodley Baye (1998) and on the the symphonic Ramda (1999), a dazzling take on dub, jazz and techno.

The musicians of the New York school created such bold experiments that the term "progressive jungle" was more appropriate.

At the same time, New York was home to the "Illbient" movement (as christened by DJ Olive).

Paul Miller, better known as DJ Spooky, the star of the Illbient movement, opted for a chaotic flow of rhythmic and non-rhytmic electronic sounds that harked back to Italian futurism and to electronic-music pioneers such as Morton Subotnick and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Songs Of A Dead Dreamer (1996) explored the least visited interstices of genres such as ambient, dub, electronica, trip hop, drum'n'bass. The tracks Riddim Warfare (1998) were not so much dance grooves as catalogs of sound effects that turned drum'n'bass into an electronic symphony. His most ambitious work, Viral Sonata (1998), credited to Paul D. Miller, was an amorphous aural architecture that evoked a post-apocalypse wasteland roamed by ghosts. File Under Futurism (1999) was chamber electronic music. Optometry (2002), performed by the quartet of pianist Matthew Shipp, bassist William Parker, saxophonist Joe McPhee and drummer Guillermo Brown, was one of the works that blurred the line between live and sampled jazz music.

The Illbient disease contaminated even avantgarde composer Bob Neill, a former member of La Monte Young's ensemble, who collaborated with DJ Spooky and We's DJ Olive on Triptycal (1996).

In Los Angeles, Medicine's guitarist/keyboardist Brad Laner used the moniker Electric Company to carry out a study in deconstruction of drum'n'bass as Kraftwerk would have done it, Studio City (1997).

San Francisco-based disc-jockey Jhno (John Eichenseer) offered a bold fusion of ethnic, ambient, jazz and techno music on Understand (1995), while Kwno (1998) mixed drum'n'bass and computer-generated improvisation and Membrane (2000) focused on inventing a new vocabulary of irregular rhythms and eerie soundscapes.

DJ Olive himself demolished and redirected the entire movement with Buoy (2004) and Sleep (2006), that contained only one colossal track each, and each a titanic endeavor of abstract soundsculpting, musique concrete, glitch art and ambient droning.

Trip-hop
Bristol 1990-95

One of England's great inventions at the turn of the millennium was "trip-hop", the style that bridged dance beats, psychedelic dub trance and soft-jazz atmosphere. Pioneered in the 1980s by dance collectives such as A R Kane and Coldcut, by sophisticated singers such as Sade and Neneh Cherry, and by pop bands such as Cowboy Junkies and Blue Nile, trip-hop was born in earnest in Bristol, England, the home base of the collectives that turned the world of dance music upside down. Soul II Soul, the project of disc-jockey Jazzie B (Beresford Romeo) and arranger Nellee Hooper, launched the genre in march 1989 with Keep On Movin', a whispered, sensual scat over shadow bass lines, softly hypnotic beats and orchestral counterpoint. Bristol created a clear demarcation between techno/house/jungle and atmospheric, ethereal dance music. Massive Attack, an emanation of the sound system Wild Bunch (disc-jockey Grantley "Daddy G" Marshall, rapper Robert "3-D" Del Naja and rhythm engineer Andrew "Mushroom" Vowles), formalized that dividing line on their influential Blue Lines (1991), featuring vocalist Shara Nelson, which established the sonic standard of trip-hop: a blend of soul vocals, dub bass lines, languid strings, ambient electronica, intricate drum patterns, and eerie atmosphere. The idea was not terribly original (it was basically a revamping of easy-listening, new-age music, orchestral soul and cocktail-lounge music for the affluent white disco crowds), but the choreography was clearly more important than the music, as Mezzanine (1998) proved in an even more seductive manner.

Slight variations on the same theme were offered by Breakbeat Era, a trio including Roni Size, Nightmares On Wax, George Evelyn's brainchild, Up Bustle And Out, a duo of producers, Smith & Mighty (producers Rob Smith and Ray Mighty who had engineered Massive Attack's sound).

Portishead, formed by producer Geoff Barrow, vocalist Beth Gibbons, sound engineer Dave McDonald and guitarist Adrian Utley, were the ultimate creation of Bristol's fertile scene. The spectral and funereal lieder of Dummy (1994) set desolate laments to a casual backdrop of electronic music and let them float over a disorienting flow of syncopated beats. They had blurred the line between the pop ballad and the abstract chamber piece.

Tricky, a former member of the Wild Bunch, hired Martine Topley-Bird to imitate Portishead on Maxinquaye (1995), adding a more neurotic dynamics. The album credited to Nearly God (1996) featured guest vocalists such as Bjork, Neneh Cherry and Alison Moyet interpreting or backing up Tricky's "songs". Fullfilling his progression towards a more personal and sincere form of music, the bleak Pre-Millenium Tension (1996) set his depressed toasting against nightmarish soundscapes.

The golden era of trip-hop 1995-99

Then came the deluge: Pressure Drop, the project of London-based disc-jockeys Justin Langlands and Dave Henley; 95 Funki Porcini (James Bradell), with the pastoral Hed Phone Sex (1995); Rockers Hi-Fi, the Birmingham-based sound system of Richard "DJ Dick" Whittingham and Glyn Bush, with Rockers To Rockers (1995); Baby Fox; Andrew Barlow's Lamb, with the psychodramas of Lamb (1996); Morcheeba, fronted by sensual chanteuse Skye Edwards, with Who Can You Trust (1996); Red Snapper, who sculpted the complex, arcane and recombinant Prince Blimey (1996); the Sneaker Pimps, the project of keyboardist Liam Howe and guitarist Chris Corner, fronted by singer Kelli Dayton, whose Becoming X (1997) was trip-hop for the generation that never heard the new wave; etc.

Skylab, a collaboration between avantgarde composer Mat Ducasse and Howie B, crafted a wild collage of manipulated sounds, #1 (1995), an essay in the absolute dissolution of identity that sounded like John Cage reborn as a disc-jockey.

London-based producer Howie Bernstein, better known as Howie B, who crafted the atmospheres of Soul II Soul's records, followed a different route on his solo albums: the instrumental tone poems of Music For Babies (1996), the stylistic studies Turn The Dark Off (1997), ranging from vibraphone-based lounge shuffles to big-band dancehall exuberance, and the elegant ballet of noises and instrumental sounds of Snatch (1999), works that elevated him to the jazz counterpart of Brian Eno and the hip-hop counterpart of Robert Fripp.

Funk (Brand New Heavies) and soul (Jamirocqai) helped the style stabilize.

Avant-hop

Several British musicians pioneered an atmospheric form of sound collage that ventured beyond the original premises of trip-hop.

Luke Vibert devoted his project Wagon Christ to the ambient side of the trip-hop equation with Phat Lab Nightmare (1994) and especially with the celestial trance of Throbbing Pouch (1995), exuding abandon and fatalism. Massive sampling of orchestral sounds gave Tally Ho! (1998) an almost symphonic grandeur.

An atmospheric sound similar to trip-hop hovering in an ether halfway between dub, hip-hop and ambient music, was often produced via a technique of cut-up that was the equivalent of cinema's montage. For example: Grassy Knoll, the project of San Francisco-based disc-jockey, filmmaker, photographer and composer Bob Green, on Grassy Knoll (1995); the subliminal jams of DJ Cam (French dj Cam Laurent Daumail), for example on Substances (1996), that frequently employed samples of obscure jazz records; Russian-born Andre Gurov, better known as DJ Vadim, who focused on collage of micro-samples with The Theory Of Verticality (1996).

The Cinematic Orchestra, led by bandleader John Swinscoe, devoted Motion (1999) to a tribute to film soundtracks of the 1950s. It was one of the works that marked a turning point in avantgarde, when "reconstructing" started prevailing over "deconstructing" (that had been the dominant buzzword throughout the era of postmodernism).

The Groove Armada, i.e. London-based disc-jockeys, Tom Findlay and Andy Cato, "reconstructed" the romantically retro Vertigo (1999).

Towa Tei, a Korean-Japanese former member of Deee-Lite in New York, assembled jazz, world-music and all sorts of retro styles on on Future Listening (1995).

A number of "atmospheric" groups were more or less related to trip-hop. Perfume Tree, a trio of Vancouver disc-jockeys, induced trance on The Sun's Running Out (1994) through a blend of dream-pop, hip-hop, dub and electronica. Iceland's Gus Gus coined an anemic, sleepy, out of focus kind of pop-soul-jazz ballad on Polydistortion (1995), that sounded like the equivalent of be-bop in the age of trip-hop: a dejected soundtrack for the neuroses of the urban crowd. Sweden's Whale incorporated sensual crooning and heavy-metal guitars into the trip-hop sound of We Care (1995). Tosca, i.e. Austrian producers and disc-jockeys Richard Dorfmeister and Peter Kruder, achieved the majestic mannerism of Opera (1997) and especially Suzuki (2000), which was replicated by the Sofa Surfers, an Austrian quartet led by Wolfgang "I-Wolf" Schloegl, on Cargo (1999).

Western dub

Dub had a life of its own in the western world. Notable works included: President's Breakfrast (1990) by President's Breakfast, a San-Francisco based ensemble led by drummer and sampler technician Click Dark that played an insane fusion of dub, funk, hip-hop and jazz; Sounds from the Thievery Hi-Fi (1996) by Thievery Corporation (1), the project of Washington-based disc jockeys, Eric Hilton and Rob Garza; the series culminated with Dub Voyage (2000) by Twilight Circus Dub Sound System, i.e. Holland-based multi-instrumentalist Ryan Moore; Rome (1996) by Rome, a Chicago instrumental trio of bass, drums and sampling keyboards sculpting dissonant electronic dub; Dancehall Malfunction (1997) by Sub Dub (the quartet of bassist John Ward, programmer Raz Mesinai, vocalist Ursula Ward and saxophonist Grant Stewart), which spearheaded a fusion of hip-hop, ambient house, world-music and dub; CD 1 (1998) by Pole, i.e. Berlin-based sound engineer Stefan Betke, who became the master of a starkly minimalist form of dub-based dance music. Influenced by Bill Laswell's and Jah Wobble's experiments of the 1980s, not to mention Adrian Sherwood, the Pop Group and Tackhead, they reinvented the genre as a stark and austere form of art.

Thomas Brinkmann transposed the minimal aesthetic of glitch music into the subliminal ideology of dub music on Klick (2001), the natural link between sound sculpting and dance-floor beats. Klick Revolution (2006) continued the program of Klick with another set of subliminal, anemic, dilapidated techno music assembled out of defective vinyl records.

Post-rock
The Louisville alumni 1993-97

The Squirrel Bait genealogy continued to dominate Kentucky's and Chicago's post-rock scene during the 1990s.

Gastr Del Sol, an evolution of Bastro's last line-up, i.e. the trio of David Grubbs on guitar, Bundy Ken Brown on bass and John McEntire on drums, gave new meaning to the word "subtlety" with The Serpentine Similar (1993), which inherited from Slint the grammatical mistakes but replaced the hardcore energy of Slint with an anemic nonchalant flimsiness. Despite the mood swings, the music bordered on free-form "slo-core" and John Fahey's transcendental suites. Jim O'Rourke joined the ranks for the chamber lied Eight Corners (1994) and the chamber concerto of The Harp Factory On Lake Street (1995), both monopolized by his ambient dissonances and derailed by anarchic jamming. Gastr Del Sol became basically a duo of Grubbs and O'Rourke for the alienated scores of Upgrade And Afterlife (1996) and Camofleur (1998), that virtually reinvented the format of the "ballad" for the post-rock generation (dissonant chamber music loosely anchored to an off-key melody). Gastr Del Sol's research program was basically continued by the solo albums of David Grubbs (11), beginning with the solo sonatas of Banana Cabbage, Potato Lettuce, Onion Orange (1997). The Thicket (1998), recorded by a supergroup featuring John McEntire on drums, Josh Abrams on bass, Jow Bishop on trumpet, and Tony Conrad on violin, was an exercise of angst-filled settings for a new style of story-telling, of mixing timbric exploration and folk melody. Its compositions betrayed and fused Grubbs' influences: Red Crayola, Pere Ubu, John Fahey and John Cage. After the avant-jazz jams of Apertura (1999) and Avocado Orange (2000), Grubbs returned to the idea of his masterpiece with The Spectrum Between (2000), although in a simpler and lighter tone.

Rodan set a standard for music that was neither atmospheric nor abstract, but a bit of both, with the lengthy conceptual compositions/improvisations of Rusty (1994). The interplay among Jason Noble's and Jeff Mueller's guitars, Tara Jean O'Neil's bass and Kevin Coultas' drums (plus Christian Frederickson's viola and Eve Miller's cello) contained elements of rock, jazz and classical music, but the "songs" didn't quite fall into either category. Mueller went on to form June Of 44, and Noble went on to form Rachel's, thus starting a new genealogy of Kentucky's post-rock.

Half of Rodan, i.e. Tara Jane O'Neil (now on vocals and guitar) and Kevin Coultas, formed Sonora Pine with keyboardist and guitarist Sean Meadows, violinist Samara Lubelski and pianist Rachel Grimes. Their debut album, Sonora Pine (1996), basically applied Rodan's aesthetics to the format of the lullaby.

For Carnation, the new project of Slint's guitarist Brian McMahan, followed Gastr Del Sol's route to subtle dynamics and wasteland-evoking soundscapes on two EPs, Fight Songs (1995) and the superb Marshmallows (1996). They refined the art of low-key, sparse but nonetheless complex compositions to the point that For Carnation (2000) betrayed virtually no emotions, just illusions of emotions.

June Of 44, a sort of supergroup comprising Rodan's guitarist Jeff Mueller, Sonora Pine's guitarist Sean Meadows, Codeine's drummer and keyboardist Doug Scharin, and bassist and trumpet player Fred Erskine, summarized the aesthetics and ethos of post-rock. Engine Takes To The Water (1995) signaled the evolution of "slo-core" towards a coldly neurotic form, which achieved a hypnotic and catatonic tone, besides a classic austerity, on the mini-album Tropics And Meridians (1996). Sustained by abrasive and inconclusive guitar doodling, mutant rhythm and off-key counterpoint of violin and trumpet, Four Great Points (1998) metabolized dub, raga, jazz, pop in a theater of calculated gestures.

Post-rock was clearly more "instrumental" than "vocal", and Rachel's merely formalized this fact with an all-instrumental format and a chamber ensemble built around Rodan's guitarist Jason Noble, pianist Rachel Grimes and viola player Christian Frederickson. Handwriting (1995) augmented the rock trio with strings and keyboards, but, rather than aiming for an orchestral sound, it downplayed the multitude of "voices" in favor of an artful exploration of timbres, while the narrative languished somewhere between the Clubfoot Orchestra's dark soundtracks (minus the expressionistic overtones) and the Penguin Cafe' Orchestra's minimalist dances (minus the nostalgic and exotic factors). By the time of The Sea And The Bells (1996), this somber hybrid had evolved into hermetic and severe avantgarde music.

Slint's guitarist Dave Pajo contributed to dispel the notion that instrumental music had to be atmospheric with Aerial M (1997), which delivered languid sub-sub-ambient slo-core in which elements of lounge jazz, Ennio Morricone's soundtracks and Rachel's semi-classical scores were carefully defused. His minimalist and transcendental technique, equally inspired by Pat Metheny (jazz), Robert Fripp (rock) and John Fahey (folk), reached an existential zenith on Papa M's Live From A Shark Cage (1999), a phantasmagoria of cubist de-composition, the instrumental equivalent of Tim Buckley's music.

Rodan's guitarists Jeff Mueller and Jason Noble reunited when they formed Shipping News with drummer Kyle Crabtree, and recorded the oblique, undulating jams of Save Everything (1997). They refined their approach with the slow-forming filigrees of Very Soon And In Pleasant Company (2000), impersonating not so much brainy improvisers as consummate storytellers spinning enigmatic tales, full of twists and surprises. Rodan's wreckage of classical harmony left behind flotsam of dub-like ecstasy and hard-rock fits.

Chicago's post-rock 1994-97

Post-rock was codified in Chicago with a German accent (as in "Can, Faust, Neu") by Tortoise and their countless descendants and affiliates.

Jim O'Rourke, Illusion Of Safety's guitarist, introduced into rock music an abstract concept of music that drew from the likes of John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Anthony Braxton and Derek Bailey. The improvisations for "prepared" guitar of Remove the Need (1989), the ambient/industrial noise of The Ground Below Above Our Heads (1991), the electronically-manipulated chamber music of Tamper (1991), the musique concrete of the monumental Disengage (1992) and of Scend (1992), the chaotic free-noise of Terminal Pharmacy (1995) revealed one of the most eclectic, visionary and radical minds of the decade. His first venture into a more accessible style was Brise-Glace, a collaboration with other Chicago luminaries (Dazzling Killmen's bassist Darin Gray and Cheer Accident's drummer Thymme Jones), which yielded the ambient blend of jazz, rock and dub of When In Vanitas (1994) and then mutated into a new project, Yona-Kit (1995). O'Rourke's experimental fury subsided with the tributes to Tony Conrad's droning music of Happy Days (1997) and to John Fahey's "primitive guitar music" of Bad Timing (1997). And then, suddenly, he reinvented himself in the tradition of orchestral pop and easy listening with Eureka (1999).

Tortoise basically reinvented progressive-rock for the new millenium when they anchored their musical drifting to dub and jazz pillars. The geometry of their sound started with the very foundations of the line-up, which was basically the union of two formidable rhythm sections, Poster Children's drummer John Herndon and Eleventh Dream Day's bassist Doug McCombs plus Gastr Del Sol's rhythm section (drummer John McEntire and bassist Bundy Ken Brown), augmented with Tar Babies' percussionist Dan Bitney. They were not only inspired by the historical rhythm sections of funk and dub, but they set out to obscure that legacy with a more far-reaching approach. On Tortoise (1994) each musician covered a lot of ground and alternated at different instruments, but basically this was a band founded on rhythm. With Slint's guitarist Dave Pajo replacing Brown on bass, Millions Now Living Will Never Die (1996) streamlined the mind-boggling polyphony of their jams and achieved a sort of post-classical harmony, a new kind of balance and interaction between melodies and rhythms. Djed, in particular, could swing between sources as distant as Neu and Steve Reich while retaining a fundamental unity, flow and sense of purpose. The jazz component and academic overtones began to prevail. The sextet (McEntire, Herndon, Bitney, McCombs, Pajo and black guitarist Jeff Parker) that recorded TNT (1998) had in mind the Modern Jazz Quartet and Miles Davis' historical quintet, not King Crimson or Slint, but the result was nonetheless a magisterial application of Djed's aesthetics.

Rex, the new project by Codeine's and June Of 44's drummer Doug Scharin with singer/guitarist Curtis Harvey, Red Red Meat's bassist Phil Spirito and cellist Kirsten McCord, penned the lengthy, downbeat, convoluted jams coalescing in cloudy ballads of Rex (1995). The "intricate" became "majestic" on C (1996), Rex's most accomplished work. Him were born as Rex's dub side-project with the dreamy extended pieces of Egg (1995) and Interpretive Belief System (1997), but then switched to jazz-rock for Sworn Eyes (1999), with Rob Mazurek's cornet playing the ghost of Miles Davis, and to ethno-funk music for Our Point Of Departure (2000).

Sea And Cake almost wed post-rock and easy-listening. The drunk, sleepy delivery of Shrimp Boat's vocalist Sam Prekop was matched on Sea And Cake (1994) by a gentle, low-key, Steely Dan-ian soundscape of jazz and soul phrases laid down by guitarist Archer Prewitt and Tortoise's multi-instrumentalist John McEntire. The idea led to the sumptuous keyboards arrangements of Nassau (1995) and eventually the electronica of The Fawn (1997).

The Denison-Kimball Trio, or DK3, formed by Jesus Lizard's guitarist Duane Denison and Laughing Hyenas/Mule/Firewater's drummer James Kimball, played nocturnal jazz with a profusion of atonal and abrasive tones on Walls In The City (1994), sounding like Lounge Lizards on drugs, and achieved a sophisticated synthesis of jazz, blues, rock and avantgarde on Soul Machine (1995), following the addition of jazz saxophonist Ken Vandermark, and Neutrons (1997).

Duotron, played a psychotic form of abstract pieces that ran the gamut from progressive-rock to noise to absurdist vaudeville to no wave and free-jazz, particularly on We Modern We Now (1995).

The instrumental group Town And Country articulated an aesthetics of baroque trance that wed Harold Budd's hypnotic bliss and Bill Evans' romantic jazz. The lengthy pieces of Town And Country (1998) and It All Has To Do With It (2000), straddling the line between jazz improvisation and classical composition, led to the mature post-fusion synthesis of C'mon (2002), performed by Jim Dorling on harmonium and bass clarinet, Ben Vida on guitar and cornet, Liz Payne on guitar, Josh Abrams on bass and celeste.

Frontier ran the gamut from shoegazing to King Crimson to Can to Tortoise on Heather (1997).

Dianogah, a trio of two basses and drums, betrayed the influence of Slint on the mostly-instrumental As Seen From Above (1997).

The golden age of post-rock 1993-1996

Hybrid vibrations, that mixed a post-punk ethos with the austere stance of progressive-rock and the sounds of dub and jazz, emanated also from New York.

Soul Coughing concocted an effervescent blend of funk, hip-hop, jazz and rock propelled by Sebastian Steinberg's bass and Yavul Dabay's drums, and obfuscated by sampling-engineer Mark Degli Antoni's murky soundscapes on Ruby Vroom (1994). A further disorienting contrast was the setting of Mike Doughty's scat-like free-form poetry against a backdrop of cartoonish novelties a` la Frank Zappa, glued together by an ominous urban pulse. Following the eclectic and witty intellectual circus of Irresistible Bliss (1996), the varied and sophisticated El Oso (1998) was another stylistic tour de force but with an almost theatrical attitude, that continuously reinvented itself.

Ui, a trio of two basses (Sasha Frere-Jones, Wilbo Wright) and drums (Clem Waldmann), offered perhaps the most adventurous fusion of dub, jazz and rock on Sidelong (1995) with compositions that harked back to the Contortions and Material and further back to Can.

In Rhode Island, Six Finger Satellite played industrial rock'n'roll that was both demented and visceral. The chaos and the noise of The Pigeon Is The Most Popular Bird (1993) were hardly in line with the aesthetics of post-rock. Skewed, jolting rhythms and off-kilter or plainly out-of-tune melodies were injected lethal gas by John McLean's and Peter Phillips' abrasive guitars, and ripped apart by the emphatic, possessed vocals of Jeremiah Ryan, who engineered the best synthesis of Freud, Sartre and Bukowski on record; while instrumental interludes referenced everybody from John Cage to Throbbing Gristle to Chrome to the Velvet Underground. Severe Exposure (1995) was even more brutal and frantic, but still managed to cohere into a vision of post-nuclear wastelands.

The most obvious link between post-rock of the 1990s and progressive-rock and German avant-rock of the 1970s was a band from Maryland, Trans Am, a trio led by guitarist/keyboardist Philip Manley. The keyboards-driven instrumental rock of The Surveillance (1998) were unique in that they exhuded the rhythmic exuberance of dance music. The group moved towards a less distinctive but more accessible prog-pop sound that culminated with Red Line (2000), under a broad range of influences, from Devo's futuristic rock'n'roll to Frank Zappa's noise-jazz bacchanals.

Jackie-O Motherfucker, the project of New York-based multi-instrumentalist Tom Greenwood, relied heavily on free-jazz improvisation for Alchemy (1995), Cross Pollinate (1996) and especially Flat Fixed (1998), although his most intriguing works were probably the ones that moved away from those roots. Fig 5 (1999) piled up elements of acid-rock, folk, blues, noise-rock and soul; and the jazz elements all but disappeared on the double-disc Magick Fire Music (2000), an epic journey from noise collage to ambient melancholia

The recordings of the No-Neck Blues Band, a loose New York-based collective of improvisers, were mainly devoted to long chaotic instrumental jams that drew inspiration from the Art Ensemble Of Chicago, Captain Beefheart, Amon Duul II and Pink Floyd. Letters From The Earth (1998) and Sticks And Stones May Break My Bones But Names Will Never Hurt Me (2001) ran the gamut from an anthropological recapitulation of primal shamanic music to free-jazz improvisation. At their best, the jams were minimalist fanfares of sorts, combining a number of repetitive patterns into a tribal acid trip of loose guitar/mandolin threnodies, polymorph multi-instrumental beats, loose aggregates of free-jazz horns and languid trance-like droning instruments. Qvaris (2005) dressed that dadaistic vice into a more austere format, bordering on electroacoustic chamber music and musique concrete.

Other significant contributions to the canon of post-rock came from: Seattle's Engine Kid, with Bear Catching Fish (1993); Seattle's Pigeonhed, a collaboration between Satchel's vocalist Shawn Smith and Pell Mell's keyboardist Steve Fisk, that yielded the industrial/electronic dub-soul crossover of Pigeonhed (1993); Minnesota's Brick Layer Cake, the project of veteran drummer Todd Trainer, with Tragedy-Tragedy (1994); Pennsylvania's Thee Speaking Canaries, the trio of Don Caballero's drummer Damon "Che" Fitzgerald (now on guitar and vocals), with Songs For The Terrestrially Challenged (1995); etc.

Boston's Karate were emblematic of post-rock's ambition to concoct loose and jazzy song structures, notably on In Place of Real Insight (1997).

In San Francisco, the iconoclastic tradition of the Residents and Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 was continued by albums such as: Fibulator's Drank From The Asphalt (1993), Double U's Absurd Fjord (1996), Ubzub's Alien Manna For Sleeping Monkeys (1996). Deerhoof was an avant-pop concept that balanced cacophony and melody, abstraction and organization, and evolved from the blissful Captain Beefheart-esque anarchy of The Man The King The Girl (1997) to the prog-garage ingenuity of Reveille (2002). Absurdist rock was also played in Oregon by the New Bad Things, for example on Freewheel (1992).

Miss Murgatroid, the brainchild of San Francisco-based accordionist Alicia Rose, blended psychedelia, raga and minimalism on Methyl Ethyl Key Tones (1993) and especially Myoclyonic Melodies (1996), a glorious fest of eerie drones, Hendrix-ian glissandos, bombardment-like walls of noise, radio signals, gothic Bach-ian toccatas, noir atmospheres and surreal concertos for dissonant accordion and all sorts of instrumental noises.

Analog ambience 1993-96

Labradford, the Virginia-based duo of keyboardist Carter Brown and guitarist Mark Nelson, were influential for at least two reasons: they rediscovered the appeal of analog keyboards; and they coined an ambient/chamber form of rock music that shunned percussion and relied on drones. The mostly instrumental albums Prazision (1993) and A Stable Reference (1995), which added a bass to the equation, subverted the song format by conceiving each "song" as a slow-motion nebula of loops, drones and guitar events (hypnotic strumming, psychedelic reverbs), while barely whispered melodies glided in different directions. This "textural" form of jamming (jamming that enhanced the timbres and the contrasts, like an impressionistic watercolor) was basically a non-psychedelic (i.e., stark and austere) form of shoegazing. Labradford opted for a machine-driven sound with Labradford (1996), which began to add samplers and drum-machines to their arsenal of instruments, and to employ found sounds and dissonances. However, the overall ambience became warmer because the vocals had evolved into a real "voice", not just background hissing. Thanks to technology, the "emptiness" of previous albums had been "filled", but the 'containee" was no less frightening than the container: a barren and spectral landscape, enveloped in a ghostly calm, that emerged out of a nightmarish fog. After the formulaic Mi Media Naranja (1998) and E Luxo So (1999), that indulged in the "panoramic" element of their music, Labradford returned to the aseptic mood of Brian Eno's original ambient program, albeit one in which details matter, with the four lenghty tracks of Fixed::Context (2001), each piece overflowing with "dark matter", with invisible sounds that were nonetheless the substance, whereas the whole was merely a vehicle, a backdrop, a context.

Fundamentally, Seattle's Jessamine reprised the electronic rock format of the Silver Apples and the United States Of America, and upgraded it to My Bloody Valentine's shoegazing. Jessamine (1994) introduced the droning music of keyboardist Andy Brown and guitarist Rex Ritter, but The Long Arm Of Coincidence (1996) added a number of subtleties to the model that set it apart from other droning ensembles: a predisposition to Can-like structures, a twisted rhythmic emphasis, jazzy synth ectoplasms and occasional echoes of Soft Machine's prog-rock.

Brown continued the experiment in Fontanelle, a collaboration with guitarist Rex Ritter, whose Fontanelle (2000) offered instrumental jams that were evocative, trance-oriented recapitulations of Soft Machine, John Cage and Miles Davis.

Florida's Windsor For The Derby sculpted the dreamy, wadded bliss of Calm Hades Float (1996) with guitar, Farfisa and drums.

Instrumental post-rock 1993-99

Post-rock's focus on instrumental interplay indirectly fostered a resurgence of instrumental rock. Oddly creative combos had been around independently of post-rock. For example, born in Boston from the ashes of Human Sexual Response, the Concussion Ensemble offered a mixture of minimalistic repetition, free improvisation and hard-rock on Stampede (1993).

Instrumental post-rock found its prophets and visionaries in Pennsylvania's Don Caballero, the first band, with Virginia's Breadwinner, which never recorded an album, to consciously and thoroughly explore the innovations of Bitch Magnet and Slint. One could find countless references inside For Respect (1993), from Neil Young's neurotic progressions to MC5's monster riffs, from Arto Lindsay's atonal screeches to Chrome's manic distortions, from King Crimson's progressive-rock to Black Flag's progressive-hardcore. The barbaric duels of guitarists Mike Banfield and Ian Williams, and the colossal "blunders" of the rhythm section (Damon "Che" Fitzgerald on drums and Pat Morris on bass) created a deviant, menacing wall of noise. Technically, 2 (1995) was even better, as it introduced a quartet of sophisticated, skilled players, and not just an enigmatic whole. Four lengthy tracks summarized 40 years of intellectual rock music, from Soft Machine to Metallica, and unloaded a cornucopia of odd time signatures and intense/elaborate textures. What Burns Never Returns (1998) was an alchemic work that retained little of the original verve.

Don Caballero's guitarist Ian Williams pursued his experiments in Storm & Stress, featuring bassist Eric Topolsky and drummer Kevin Shea. Storm & Stress (1997) and Under Thunder And Fluorescent Light (2000) were ambitious attempts at playing music while intentionally forgetting the song that they were playing. The technique resonated with theories borrowed from John Cage, Ornette Coleman and Einsturzende Neubaten. A chronic lack of a gravitational center permeated all of their jams. At times, harmony was so loose that it appeared to be random.

Chicago's Trenchmouth, led by vocalist Damon Locks and guitarist Chris DeZutter, mixed heavy-metal solos, and elements of ska, funk, reggae and jazz on the philosophical concept albums Inside The Future (1993) and Vs The Light of The Sun (1994), to the point that their final The Broadcasting System (1996) was virtually a tribute to the dub civilization.

Instrumental rock music became more and more ambitious during the rest of the decade.

Chicago's 5ive Style, formed by guitarist Billy Dolan, Tortoise's drummer John Herndon, bassist LeRoy Bach and Lonesome Organist's keyboardist Jeremy Jacobsen, concocted first the angular funk and rhythm'n'blues of 5ive Style (1995), which sounded like the Meters playing for Schoenberg, and then the nostalgic Caribbean nonsense of Miniature Portraits (1999), replete with demonic picking and kitschy vibraphone.

Salaryman, the all-instrumental subsidiary of the Poster Children, toyed with a kaleidoscope of genre deconstructions on Salaryman (1997).

San Francisco's A Minor Forest indulged in the lengthy instrumental improvisations of Flemish Altruism (1996).

North Carolina's Tractor Hips glued together remnants of Soft Machine's jazz-rock, Can/Faust's kraut-rock and John Zorn's avant-jazz on Tractor Hips (1996).

The Fucking Champs, hailing from San Francisco, leveraged the double-guitar attack of Josh Smith and Tim Green (ex-Nation Of Ulysses) on III (1997), released under the moniker C4AM95, one of the few works to bridge heavy-metal and post-rock since the pioneering work of Bitch Magnet.

Paul Newman were Don Caballero's disciples in Texas with albums such as Frames Per Second (1997).

Phylr, the new project of Cop Shoot Cop's keyboardist Jim Coleman, indulged in Foetus-like gothic and industrial overtones on Contra La Puerta (1998).

Laddio Bolocko, featuring Drew StIvany on guitar, Ben Armstrong on bass, Marcus DeGrazia on saxophone and ex Dazzling Killmen's drummer Blake Fleming, mixed the neurotic introspection of post-rock and the psychotic attack of hardcore on Strange Warmings (1997), whose jams also referenced free-jazz and acid-rock. As structures exploded and imploded, the listener was taken on a rollercoaster of stylistic mirages. The soundscape got blurred on the EPs In Real Time (1998) and As If By Remote (1999), that abandoned the frenzy of the debut album to concentrate on textural explorations.

Minnesota's space-rockers Salamander indulged in abstract soundpainting on Red Ampersand (1998) and turned the title-track of Red Mantra (1999) into an avantgarde concerto.

Minnesota's prog-rockers Gorge Trio applied Don Caballero's art of counterpoint to Dead Chicken Foear No Knife (1998) and For Loss Of (1999).

Dazzling Killmen's bassist Darin Gray and Cheer Accident's drummer Thymme Jones who had been the rhythm section for O'Rourke's projects Brise-Glace and Yona-Kit, formed You Fantastic with guitarist Tim Garrigan, whose Homesickness (1999) contained brief experiments at the border between hardcore and free-jazz.

San Diego's Tristeza seemed to wed new-age music and instrumental post-rock with the slow, gentle pieces of Spine And Sensory (1999).

Turing Machine's A New Machine For Living (2000), the new project by Pitchblende's Justin Chearno, wed four generations of jamming (1960s' acid-rock, 1970s' kraut-rock, 1980s' noise-rock and 1990s' post-rock).

Ebbing and flowing 1995-99

As instrumental post-rock lost its hardcore component and shunned the trance-oriented approach of ambient music, it developed into a new form of music, both dynamic and atmospheric.

Rake's guitarist/keyboardist Bill Kellum and Pitchblende's guitarist Justin Chearno formed a keyboards-guitar-drums trio, Doldrums, that concocted an atmospheric blend of Main's ambient shoegazing, Tangerine Dream's cosmic music, Grateful Dead's Dark Star and Pink Floyd's A Saucerful Of Secrets. Secret Life Of Machines (1995) and Acupuncture (1997) contained multi-part suites that, under the apparent staticity, mutated continuously, each an amorphous plasma of sounds that went from exuberant to ecstatic, from chanting to droning, from tribal drumming to abstract doodling. Feng Shui (1998) was a more artificial work, the product of studio editing, but that technique was refined on Desk Trickery (1999), a moltitude of carefully-crafted sonic events seeping through the shapeless jelly.

Scenic, the new project by Savage Republic's founding member Bruce Licher (now living in Arizona), interpreted desert music in an almost cosmic setting. If Incident At Cima (1995) was still impressionistic and sketchy, Acquatica (1996) and The Acid Gospel Experience (2002) were ambitious frescoes of the musician's environment and, indirectly, of the musician's psyche.

Australian trio Dirty Three, comprising Warren Ellis on violin, Mick Turner on guitar and Jim White on drums, chiseled lenthy evocative jams that aimed for a folk-jazz-raga-rock fusion, a sort of culmination of four decades of crossover. Sad And Dangerous (1994) and Dirty Three (1995) evoked John Fahey, Albert Ayler, the Third Ear Band, the Turtle Island String Quartet; but, ultimately, were quite unique thanks to Ellis' violin, that could imitate John Cale's viola and Jimi Hendrix's guitar as well as an Indian sitar or a jazz trumpet. More importantly, the narrative masterpieces of Horse Stories (1996) delivered emotions without exploiting the conventions of emotion in music. The trio's music transcended stylistic boundaries and technical vocabularies, but somehow managed to be intuitive and user-friendly. Abandoning the punkish undulations of the early works, the austere chamber music of Ocean Songs (1998) upped the ante. It was delicate, lyrical and pictorial, without the harsh edges of the early works. The emotional content was much higher because the album was a tribute to nature and also a somber meditation on the human condition, the violin rising to universal voice of the century's existential angst. The six extended compositions of Whatever You Love You Are (2000) hastened the convergence with classical music, as the jazz and folk influences faded away.

Godspeed You Black Emperor, a large ensemble from Montreal, revolutionized (mostly) instrumental rock with the three slow-building compositions of f#a# Infinity (1998): they were not melodic fantasies (too little melodic emphasis), they were not jams (too calculated), and they were not symphonies (too low-key and sparse), but they were something in between. Emotions were hard to find inside the shapeless jelly, dark textures and sudden mood swings. The four extended tracks of Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven (2000) were more lively, but no less enigmatic, alternating baroque adagios for chamber strings, majestic psychedelic crescendos, martial frenzy, noise collages and, for the first time, tender melodies. Yanqui UXO (2002) was a collection of glacial, colorless holograms with no dramatic content, massive black holes that emitted dense, buzzing radiations.

Three members of Godspeed You Black Emperor (guitarist Efrim Menuck, violinist Sophie Trudeau and bassist Thierry Amar) contributed to the two lengthy multi-part suites of Silver Mt Zion's He Has Left Us Alone But Shafts Of Light Sometimes Grace The Corner Of Our Rooms (2000), which presented a more humane face of Godspeed's music, bending the techniques of the baroque adagios and allegros to fit the spleen (if not the aesthetic) of post-rock. Two Godspeed members (drummer Aidan Girt and violinist Sophie Trudeau) also contributed to Set Fire To Flames' Sings Reign Rebuilder (2001), a much more noise-experimental work.

Seattle's Hovercraft, the project of keyboardist/guitarist/samplist Ryan Campbell, created the musical equivalent of action painting performed by an epileptic acrobat on phantasmagoric albums such as Akathisia (1997) and Experiment Below (1998). Their atonal mini-symphonies recalled alternatively Sonic Youth, Red Crayola and King Crimson, but also wove a supernatural suspense and inspired apocalyptic fear.

Their cousins Magnog incorporated the aesthetics of post-rock into the plot-less synth-tinged instrumental tracks of Magnog (1996), that offered a tuneless and mantra-oriented form of space-rock.

San Francisco's Tarentel sculpted From Bone To Satellite (1999), a magnificent plateau of desolate, dilated, arpeggiated, minor-key, synth and guitar-driven scores a` la Godspeed You Black Emperor. A more humane feeling surfaced from the stark, carefree solemnity of The Order of Things (2001). The four-volume series of Ghetto Beats On The Surface Of The Sun (2006) zeroed on skeletal rhythms piercing through a jelly of glitchy ambience. Their "ghetto" was a psycho-musical ghetto, a mythological "place" of the mind that manifested itself in a plethora of disorienting soundscapes.

Montage

The Vampire Rodents, a project of Toronto guitarist/vocalist Anton Rathausen (real name Daniel Vahnke) and keyboardist Victor Wulf, were possibly the greatest composers of collage-music of the decade. War Music (1990) merely set the existential tone of their opus by juxtaposing recitals of horror stories against industrial music performed by Neanderthal men on stone instruments. Premonition (1992), featuring Andrea Akastia on violin and cello, transposed that program to another dimension, making music out of a frantic collage of sources. On one hand, the combo created a music in which sound effects, not instruments, became the element of composition. On the other hand, they retained the feeling of jazz and avantgarde chamber music. Their savage art of montage reached a demented peak with Lullaby Land (1993). Rhythm permeated this work at least on two levels: a disco/funk/house beat that propelled the track; and the pace at which snippets were glued together to form "songs". At both levels the verve was palpable. The songs were gags, and each gag was an assembly of cells. It was entertaining, and it was terrifying. The whole recalled the grotesque and unpredictable merry-go-rounds of Frank Zappa's early works and the Residents' early suites. Vampire Rodents' "lullaby land" was set in a Freudian nightmare and that nightmare played at double speed in a very chaotic theater. Clockseed (1995) added more instruments of the orchestra and more drum-machines, and offered a more linear, rational and focused take on the same idea. It was another symphony of chaos and multitude, that, indirectly, harked back to composers of urban cacophony such as Charles Ives and Edgar Varese (and composers of cartoon soundtracks such as Carl Stalling). It was still a cannibal and schizophrenic art, that continuously devoured itself and that continuously changed personality. Gravity's Rim (1996), instead, returned to the format of the pop song, thus closing an ideal loop. Layers of samples merely provided the "arrangement" for the melodies carried by the vocals. Vampire Rodents' art shared with Dadaism and Futurism the aesthetic principle that avantgarde and clownish novelty should be one and the same.

In New York, M'lumbo bridged dissonant avantgarde, free-jazz and dance music with the free-form collages of Spinning Tourists in a City of Ghosts (1999), that applied the collage technique to the most diverse sources.

Bugskull, the brainchild of Oregon's guitarist and vocalist (and former folksinger) Sean Byrne, coined a style of arrangement that was the post-rock equivalent of Brian Wilson's orchestral productions: a catalog of musical mistakes instead of an abundance of instrumental counterpoint. The "songs" of Phantasies And Senseitions (1994) were jams of found sounds, electronic sounds, distortions, out-of-tune passages, abstract noise, and, last but not least, senseless lullabies. Snakland (1996) focused on the core (the tune) rather than on the shell (the cacophony), but the program remained one of wrapping tunes into layers and layers of cacophony. Distracted Snowflake Volume One (1997) marked the formal triumph of his techniques of lo-fi avantgarde. Each piece was carefully sculpted with a myriad of sounds, resulting in "songs" that were both overwhelming and exhilarating.

Boston's Land Of The Loops, the project of Boston keyboardist Alan Sutherland, produced the cartoonish collages of samples, dance beats and ethereal vocals of Bundle Of Joy (1996).

Bran Van 3000, the project of Montreal-based multi-instrumentalist Jamie DiSalvio, assembled Glee (1998), a surreal, dissonant, hyper-realistic collage of hip-hop, conversations, scratches, jazz improvisation, choirs, loops, orchestral instruments, that magically retained the traditional song format.

In Holland, Solex, the project of Dutch used-record specialist Elizabeth Esselink, updated the soul-jazz diva to the age of samplers and drum machines. The songs on Pick Up (1999) and especially Low Kick And Hard Bop (2001) were fragments of music glued together and propelled by disjointed beats. The difference between her compositions and the audio cut-up of the avantgarde was that her compositions were actually "songs", and even "melodic" ones. Her silky voice blended naturally with the frigid textures of her collages. Few composers could turn a cold, artificial art of puzzle recomposition into a warm, personal art of personality decomposition, as she proved on another painstaking, almost surgical, cut and paste tour de force, Laughing Stock Of Indie Rock (2004).

German post-rock 1994-98

Post-rock owed a huge debt to German rock of the 1970s. Thus, it was not surprising that Germany rapidly became one of the centers for post-rock.

Mouse On Mars, the Duesseldorf-based duo of Andi Toma and Jan Werner, applied the post-rock aesthetics to post-techno music. The pseudo-psychedelic trance of Vulvaland (1994) was unusual mainly because of its tragic, gloomy mood, but Iaora Tahiti (1995) layered elements of dub, jungle, hip-hop inside a shell of warped ambient/cosmic cliches, thus creating a new kind of futurism, one that was not Kraftwerk's paranoia of machines but a very bodily (and current) neurosis. Autoditacker (1997) consolidated that style in a baroque synthesis of light polyrhythms and bizarre electronics, while Instrumentals (1998) was perhaps the most austere enunciation of their deconstruction technique. The "thickness" of sound effects on Idiology (2001) gave rise to an hallucinated symphony of instrumental colors, while assembling a catalog of impossible beats.

Ronald Lippock's To Rococo Rot basically unified the aesthetics of trip-hop and post-rock on Veiculo (1997), achieving on The Amateur View (1999) a gentle, subliminal blend of hypnosis and vitality. Lippock's side-project Tarwater infused the robotic rhythms and alien noises of 11/6 12/10 (1996) with romantic melodrama.

Laub, the duo of vocalist Antye Greie-Fuchs and keyboardist Juergen "Jotka" Kuehn, explored alien soundscapes on Kopflastig (1997) and especially Unter anderen Bedingungen als Liebe (1999).

Markus Archer's Notwist, featuring Martin "Console" Gretschmann on samples, were fluent in the idioms of hardcore, noise-rock and post-rock, which they applied simultaneously to the pastiches of 12 (1997). By the time that they crafted the carefully orchestrated and absurdist ballads of Neon Golden (2001), instead, they were pioneering the digital folk-rock of the new decade.

Their cousins Village of Savoonga straddled the line between expressionist drama, psychedelic doom and stream of consciousness on Philipp Schatz (1996). And their other cousins Tied & Tickled Trio revived cool jazz for the digital generation on Tied & Tickled Trio (1998) and EA1 EA2 (1999), while horns-driven Observing Systems (2003) and the keyboards-driven Aelita (2007) balanced the elegant flow of a jazz improvisation and the cold geometry of a classical composition.

The "songs" built by Notwist's sampling engineer Console (born Martin Gretschmann) on albums such as Pan Or Ama (1997) and Rocket In The Pocket (1999). were tributes to studio technique, concentrates of electronic and computer trickery, complex hodgepodges of synthesizer melodies, spastic beats, samples, dissonances, reverbs, computerized voices.

Other notable contributions to German post-rock came from: Kreidler, featuring keyboardists Andreas Reihse and Detlef "DJ Sport" Weinrich, with Weekend (1996); Trance Groove, with Paramount (1996); the multinational quartet Karamasov, with On Arrival (1998); Lali Puna, the project of Munich-based vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Valerie Trebeljahr, with Tricoder (1999); etc.

These German projects made up a formidable generation of experimental musicians, worthy of their predecessors Can, Neu and Faust.

Japanese post-noise 1990-95

Space Streakings were the greatest disciples of the great tradition of Zeni Geva and Boredoms. Hatsu-Koi (1993) concocted an ebullient amalgam of jazz, noise, electronica, hip-hop and hardcore that sounded like a musichall sketch performed on doomsday. And the end of the world came with 7-Toku (1994), the soundtrack of absolute chaos, of Babelic confusion, of decades frantically played back in the last few seconds of civilization. Its cacophonic fantasies were the last rational beings in an ecosystem of grotesque mutations.

Ground Zero, the brainchild of guitarist and turntablist Otomo Yoshihide, transposed Zeni Geva's noise-core to the age of sampling. Null And Void (1993) was typical of their improvised symphonies for noise and samples, while Revolutionary Pekinese Opera (1995) was virtually a post-modernist essay, a piece of music constructed out of samples of an opera and of snippets of tv commercials and soundtracks.

A few bands specialized in fast-paced noise-core that mixed the speed of hardcore and the cacophony of industrial music. Representative albums of this brutal, possessed, loud and frenzied style included: Scratch Or Stitch (1995) by Melt-Banana, God Is God (1995) by Ultra Bide, and Missile Me (1996) by Guitar Wolf.

British post-rock

At the same time that the post-rock aesthetic was spreading in the USA, England boasted a significantly different school of intellectual rock.

Napalm Death's drummer Mick Harris recreated the original line-up of that band (namely, guitarist Justin Broadrick and vocalist Nick Bullen) for his new project, Scorn but the music they played on Vae Solis (1992), was from another planet: Harris operated sampling machines and sequencers, and sculpted arrangements that incorporated industrial music and dub in a brutal and lugubrious framework, reminiscent of Public Image Ltd and Killing Joke. The bleak, hallucinated, horror soundscapes of this album enabled the stately psychodramas of Colossus (1994). The territory was still scoured by heavy beats and ghastly distortions, but there were real souls wandering in the miasmatic mist. It was a music of agonizing, paranoid rhythmic patterns, and rhythm rapidly became the focus of Scorn: Evanescence (1994) incorporated the syncopated beat of hip-hop, and Scorn retreated to a spectral ambient format with the instrumental Gyral (1995), once Bullen had left Harris alone at the helm. As the music of Scorn became more trivial, the music of its alter-ego, Lull, became more complex. The electronic poems of Dreamt About Dreaming (1992) evolved into the ambient mololiths of Cold Summer (1995) and Continue (1996), influenced by two crucial collaborations: the four lengthy Murder Ballads (1994), sung by Martyn Bates, at the border between gothic and ambient music; and the two ambient suites of Somnific Flux (1995), a joint venture with Bill Laswell. The sheer scope of Harris' work was stunning. Free-jazz, ambient music and grindcore found an improbable meeting point in Painkiller, the trio formed by Harris with Bill Laswell and John Zorn, best represented by Buried Secrets (1993).

Disco Inferno, after becaming the creature of producer Charlie McIntosh and vocalist/guitarist Ian Crause, delivered one of the most challenging albums of the era, DI Go Pop (1994).

Pram twisted the old craft of progressive-rock to the point that it became a container for all sorts of odd structures. Rosie Cuckston's childish vocals inhabited a Wonderland painted by the surreal colors of Max Simpson's samples and keyboards, plus the occasional trumpet or saxophone, and was constantly challenged by the grotesque charge of a power-twio ignited by Matthew Eaton's guitar. Elements of jazz, dub and electronica permeated The Stars Are So Big The Earth Is So Small (1993), thus it was not surprising that Helium (1994) sounded like Daevid Allen's Gong playing trip-hop. Its creative chaos had few rivals in those years. Despite the amount and density of sonic events, the loose structures of Sargasso Sea (1995) sounded like pure abstractions, mirages, phantasms, and eventually led (on a more earthly plane) to the exquisite muzak of North Pole Radio Station (1998) and Museum Of Imaginary Animals (2000).

Moonshake, the creature of singer-songwriters Dave Callahan and Margaret Fiedler, reduced the song format to a plasma of rhythmic and melodic fragments on the atmospheric experiments of Eva Luna (1992). A bold synthesis of psychedelia, trip-hop and jazz, their sound basically upgraded Public Image Ltd's sound to the age of sampling. As The Sound Your Eyes Can Follow (1994) provided sturdier scaffolding for the melodies, the mood settled halfway between Pere Ubu-like hysteria and Contortions-like neuroris. The more robust Dirty & Divine (1996), without Fiedler, further polished the edges and displayed similarities with Talking Heads' rhythmic juggernauts and hypnotic fanfares.

Laika, the new project of Moonshake's co-founder Margaret Fiedler, continued the exploration of Moonshake's stylistic crevices while focusing on electronic keyboards, sampling machines, flute and polyrhythms. Silver Apples Of The Moon (1994) delivered circular jazz-funk bacchanals reminiscent of Rip Rig & Panic and ethno-ambient frescoes reminiscent of Jon Hassell. Sounds Of The Satellites (1997) refined the production technique and achieved a super-fusion that stretched from Miles Davis' jazz-rock to Morton Subotnick's musique concrete.

Scotland's Long Fin Killie updated Pentangle's folk-rock to the age of trip-hop and post-rock on Houdini (1995).

Piano Magic, the project of guitarist Glen Johnson, offered the fragile electronic tapestry of Popular Mechanics (1997), performed on cheap keyboards and reminiscent of Young Marble Giants and Brian Eno.

Scotland's Mogwai anchored the blissful, impressionistic ambience of Young Team (1997) to atmospheric guitar sounds, ranging from celestial drones to hellish walls of distortions. Removing the impetus of that work, Come On Die Young (1999) revisited the desolate soundscapes of "slo-core", music that wandered, drifted, diluted itself into myriad variations of its own theme. The slowly-unfolding ballads of The Rock Action (2001) and the carefully orchestrated, organic, rational sonatas of Happy Songs For Happy People (2003) were practical applications of that theory.

Scottish guitarist Richard Youngs specialized in "lo-fi" improvisations inspired by Terry Riley's minimalism and John Fahey's instrumental folk music, notably the three lengthy spectral improvisations of Advent (1988) and the three lengthy "ballads" of Sapphie (1998). Significant detours included Summer Wanderer (2005), a moving a-cappella album, and Multi-Tracked Shakuhachi (2006). Since the late 1980s he had also been collaborating with avantgarde composer Simon Wickham-Smith, creating lengthy free-form noise collages/jams such as Ceaucescu (1992), The Proof Of The Point, off Kretinmuzak (1994), Diabetes for more than 20 instruments, off Asthma And Diabetes (1994), More Urban Music for the Middle Of Nowhere, off Enedkeg (1996), Angels From CT with sampler, rhythm machine and synthesizer, off Veil (1997).

Other notable albums of the second half of the decade included: Precious Falling (1997) by Quickspace, the new project of Faith Healers' guitarist Tom Cullinan; the trilogy of concept albums begun with Caledonian Gothic (1997) by Fiend, the brainchild of Mogwai's drummer Brendon O'Hare; Slow Motion World (1998) by Snowpony, the supergroup of Stereolab's keyboardist Katharine Gifford, My Bloody Valentine's bassist Deborah Googe and Rollerskate Skinny's drummer Max Corradi; Hammock Style (1998) by Ganger; Little Scratches (1998) by Rob Ellis' Spleen; Fried For Blue Material (1998) by Davey Henderson's Nectarine #9, inspired by the Pop Group and Captain Beefheart; Volume One (2000) by Richard Warren's Echoboy; etc.

Post-rock primitivism 1995-97

Chicago's U.S. Maple, formed by Shorty's guitarist Mark Shippy and vocalist Al Johnson, were among the "primitivists" of post-rock. The post-modernist blues of Long Hair In Three Stages (1995) used a confused vocabulary of spastic jamming, acid singing and crooked geometry, inspired by Red Crayola and Captain Beefheart. US Maple's surgical strike on tradition achieved an immaculate purity on Talker (1999) and Acre Thrills (2001). Both impeccable in their execution of the science of musical flaws and faults, they represented a genuine confession of love for what the band hated.

Seattle's Old Time Relijun were possibly the greatest disciples of Captain Beefheart in the 1990s, devoted to organizing musical structures out of sheer chaos. The psychotic jazz-rock of Songbook Vol 1 (1997) evoked a meeting of the Contortions and Albert Ayler, but the more experimental Utereus And Fire (1999), with Phil Elverum of the Microphones on drums, was reminiscent of Jon Spencer's deformed blues except that the focus was on DeDionyso's vocal histrionics, while atonal guitars and childish drums created a divine mayhem. The leader's saxophone solos and a demented rhythm section graced Witchcraft Rebellion (2001).

Chicago's Joan Of Arc, featuring multi-instrumentalist and singer Tim Kinsella and keyboardist Jeremy Boyle, inhabited a niche of sub-folk music with the likes of Nick Drake and Smog, but they focused on the disturbing process of a neurotic soul in the making. A Portable Model (1997) shunned the edgier, harshest overtones of post-rock and reached out to Will Oldham's anti-folk. That format was perfected with the rambling and sparse ballads of How Memory Works (1998), a cybernaut's journey through the extreme periphery of German avant-rock and electronic music. After a calm and subdued Live in Chicago (1999), Kinsella's ensemble crafted a frail music of scant and tentative emotions with the unstable and unfocused structures of The Gap (2000).

Colossamite was the Gorge Trio augmented with the unholy growl of Dazzling Killmen's vocalist Nick Sakes. All Lingo's Clamor (1997) and Economy Of Motion (1998) unleashed brief but terrifying firestorms of dissonant guitars, chaotic drumming and beastly screams.

Oregon's Rollerball, that featured Mae Starr (vocals, keyboards, accordion), Amanda Wiles (sax) and Shane DeLeon (trumpet), indulged in Pop Group-inspired, spastic, psychedelic, progressive and free rock that peaked with Trait Of The Butter Yeti (2001).

Post-post-rock 1996-99

Boxhead Ensemble was an impromptu project of the Chicago rock avantgarde that involved members of Tortoise, Jim O'Rourke and Ken Vandermark, assembled by composer Michael Krassner to score the soundtrack for a film, Dutch Harbor (1997), a set of austere, erudite, low-key and gloomy improvisations; high-caliber noir and chamber jazz. Another stellar cast (Krassner, bassist Ryan Hembrey, violinist Jessica Billey, drummer Glenn Kotche, Souled American's guitarist Scott Tuma, cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm) improvised the smoky, sleepy chamber music of Two Brothers (2001), the seven transcendent Quartets (2003) and the eight zen-like Nocturnes (2006). The Lofty Pillars recycled a few members of the Boxhead Ensemble, again under Krassner's direction. Like the Penguin Cafe' Orchestra, Amsterdam (2001) was caught in a time warp, plotting a fusion of old-fashioned genres (Leonard Cohen-ian dirges, Dylan-ian odes, gospel/country hymn a` la Band) and modern aesthetic values, while delivering clockwork performances worthy of classical music.

Lowercase, San Francisco's guitar-drums duo of Imaad Wasif and Brian Girgus, staged unstable, suicidal psychodramas via the slow, lengthy dirges of All Destructive Urges (1996) and especially Kill The Lights (1997), which basically reenacted over and over again a descent into a personal hell.

Chris Leo conducted the textural experiments of Van Pelt's Sultans Of Sentiments (Gern Blandsten, 1997) and Lapse's Heaven Ain't Happenin' (2000).

The slow, thick and majestic compositions of Ulan Bator, a French ensemble led by guitarist Amaury Cambuzat, linked post-rock with French progressive-rock, especially on Vegetale (1997) and Ego Echo (2000).

Zeek Sheck (Chicago-based Roseanna Perkins Meyers) composed a Residents-like pentalogy on an imaginary race starting with I Love You (1998), a chaotic assemblage of violin, flute, clarinet, harmonica, tuba, guitar, bass and electronics, including Cheer Accident's keyboardist Thymme Jones and cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm.

I Am Spoonbender, the trio of Pansy Division's drummer Dustin Donaldson, Cub's guitarist Robyn Iwata and keyboardist Brian Jackson, mined the border between Brian Eno's retro-pop and Can's austere avant-rock on Sender/ Receiver (1998).

Indiana's Tombstone Valentine, fronted by vocalist Richelle Toombs, renewed the art of space-rock with Hidden World (1998), an album which blended the surreal element of Pink Floyd's Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, the percussive element of 1970s' German avant-rock, and the exotic element of the Third Ear Band.

Out of Worship was a collaboration between San Francisco-based guitarist/bassist Joe Goldring and Codeine/Rex/Him's drummer Doug Scharin, whose Sterilized (1999) achieved a sophisticated and colorful fusion of jazz, raga, psychedelia and dub (thanks to Ill Media's turntables, Tony Maimone's bass, Julie Liu's violin and Adheesh Sathaye's tablas).

New York's Oneida carved an odd niche for themselves with the convoluted psychedelic and post-rock freak-outs of A Place Called El Shaddai's (1998), a mixture of Blue Cheer, Sonic Youth, and Can that blossomed on the sophisticated and harrowing Each One Teach One (2002).

Washington's El Guapo added manic doses of electronics to its stew of Soft Machine, Contortions, Pop Group, Fall on Super System (2002).

Jazz was a major factor in alienating the Chicago school from the traditional foundations of rock music. More and more units looked to jazz for inspiration: Isotope 217, the project of Tortoise's black guitarist Jeff Parker; Euphone, the brainchild of drummer Ryan Rapsys, whose The Calendar of Unlucky Days (1999) was devoted to improvised, instrumental jams mixing electronics, acoustic instruments and syncopated beats; Bill Ding, veterans of the jazz scene who performed chamber music for electronics, vibraphone, cello, trumpet, violin on Trust In God But Tie Up Your Camel (1997); Brokeback, a collaboration between Tortoise's bassist Douglas McCombs and Chicago Underground Quartet's bassist Noel Kupersmith, which delivered the quiet, ethereal, sparse watercolors of Field Recordings From The Cook Country Water Table (1999) and Morse Code In The Modern Age (2001).

The towering figure of this generation was cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm, who played in and led a number of orchestras and ensembles, notably Pillow, a quartet with the Flying Luttenbachers' reed player Michael Colligan, and two members of Town And Country, bassist Liz Payne and guitarist Ben Vida, best documented on their second album Field On Water (2000), and Terminal 4 (2001), that offered rock music for a pseudo-jazz quartet of cello, guitar (Ben Vida), bass (Josh Abrams) and trombone (Jeb Bishop).

Mood 1998-99

Calexico, which was Giant Sand's rhythm section of bassist Joey Burns and drummer John Convertino, coined one of the most distinctive and traditional styles of the era. The languid, introspective and touching mood of The Black Light (1998) relied on humble but eccentric orchestration and a hallucinated, oneiric take on mariachi music and Ennio Morricone's soundtracks. Austere but friendly, they sounded like the equivalent of the Penguin Cafe` Orchestra for the Arizona desert. With Hot Rail (2000), Calexico opted for a more intimate form of expression, for a stylish, somber, bleak ballad that is often drenched in psychedelic reverbs and accented by jazz instruments. Feast of Wire (2003) was, instead, an album of film-noir gloom.

Black Heart Procession, a collaboration between Three Mile Pilot's singer Pall Jenkins and keyboardist Tobias Nathaniel, switched to melancholy, funereal music, sparsely arranged with analog keyboards, guitars, xylophone and trumpet. The skeletal lullabies of 1 (1997) led to the dark and creepy 2 (1999), which basically coined a new form of existential ballad, one that leveraged and transcended the abused stereotypes of Nick Drake, Leonard Cohen and Nick Cave. 3 (2000) wrapped the naked agony of that album into sophisticated arrangements, that, enhanced with Matt Resovich's violin, led to the post-psychedelic trance-y ballads of The Spell (2006).

Maquiladora, a trio from San Diego (vocalist Phil Beaumont, drummer Eric Nielsen, guitarist Bruce McKenzie), filled Lost Works of Eunice Phelps (1998) with lunatic ballads baked by the hot sun of the desert that ran the gamut from the drugged folly of the Holy Modal Rounders to the calm poetry of Leonard Cohen, from Syd Barrett's mad folk to the eerie stupor of Cowboy Junkies. White Sands (2000) refined the idea by adding several keyboards and string instruments to their arsenal, a move that somehow highlighted the similarities with Calexico's hallucinated country-rock. Far from being only an intellectual exercise, Maquiladora packed an impressive amount of poetry in the brief vignettes of Ritual Of The Hearts (2002).

Italy 1990-99

Italy's rock scene boomed in the 1990s. Surprisingly, Italy, the homeland of melodic music, turned out to be one of the major international centers for post-rock. In general, the sonic model was a mixture of Big Black, Sonic Youth and Fugazi, while the themes coined a sort of neo-existentialism, very much concerned with the psychodramas of ordinary kids. It all sounded like a brain scan at the edge of a nervous breakdown.

Starfuckers merged rock and electronic sounds on the ambitious aesthetic manifesto of Sinistri (1994) and especially on Infrantumi (1997), a blend of free-jazz, cubism, dissonant avantgarde, musique concrete and Faust-like structures.

Massimo Volume's subtle second album, Lungo I Bordi (1995), was an oneiric and noir journey into a Fugazi-esque hell.

Marlene Kuntz's existential noise-rock on Il Vile (1996) sounded like a synthesis of European and American moods.

Three Second Kiss devoted For Pain Relief (1996) to free-form noise-rock.

Afterhours' stylistic tour de force of Hai Paura del Buio? (1997) achieved an eclectic fusion of hardcore, grunge, folk and pop.

With their third album Different Section Wires (1998), Uzeda cemented a dark noise-rock style that was both brutal and lyrical, fierce and mercyful, physical and psychological, centered on dynamic tribal-jazzy rhythms.

The post-rock renaissance of the 1990s somehow emancipated the rest of the nation, fostering innovation in many different genres.

The prog-rock school was abandoned and replaced by new sound paradigms such as Epsilon Indi's ambient exotic monolith A Distant Return (1992), or Timoria's melodic concept Viaggio Senza Vento (1993), their fourth album. Elio E Le Storie Tese, a six-member unit, became Italy's most relevant disciples of Frank Zappa with Elio Samaga Hukapan Karyana Turu (1989).

A sign that Italian prog-rock was about to stage a major come-back was Eris Pluvia's baroque Rings Of Earthly Light (1991), particularly its five-movement title-track. Deus Ex Machina indulged in a vehement, torrential fusion of classic, jazz and rock, that slowly became more cerebral as they progressed from the rock opera Gladium Caeli (1991) to the jazzy fantasias of Cinque (Cuneiform, 2002). Finisterre's Finisterre (1994) saluted the revival of Italy's prog-rock school with an unusual balance of classical piano and rock guitar. Bluvertigo delivered the progressive cauldron of Metallo non metallo (1997).

Technogod fostered an industrial-rap-rock fusion with Hemo Glow Ball (1992), while Assalti Frontali, the leading hip-hop posse of Italy, unleashed the confrontational manifestos Terra di Nessuno (1992) and the hardcore-tinged Conflitto (1996).

Almamegretta coined a new form of world-music on Sanacore (1995), an ambitious encyclopedic revision of traditional codes that bridged the ancient folk tradition of Napoli (Naples), electronic dance music, dub production techniques and Middle-Eastern scales.

Ordo Equitum Solis (a duo of guitar and vocals) crafted sets of solemn, melancholy folk ballads redolent of medieval music such as Solstitii Temporis Sensus (1990).

On the folk side of things, Italy boasted Mau Mau's world-music orgy Sauta Rabel (1992), Modena City Ramblers's punk-folk romp Riportando Tutto A Casa (1994), and Ustmamo`'s dream-poppy Ust (1996).

Among pop musicians, Tiromancino were probably the least derivative (La Descrizione di un Attimo, 2000; Amore Impossibile, 2004). Baustelle's Sussidiario Illustrato Della Giovinezza (2000) and Perturbazione's In Circolo (2002) were among the albums that reinvented Italian pop music.

At the turn of the century, Italy's post-rock scene had become one of the most vibrant in the world.

Ossatura indulged in a mixture of abstract electronic soundscaping, free-jazz improvisation, concrete collage and progressive-rock on Dentro (ReR, 1998).

The Dining Rooms (Stefano Ghittoni and Cesare Malfatti) ventured into trip-hop with a cinematic twist on Subterranean Modern Volume Uno (1999).

Yuppie Flu's Days Before The Day (2003) offered charming folk vignettes arranged with analog electronic keyboards.

Maisie (Alberto Scotti and Cinzia La Fauci) penned the dissonant and cartoonish divertissement The Incredible Strange Choir Of Paracuwaii (1999) under the aegis of Captain Beefheart and Dada.

Quintorigo's postmodern chamber workout Rospo (1999) was Italy's best attempt at classic-jazz-rock fusion since the heydays of progressive-rock.

Minimal duo My Cat Is An Alien delivered a post-rock version of Tim Buckley's sublime dejection on the totally improvised three-part jam Landscapes Of An Electric City (1999).

A Short Apnea (former Afterhours' guitarist Xabier Iriondo, guitarist Paolo Cantu` and vocalist Fabio Magistrali) blurred the borders between post-rock, free-jazz and electronic avantgarde in the three jams of their second album, Illu Ogod Ellat Rhagedia (2000).

Bron Y Aur played a devastating kind of improvised post-rock Bron Y Aur (Beware, 2000).

Giardini di Miro` assembled an intriguing combination of hypnotic instrumental textures, deconstructed melodies, dilated psychedelic improvisation, and melodramatic soft-loud glacial/vibrant dynamics on Rise and Fall of Academic Drifting (2001).

Notable was also Yo Yo Mundi's instrumental post-rock puzzle Sciopero (2001).

Zu revived the school of jazzcore from the perspective of the post-rock generation with the brutal, free-form instrumental music of Igneo (2002).

Jennifer Gentle, perhaps the premier psychedelic band of Italy, penned the surreal folk-pop of Funny Creatures Lane (2002) for rock quartet, strings, accordion and sitar.

To The Ansaphone's To The Ansaphone (Heartfelt, 2003) harked back to the angst-filled no wave of the late 1970s (Pop Group, Contortions, DNA).

Larsen were among the most creative groups to try and bridge the aesthetics of post-rock and glitch electronica with the austere, brooding, hypnotic atmospheres of Rever (2002) and Play (2005).

Outside post-rock and, in general, avant-rock, Italian bands delivered substantial contributions to garage-rock, such as Julie's Haircut's Fever In The Funk House (1999), dance-pop, such as Subsonica's Microchip Emozionale (1999), pop-revisionism, such as Baustelle's Sussidiario Illustrato della Giovinezza (2000), etc.

The sloppy, demented, eclectic garage-folk of Bugo (Cristian Bugatti) bridged Beck and Jon Spencer Blues Explosion on La Prima Gratta (1999) and especially the double-disc tour de force Golia & Melchiorre (2004).

Italian heavy-metal had never been particularly interesting, but at the turn of the century a number of works heralded a mature era: Rhapsody's Symphony Of Enchanted Lands (1998), summarizing the quintessential of operatic symphonic metal, Ephel Duath's Phormula (2000), a magisterial fusion of jazz and metal, Void Of Silence's Toward The Dusk (2001), Forgotten Tomb's Songs To Leave (2002), etc. Ufomammut's ultra-heavy space-rock expressed itself via both the visceral Godlike Snake (2000) and the progressive Snailking (2004).

the Italian dynasty of singer-songwriters ("cantautori") was continued at the turn of the century by Ivano Fossati, with Discanto (1990), Carmen Consoli with Confusa e Felice (1997), Cristina Dona`'s Nido (1999), and Vinicio Capossela's Canzoni a Manovella (2000).

The ambient avantgarde in the digital age
Electronic Ambience

New studio techniques and new electronic and digital instruments allowed rock music and avantgarde music to develop new kinds of composition and performance. Ambient and cosmic music, in particular, reached an artistic peak. Noise was employed in a less irreverent and more calculated manner. Electronic sounds became less alien and more humane. Sound effects became the center of mass, not the centrifugal force. Overall, the emphasis shifted from melody/rhythm to "sound" and "ambience". And, in a way, this was the terminal point of a movement begun at the outset of the 20th century to emancipate music from the dogmas of classical music.

French combo Lightwave was still composing electronic tonal poems in the spirit of the German "cosmic couriers" of the 1970s, but they added intrepid new ideas. Serge Leroy and Christoph Harbonnier harked back to Klaus Schulze's early works on Nachtmusik (1990), but enhanced that cliche' with techniques borrowed from classical avantgarde. Tycho Brahe (1993), that added Paul Haslinger (ex-Tangerine Dream) and violinist Jacques Deregnaucourt to the line-up, offered elegant, dramatic and highly-dynamic chamber electronic music of a kind that had never been heard before. Electronic music had matured into something both more conventional (like a traditional instrument) and more alien (like a supernatural harmony). Mundus Subterraneus (1995) reached new psychological depth, while furthering their soundpainting both at the microscopic and at the macroscopic levels. A spiderweb of metabolizing structures, an organic blend of timbres, drones and dissonances, it blurred the line between rationality and chaos, showing one as being the sense of the other. The spirit of Lightwave's music recalled the allegorical, encyclopedic minutiae of medieval treatises, an elaborate clockwork of impossible mirages and erudite quotations. Ultimately, it was a journey back to the roots of the human adventure.

In Germany, Uwe Schmidt's multi-faceted saga began with Lassigue Bendthaus and unfocused electronic soundscapes such as the ones on Render (1994). His ambient/atmospheric project Atom Heart was more successful, particularly with Morphogenetics Fields (1994). N+'s Built (1996), which was virtually a tribute to cosmic music, and the numerous collaborations Bill Laswell and Pete Namlook completed his training in the field of lengthy, static electronic poems. But his activity ranged from Latin music, explored by Senor Coconut Y Su Conjunto, for example on El Gran Baile (1997), to the digital ambient/industrial jazz-rock of Flanger, a collaboration with percussionist Bernd Friedman, on Templates (1999). His partneship with Japanese visionary Tetsu Inoue was particulary relevant. The third Datacide album, Flowerhead (1994), toyed with a noise-based form of ambient music that sounded like organic matter slowly developing into an embryo. The duo recorded ambient works under several names, notably Masters Of Psychedelic Ambiance's MU (1995) and Second Nature's Second Nature (1995).

In Belgium, Vidna Obmana, Dirk Serries' project, practiced electronic soundpainting on the ambient trilogy begun with Passage In Beauty (1991), but Echoing Delight (1993) shifted the emphasis towards spiritual and tribal evocations. This is the genre in which Serries gave his most original and poignant works, first Spiritual Bonding (1994), a collaboration with Steve Roach and Robert Rich, and then Crossing The Trail (1998).

In Holland, Ron Boots's Different Stories and Twisted Tales (1993) straddled the border between sequencer and ambient music. In Portugal Nuno Canavarro produced one of the most atmospheric works of early ambient music, Plux Quba (1988).

San Francisco's Kim Cascone mined the border between ambient music and musique concrete both on Heavenly Music Corporation's In A Garden Of Eden (1993) and on PGR's The Morning Book of Serpents (1995).

A Produce, Barry Craig's project, also from California, crafted Reflect Like A Mirror (1993), an impeccable follow-up to Brian Eno's and Harold Budd's classics.

Happy The Man's keyboardist Kit Watkins composed the austere Thought Tones (1992) and especially Circle (1993), a suite for electronic sounds and natural sounds.

In Canada, Delerium, an offshoot of Front Line Assembly, crossed over into gothic, dance and pop music with meticulously and lushly arranged albums such as Stone Tower (1990), Spiritual Archives (1991) and Spheres (1994). Their associates Will composed the pagan mass Pearl Of Great Price (1991) in a similar vein.

Arizona-based Life Garden sounded like the electronic version of Popol Vuh on Caught Between The Tapestry Of Silence And Beauty (1991).

The "organic sound sculpting" of Voice Of Eye, the Texas-based duo of Bonnie McNaim and Jim Wilson, was inspired, at different levels, by Steve Roach, Harold Budd, and Karlheinz Stockhausen. Mariner Sonique (1993), the seven Vespers (1994), imbued with medieval spirituality and zen transcendence, and the six movements of Transmigration (1996) co-founded the religious version of electronic world-music with Life Garden.

The most challenging and political form of ambient music was perhaps the one invented in New York by Terre Thaemlitz, for example on Soil (1995).

Liquid Mind, the project of Los Angeles-based composer Chuck Wild, sculpted the ecstatic Ambience Minimus (1994): memorable melodies slowed down, came to a standstill and decomposed in celestial chimes, echoes of angels, breathing of nebulae. The neo-classical Unity (2000), instead, let strings and woodwinds float, multiply and merge as if an entire repertory of "adagios" was being played in slow motion and out of sync by an orchestra of orchestras.

In a ligher mood, Richard Bone was equally at ease with the surreal synth-pop of Vox Orbita (1995) and the ambient symphony of Eternal Now (1996).

Cevin Key of Skinny Puppy composed a magniloquent symphony for "subconscious electronic orchestra", Music For Cats (1998).

Stars Of The Lid, the Austin-based duo of Adam Wiltzie and Brian McBride, manipulated found sounds, acoustic instruments and electronics to produce the ambient concertos of Ballasted Orchestra (1997); and an even more austere exploration of melody and movement was carried out on The Tired Sounds Of Stars Of The Lid (2001).

Electronic Ambient World Music

By exploiting Steve Roach's ideas, a number of musicians scoured the territory at the border between new-age music, ambient music and world-music.

San Francisco's "modern primitivism" movement was best represented by a multi-national commune that emerged with the music of Lights In A Fat City, centered upon Canadian electronic composer Kenneth Newby, British-born didjeridoo player Stephen Kent and percussionist Eddy Sayer. Somewhere (1988) was possibly the first electronic album built around the sound of the didjeridoo, and juxtaposed hypnotic rhythms to a madly droning background. Sound Column (1993) was a more philosophical work, comprising four improvisations for didjeridoo and acoustic instruments recorded inside a huge pillar. That project evolved into Trance Mission, formed by Newby and Kent with Club Foot Orchestra's clarinetist Beth Custer and percussionist John Loose. Trance Mission (1993), a dense maelstrom of jazz improvisation, transcendental exotica, atmospheric electronica and tribal rhythms, took a new route to Brian Eno's ambient trance and to Jon Hassell's fourth-world music. That wedding of futuristic and ancestral elements was abandoned on Meanwhile (1995), for a more facile dance-exotic fusion that evoked the vision of the Third Ear Band mixed by a techno producer; while later works such as Head Light (1997) veered towards an alien form of free-jazz. Kent, harpist Barbara Imhoff, a percussionist and a vocalist explored a simpler kind of electronic folk music under the moniker Beasts Of Paradise on Gathered On The Edge (1995).

Kenneth Newby, a member of the Trance Mission collective, crafted Ecology Of Souls (1993), perhaps the most accomplished fusion of electronic music and exotic instruments of the era. Four lengthy suites explored a magical, surreal, mythological landscape roamed by rhythmic patterns and primordial sounds, swept by intergalactic winds and tidal waves of cosmic radiations, while melodramatic and ethereal moments alternated at creating a metaphysical suspense.

Germany's Enigma, the project of Romanian-born veteran disco producer and electronic composer Michael Cretu (aka Curly M.C.), elaborated a pseudo-ethnic ambient style that would be very influencial on mainstream music. MCMXC A.D. (1990) mixed Gregorian chanting, dance beats, new-age ecstasy and exotic fascination. The Cross Of Changes (1994) was a tour de force of juxtapositions and layering that roamed the world for inspiration (French chansons, African polyrhythms, Middle-eastern cantillation, Peruvian flutes, operatic choirs, etc).

France's Deep Forest were successful on Deep Forest (1992) with a similar idea: an atmospheric potion of ethnic samples and dance beats.

Mo Boma, the duo of German multi-instrumentalist Carsten Tiedemann and Iceland-born jazz bassist Skuli Sverrisson, achieved a brilliant fusion of Brian Eno, Jon Hassell, Klaus Schulze, Weather Report and Pat Metheny, for the age of raves on Jijimuge (1992) and especially on the more electronic, primitive-futurist Myths Of The Near Future (1994). The first part of a trilogy recorded in South Africa in 1993, the latter set the foundations for the sophisticated ethno-jazz of Myths Of The Near Future Part Two (released in 1995) and the lush, symphonic "thickness" of Myths Of The Near Future Part Three (1996). Overall, the trilogy represented a majestic celebration of the human race.

Australia's Eden, the brainchild of vocalist Sean Bowley, displayed the combined influence of Dead Can Dance's exotic/medieval music and Nico's ancestral folk on the madrigals of Gateway To The Mysteries (1990), performed by a chamber ensemble (rich in ancient instruments) and sung in lugubrious ecclesiastic tones. The macabre and decadent ballads of Fire And Rain (1995) added Paul Machliss' electronic arrangements.

Michigan's Fibreforms performed instrumental world-music a` la Penguin Cafè Orchestra on Treedrums (1996), but based on the haunting sound of the African bounkam. They changed name to Kiln and repeated the exploit with Holo (1998).

Britain's Bob Holroyd integrated Deuter's eastern spirituality, Jon Hassell's fourth-world atmosphere and Deep Forest's sampling. on Fluidity And Structure (1995).

The lush electronic arrangements and soothing melodies of Mythos (1998) by Canada's Mythos were the obvious bridge with new-age music.

Dead Can Dance's multi-instrumentalist Brendan Perry returned with Eye Of The Hunter (1999), an intensely personal statement arranged for (synthesized) orchestra and a plethora of acoustic instruments, but more reminiscent of Nick Cave and Leonard Cohen than of his old band.

In Japan, Onna-Kodomo offered a languid and spiritual fusion of western classical music and eastern classical music on Syuuka (1997), in a vein similar to Popol Vuh's Hosianna Mantra.

Transglobal trance

It was not avantgarde, but Britain's "transglobal dance" was a natural consequence of the merger of electronica and world-music in the age of raves.

TUU, mainly Martin Franklin's project, delivered arcane, sacred and ethnic trance on One Thousand Years (1992), evoking both Third Ear Band and Popol Vuh. All Our Ancestors (1995) approached chamber music and Jon Hassell's fourth-world music, while the more electronic Mesh (1997) was influenced by Steve Roach's sinister soundscapes.

Voices Of Kwahn offered an elegant fusion of quirky vocals and electronic/ethnic ambience on Silver Bowl Transmission (1996).

In the USA, Georgia's Macha penned the mostly improvised Macha (1998) and the quasi-symphonic See It Another Way (1999); while New York's Badawi, Raz Mesinai's project, fused traditional middle-eastern instruments, simple reggae figures and syncopated drumming at a deeper level on Jerusalem Under Fire (1997). and Tuatara, a supergroup made of REM's Peter Buck, Screaming Trees' drummer Barrett Martin, Luna's bassist Justin Harwood and jazz saxophonist Skerik (Nalgas Sin Carne), indulged in studio magic on the all-instrumental Breaking The Ethers (1997).

Hochenkeit, led by guitarist Jeff Fuccillo of the Irving Klaw Trio, concocted the psychedelic/electronic world-music cauldron I Love You (1999), inspired by German avant-rock of the 1970s.

Montreal-based Shalabi Effect employed a veritable orchestra of ethnic, western and electronic instruments to generate the propulsive and trancey scores of Shalabi Effect (2000). The Trial Of St Orange (2002) was another masterful essay of East-West fusion; while Sam Shalabi's solo On Hashish (2001) was a more pretentious experiment with field recordings, free improvisation, droning and glitches.

Guitar drones

An important thread for ambient music was started in Britain when the post-shoegazing psychedelic groups began playing music anchored to guitar drones. Seefeel pioneered the idea on Quique (1993) and Succour (1994). The combination of Sarah Peacock's stunned vocals, Mark Clifford's minimalist guitars, Justin Fletcher's proto-rhythms and Darren Seymour's dub bass lines dissolved the music of My Bloody Valentine and Spacemen 3 in nebulae of abstract sound.

German guitar trio Maeror Tri also pioneered doomsday's music for guitar-drones, although their white-noise hurricanes, particularly on the monumental Myein (1995), recorded in 1992 and 1993, were reminiscent of both Glenn Branca's symphonies and Throbbing Gristle's industrial nightmares.

Drone-based symphonies became the bread and butter of most shoegazing veterans.

Spacemen 3's guitarist Sonic Boom (Peter Kember) began a stubborn quest for the mystical qualities of sound. His first success was with Soul Kiss (1991), the second, ultra-ethereal album by Spectrum. Kember's second success came with Experimental Audio Research, or E.A.R., the experimental trio formed with God's Kevin Martin and My Bloody Valentine's Kevin Shields, who produced at least two innovative recordings: the four cosmic-ambient suites of Mesmerized (1994) and the three futuristic concertos of Millennium Music (1998).

Main, the new project of Loop's Robert Hampson, was an obsessive probe of the power of drones. Over the course of a number of EPs, Hydra (1991), Calm (1992), Dry Stone Feed (1993) and Firmament (1993), and the album Motion Pool (1994), Hampson's style evolved from a dark, cold, dynamic sound to a softer, static, almost mystical sound. The two colossal tracks of Firmament II (1994) and the six multi-part suites of Hz (1996) coined a sophisticated art of nuances that, far from being only cacophonous and monotonous, was rich in the way that a black hole is rich of invisible gravitational energy. Hampson's technique was perhaps the closest a rock musician had come to repeating Karlheinz Stockhausen's experiments of the 1960s.

Sound manipulation of acoustic sources became the focus of many artists of this generation.

Rapoon, the brainchild of Zoviet France's Robin Storey, gave new meaning to the fusion of Indian and western music on albums such as Vernal Crossing (1993) and The Kirghiz Light (1995), exalted orgies of samples, loops and mixing that "used" drones and rhythms rather than "playing" drones and rhythms. He then converted to the mystical/contemplative style of Darker By Light (1996), Easterly 6 Or 7 (1997) and The Fires Of The Borderlands (1998), that basically reconciled his experiments with new-age music.

O.Rang, the new project of Talk Talk's rhythm section of Lee Harris (percussions) and Paul Webb (now on keyboards), manipulated the sounds of a small orchestra of friends on Herd Of Instinct (1994).

A couple of Bristol groups represented a peak for guitar-based ambient music.

Flying Saucer Attack, i.e. the duo of multi-instrumentalists Dave Pearce and Rachel Brook, were among the groups that transformed psychedelic rock into an austere form of chamber music. The albums Flying Saucer Attack (1993), Further (1995) and New Lands (1997) refined a kind of shoegazing that relied increasingly on melody, yielding delicate elegies set against a disturbing background of cosmic music, free-jazz, Throbbing Gristle's industrial noise, LaMonte Young's droning music or contemplative new-age music.

Richard Walker's Amp continued Flying Saucer Attack's mission with the chaotic ambience of Sirenes (1996) and the ethereal space ballads for female vocals (Karine Scharff) and guitar maelstroms of Stenorette (1998), while at the same time indulging in the more abstract improvisations of Astral Moon Beam Projections (1997) and Perception (1997).

Treated guitar drones and noises reached a new dimension with the work of Austrian-born Christian Fennesz, both his harsh cacophonies, such as Hotel Paral.Lel (1997), and his melodic illusions, such as Endless Summer (2001).

Rhode Island-based Geoff Mullen composed droning and softly cacophonous music for guitar, banjo and electronics on Thrtysxtrllnmnfstns (2006) and The Air in Pieces (2006) that sounded like John Fahey's progressive folk being remixed by a glitch musician, or like Keith Fullerton Whitman gone folk. Armory Radio (2007) increased the sense of disorientation with constantly shifting textures and continuously evolving patterns, still maintaining a low register throughout.

Ambient guitar noise 1994-99

In the USA, ambient guitar noise was generally more subdued.

Windy & Carl, the project of Detroit's guitarist Carl Hultgren, added Windy Weber's ethereal vocals to the equation. Portal (1994) indulged in the angelic hypnosis of the shoegazers, but the drifting nebulae of Drawing Of Sound (1996) created friendly soundscapes for vocals to roam, despite the monumental spires of guitar distortion and the absence of rhythm. By demoting the guitars to the background and promoting the electronic keyboards to the forefront, the three lengthy tracks of Antarctica (1997) veered towards German "kosmische musik" of the 1970s. The organic and fibrillating Depths (1998) developed that idea into a full-fledged marriage of heaven (the cosmic drones) and hell (the menacing density of the sound).

Pennsylvania's Azusa Plane, the project of guitarist Jason DiEmilio, formalized a mystical psycho-acoustic art of guitar drones and overtones on Tycho Magnetic Anomaly And the Full Consciousness of Hidden Harmony (1997) leading to the chamber ambient dissonant music of America Is Dreaming Of Universal String Theory (1998).

The genre of instrumental drone-oriented psychedelic music was perfected by Oregon's Yume Bitsu. The lengthy, trancey, ethereal suites with a dramatic edge of Giant Surface Music Falling to Earth Like Jewels From The Sky (1998) were reminiscent of both German cosmic music and British shoegazers. On Yume Bitsu (1999), the quintessential album of extended psychedelic jams, guitarists Adam Forkner and Franz Prichard painted (or, better, drilled) soundscapes of incredible brightness, enhanced by the surreal palette of Alex Bundy's keyboards. Texture and mood were the two fundamental axes of Yume Bitsu's art. Their technique was mainly "pointillistic": a thick layer of colored dots (percussions, guitar tones, repeated chords) that created the illusion of shapes and stories.

Surface of Eceon, formed in New York by former Yume Bitsu guitarist Adam Forkner, penned The King Beneath the Mountain (2001), an album of epic-length triple-guitar textures, adrift in a solemnly calm sea of languid notes that recalled both Popol Vuh and Pink Floyd, but refracted through the lenses of Dali's surrealism. Forkner's stylistic journey eventually rediscovered the land of Terry Riley's Rainbow In Curved Air and Brian Eno's Discreet Music with White Rainbow's Prism Of Eternal Now (2007).

Pan American, the side-project of Labradford's guitarist Mark Nelson, used the extended (and mostly instrumental) compositions of Pan American (1998) and especially 360 Business 360 Bypass (2000) to craft ambient music for the post-house age. Mixing wavering beats, organic pulses, digital noise, processed instruments and voices, Nelson built minimalist soundscapes and populated them with slow-motion events. The process of music-making was hardly recognizable anymore, especially when all that was left was a weak, unfocused signal. Whenever instruments or voices resurrected harmony, Nelson killed it again, at a deeper level. Wadded rhythms drifted through the music rather than support the music. The River Made No Sound (2002) whispered languid tones into liquid, murky textures. Quiet City (2004) was music of environments that are, first and foremost, in the mind. The events within those environments are modest and tidy, but generate intense poetry, as in the sonata of Christo in Pilsen. Mark Nelson's still nature, which prefers pale colors and smooth surfaces, and reveals itself in a discrete, almost fearful manner. The subtleties and innuendos of Nelson's compositions gave ambient music a new meaning.

Chicago's James Plotkin used processed guitar sounds to compose subliminal works such as A Peripheral Blur (1998), but then ventured into the most ferocious kind of industrial music and digital hardcore on Atomsmasher (2001), a concentrate of drilling electronics, chaotic collages, hyper-fibrillating drums, psychotic howls, barbaric noises.

San Francisco's Bethany Curve bridged pop song and ambient guitar on Gold (1998). Michigan's Tomorrowland seemed to play old-fashioned "kosmische musik" on Stereoscopic Soundwaves (1997) even though all sounds were produced by manipulating acoustic instruments.

Ambient avantgarde

At the turn of the century, ambient composers abounded all over the world.

Veteran British music critic David Toop aimed for Brian Eno's ambient ecstasy via a mix of natural sounds, electronic sounds and acoustic instruments on Buried Dreams (1994), a collaboration with Max Eastley, basically reinventing musique concrete for the ambient generation.

Belgian composer Benjamin Lew crafted Le Parfum Du Raki (1993) for an ensemble of electronic, ethnic and acoustic instruments.

Alio Die, the project of Italian composer Stefano Musso, assembled electronic pieces such as Sit Tibi Terra Levis (1991) that continued Harold Budd's program of angelic music. In Suspended Feathers (1995) tiny instances of natural sounds appear in calm soft soundscapes and create disorienting shifting perspectives, the sonic equivalent of a camera that slowly moves around the landscape. The drone symphony Password for Entheogenic Experience (1997) evolves in time instead of space, as the initial pastoral setting gets stretched and dilated into a dreamy mournful adagio and then modulated into the geometry of a baroque fugue and then channeled into the austere macabre grandeur of a requiem.

Tetsu Inoue, Uwe Schmidt's partner in Datacide, was even more delicate on Ambiant Otaku (1994).

British audio-visual technician Andrew Lagowski launched both Legion the dark ambient project of Legion, that released False Dawn (1992) for found sounds and white noise, and especially Leviathan (1996), a six-movement symphony of exoteric electronica, and the project SETI, at the border between techno, ambient and dub.

German electronic musician Pete Namlook (Peter Kuhlmann), one of the most prolific musicians of all times (not a compliment), focused on the untapped potential of analogue synthesizers, often developing or extending the instruments in his own laboratory. Most of his 200+ recordings were collaborations with influential artists of his time, and many were repeated collaborations (i.e., with sequels): Silence (1992) with Dr Atmo, The Dark Side Of The Moog (1994) with Klaus Schulze, Psychonavigation (1994) with Bill Laswell, Jet Chamber (1995) with Atom Heart, etc. Namlook's own music, the series that started with Air (1993), endorsed one or a combination of the following: German "kosmische musik", Brian Eno's "discreet" music, free-jazz and/or Eastern classical music.

After familiarizing himself with the soft, slow-decaying gong drones of Teimo (1992), German composer Thomas Koner penned the drone-based ambient music of Permafrost (1993). These pieces laid the foundations for hour-long compositions such as Daikan (2001), the zenith of his icy ambience, and Une Topographie Sonore (2003), that obsessively explores a magical and ethereal soundscape of natural sounds and eerie drones.

Australian composer Paul Schutze was inspired by Brian Eno's ambient music, Miles Davis' jazz-rock and Pierre Henry's musique concrete for the one-hour collage of Deus Ex Machina (1989) and for the claustrophobic Topology Of A Phantom City, off New Maps Of Hell (1992), perhaps the best formulation of his "chaotic minimalism", a psychological puzzle of dissonance, trance, jazz, psychedelia, tribal frenzy, raga and ambient melodrama, The Rapture Of Metals (1993), which bridged musique concrete and ambient music and exuded the same subterranean tension reverberating with urban neurosis, and Apart (1995), an imposing summary of his techniques, particularly the cryptic and sinister suite Sleep.

Indiana-based ambient guitarist Jeff Pearce employed layers and layers of electronically-processed guitar melodies to compose The Hidden Rift (1996).

New York-based pianist Ruben Garcia opted for a more emotional version of Harold Budd's ambient piano minimalism in Eleven Moons, off Room Full of Easels (1996).

James Johnson recreated Harold Budd's ethereal ecstasy with the computer-generated music of Surrender (1999).

Los Angeles-based tuba improviser Tom Heasley manipulated the sound of the tuba in order to produce the ambient music of Where the Earth Meets the Sky (2001) and On the Sensations of Tone (2002).

New York-based clarinetist and saxophonist William Basinski specialized in gentle compositions for loops and drones, whether derived from snippets of radio broadcasts, such as on The River (2002), or composed with electronic keyboards, such as on Watermusic (2001), or obtained by letting tapes slowly deteriorate, such as on The Disintegration Loops (2003), or created out of variations on simple melodic patterns, such as on The Garden of Brokenness (2006) and Variations For Piano And Tape (2006).

British sound sculptor John Coleclough operated at the border between droning ("deep listening") music and abstract electronic music on sophisticated poems such as Cake (1998).

Eliane Radigue proved to be La Monte Young's greatest disciple on Trilogie De La Mort (1998).

Nick "Farfield" Webb (Britain) coined a form of ambient music for tape collage of electronic sounds, found sounds and instruments on The Edges of Everything (1999).

Arovane, the project of Berlin multi-instrumentalist Uwe Zahn, wed ambient music, Debussy's impressionism and new-age relaxation on Tides (2000).

Classical pianist Anton Batagov (Russia) penned ambient music inspired by Buddhism on the triple-cd The Wheel Of The Law, originally recorded in 1999, containing three composition/improvisations for organ, glockenspiel, xylophone, piano and percussion: Circle Of Time, Voidness cycle, Liberation Through Listening In The Between.

Other notable ambient recordings included Larry Kucharz's Metachoral Visions (1997), Robert Scott Thompson's Music for A Summer Evening (1997), Kevin Keller's Pendulum (1999), and Akira Rabelais's Spellewauerynsherde (2004).

Noise

On the more radical front of noise and sound manipulation, countless musicians worldwide composed symphonies of "textures" (as opposed to "instruments"), sometimes with abrasive overtones and sometimes with an ambient/new-age feeling: Gareth Mitchell's Philosopher's Stone in England, with Preparation (1997); Klangkrieg in Germany, with Das Fieber der Menschlichen Stimme (1999); RhBand in Los Angeles, with Third Order Parasitism (1997); Ether in Utah, with Hush (1997); etc.

Campbell Kneale's Birchville Cat Motel in New Zealand inaugurated his career with a tour de force of sound manipulation, Siberian Earth Curve (1998). This laid the groundwork for the later symphonic frescoes of Beautiful Speck Triumph (2004) and Birds Call Home Their Dead (2007), that alternated between droning, layered nightmares and cascading, distorted, pulsating space-rock jams and whirlwinds of visceral musique concrete.

Randy Greif indulged in hypnotic, percussive, tribal pieces like Bacteria and Gravity (1987) and especially Verdi's Requiem (1997), reminiscent of Morton Subotnick's chaotic scores, but also coined a novel technique of postmodernist deconstruction and recomposition of texts with Alice In Wonderland (1992) and War Of The World (2001).

Thomas Dimuzio's Sonicism (1997), created by distorting an arsenal of instruments, samples and field recordings, was perhaps the best example of dark ambient industrial music.

Further developments

Hood began as followers of Flying Saucer Attack with Cabled Linear Traction (1994), but, via the melancholy dilated folk-rock of Rustic Houses Forlorn Valleys (1998), they mutated into a different band. Their most original achievement, Cold House (2001), juxtaposed gentle melodies, acoustic instruments, layers of cutting-edge electronica, digital clicks and fractured beats.

Troum, the brainchild of Maeror Tri's Stefan Knappe, created a pagan/shamanic ambient music on a trilogy dedicated to the aboriginal "dreamtime", Tjukurppa - Harmonies (2000), Tjukurppa - Drones (2001) and Tjukurppa - Rhythms And Pulsations (2003), while the "circular" suites of Autopoiesis (2004) and the 51-minute piece of Shutun (2007) in collaboration with All Sides (Nina Kernicke) were studies on the organization of sound that transposd into music the combination of biological metabolism, Freudian stream of consciousness, and sci-fi cinematic vision.

In Iceland, Sigur Ros specialized in lengthy suites that leveraged celestial vocals and orchestral drones on Agaetis Byrjun (1999). The dilated fabric of (2002) evoked the image of frail organisms crawling on spectral landscapes, particularly Death, thirteen minutes of cataleptic suspense and understated raga.

Neil Campbell's Vibracathedral Orchestra drew inspiration from minimalist composers such as LaMonte Young and Pauline Oliveros. Working with a variety of acoustic instruments, as well as electronics, they turned the chaotic Lino Hi (2000), Versatile Arab Chord Chart (2000) and Dabbling With Gravity (2002) into mystical experiences, specializing in a dense and blurred mixture of guitar mayhem and ambient bliss.

Terra Ambient, the project of electronic musician Jeff Kowal, employed percussion, didjeridoo, guitar and ethnic instruments for the "forth-world music" of The Gate (2004). Rick Cox's Fade (2005), performed by Cox on electric guitar, Thomas Newman on piano and Peter Freeman on bass, was typical of the ever more popular strategy of creating ambient music via tone exploration: the instruments improvised around each other's sustained dreamy tones, patiently weaving a labyrinthine celestial atmosphere.

Africa
North Africa

Morocco's gnawa music is a kind of folk music that originated among the Gnawas, descendants of black slaves. It retains central-African characters such as propulsive syncopated beats and pentatonic melodies, and employes instruments such as the sintir lute and the karkabas castanets, besides the human voice. The music usually accompanies ceremonies of healing based on creating an atmosphere of trance. The cult (which is probably related to the voodoo of Haiti and the macumba of Brazil) is centered in the city of Essaouira. A distinguished gnawa musician is Maleem Mahmoud Ghania, who collaborated with jazz giant Pharoah Sanders on Trance of Seven Colors (1994).

Hassan Hakmoun plays the sintir lute and concocts fusion tracks of trancey gnawa, lilting rock and American dance music on albums such as Trance (1993).

Maleem Abdelah Ghania, a virtuoso of the Moroccan guimbri guitar, released the trancey Invocation (2000).

Egyptian percussionist Hossam Ramzy drew from the rituals of Arabian Bedouin tribes and from the belly-dance rhythms of the Middle East for Source of Fire (1995).

With Sudaniyat (1997) Sudanese singer-songwriter Rasha concocted a mishmash of jazz, pop, reggae and American dance music that achieved pan-ethnic pathos in the tracks arranged with an orchestra of violins, accordion, saxophones, oud and percussion.

Black Africa

Mali remained the leading scene of Africa in the 1990s.

Malian guitarist Djelimady (or Jalimadi) Tounkara of the Super Rail Band developed a style that evokes the sound of the kora harp, the balafon xylophone and and the ngoni lute.

Habib Koite', who played guitar in the band Bamada (Cigarette A Bana) since 1990, fused griot philosophy, the trancey folk music of the desert (he plays the guitar like a ngoni lute) and the blues jamming of the forest on Muso Ko (1995).

Issa Bagayogo updated the traditions of Mali to the age of electronic dance music (house, techno, hip-hop, dub) on Sya (1998) and Timbuktu (2002).

Mali's female singer-songwriter Oumou Sangare single-handedly revolutionized African music with Ko Sira (1993), devoted to feminist issues from the perspective of a young African woman, sung in a majestic register, and accompanied by danceable music for violin, lute and percussion.

Mali's Lobi Traore' bridged distant ages on Bambara blues (1991) and Bamako (1994) by harking back to the original feeling of the blues while adopting the burning guitar riffs of hard-rock and underpinning them with frantic cerimonial percussion.

Mali's Rokia Traore' expressed her anguish in a gentle tone on Wanita (2000) over hypnotic rhythmic patterns based on the kora harp, the ngoni lute and the balafon xylophone, but rather neutral in terms of ethnic origin.

Originally from Mali but formed in an Algerian refugee camp, Tinariwen, a desert-blues band of Tuareg nomads with electric guitars, were the main musicians to emerge from the first "Festival au Desert" that was held in january 2001 at Tin Essako in the Sahara of northeastern Mali. The Radio Tisdas Sessions (2002), Amassakoul/ Traveller (2004) and Aman Iman/ Water is Life (2007) documented the music they had been playing since the mid 1980s.

Jean-Marie Ahanda's Les Tetes Brulees took Cameroon's music into the punk age, with a provocative attitude and a demented and energetic sound. Hot Heads (1991) offered ancient bikutsi rhythms of the rain forest replacing the balafon xylophone with the electric guitars of rock music.

Senegalese vocalist Baaba Maal mixed traditional African instruments with the western aesthetics on Baayo (1991).

Ghana's percussionist Kwaku Kwaakye Obeng delivered the imposing intricate and hypnotic polyrhythmic maelstroms of Awakening (1998).

Raised in Europe, fluent in the musical traditions of the Middle East and of African-Americans, Congolose vocalist Marie Daulne founded Zap Mama, an all-female a-cappella group, to sing tunes inspired by the music of the world, such as on Adventures in Afropea I (1993).

Madagascar's Tarika is led by female vocalist Hanitra Rasoanaivo who is on a musicologist as well as sociopolitical mission to rediscover the roots of her land on albums such as the bleak (but no less rhythmically upbeat) concept Son Egal (1997).

Popular music for a new millennium

Popular music at the turn of the millennium was characterized by the confluence of two revolutionary trends. The first one was world music. The 1990s had been the decade of world music, when western musicians pillaged the rhythms, melodies and timbres of other ethnic cultures. In reality, western musicians had only scratched the surface of the vast repertoire of sounds created over the centuries by the rest of the world. The exploration and integration had just begun. The second trend was electronic/digital music. New instruments had always determined musical revolutions, because, tautologically, they allowed for new forms of music. The electronic/digital music was bound to have an even bigger impact because the new forms of music that it enabled were virtually infinite. It also released the musician from the obligations of finding a "band" and a "producer" before being able to deliver her music to the audience.
Yet another definition of Rock Music
Rock'n'roll may (may) have been a well-defined genre, but starting with Buddy Holly the term "rock music" became fuzzier and fuzzier. The Beach Boys played surf music, and the Beatles' music was Mersey-beat, a variant of pop music. Dylan was a folksinger. Somehow they all got lumped into "rock music". The truth is that there was no definition of rock music to start with. In the following decades there was less and less of an agreement on what constituted rock music, as its purveyors swung wildly from jazz to world-music. By the end of the century, rock music included artists who played mainly electronic and digital instruments.
The problem is that "rock music" was never a definition of the music, but a definition of the audience. Rock music was music for young white rebels. As those young rebels grew up, it lost its "young-only" quality. As times changed and people accepted the Establishment (maybe because they had fewer reasons to attack it), the "rebellious" quality was reduced to a mere search for originality. Thus rock music evolved into music for white originals. The music itself changed dramatically, but the audience that rock music had created basically continued to exist, mutatis mutandis, across generations. Thus an identity could be find in the audience, not in the stylistic attributes of the music.
The media were largely responsible for determining what that audience listened to, and therefore what rock music was. The media's defining power was already evident in the 1960s. Hendrix happened to be classified as a rock musician mainly because his records were reviewed in rock magazines and therefore sold to a rock audience. He might as well have been classified as a blues musician, or even a jazz musician: had his records been reviewed mainly by blues magazines, his audience would have been the blues audience, and therefore he would have been part of the history of blues music, not rock music.
Ultimately, the reason some musicians were considered "rock" is that rock critics and rock historians (such as me) wrote about them. The only consistent definition of rock music is, in a sense, that rock music is what i am writing about.
The only viable definition is a "use-based" definition: rock music is the set of all musicians that the rock community writes about. Thus Klaus Schulze (an electronic musician) makes rock music, but an electronic musician raised in the classical community does not make rock music, even if their styles are very similar: the difference between the two is that the rock press writes at length about Schulze.
It is not the listener who defines what is rock music, it is the reader.
The Age of Mediocrity

The boom of independent music at the turn of the millennium had changed the dynamics of the music industry. At about the same time, the CD (cheap to manufacture) replaced the vinyl album (expensive to manufacture). Shortly thereafter, the Internet allowed musicians to directly distribute their music, thus bypassing the selection of the old-fashioned "record label".
Unfortunately, the combined effect of these phenomena resulted in a boom of mediocrity. Among independent/avantgarde musicians, it became commonplace to release just about anything they recorded or just thought of recording. Needless to say, only a few minutes of the hours of recording that they released were truly indispensable.

Among mainstream musicians, it became commonplace to release an album that contained only one or two songs worthy of being released. The rest was filler, but was filler that increased the price of the release, i.e. the profits of the label and of the artist.

Both sides shamelessly took advantage of technology that allowed to print and distributed albums very easily. The cost of printing compact discs kept going down, and the Internet allowed to bypass the traditional, cumbersome marketing and distribution processes. The net result was a flood of poor-quality recordings.

The music press soon revealed itself to be part of the problem, not of the solution. Instead of helping screen and select the few outstanding recordings, countless magazines, fanzines and webzines promoted just about every recording as a masterpiece, no matter how trivial, derivative and amateurish it was. Basically, anyone could make a CD and count on at least ten critics writing a good review of it; which was enough to sell enough copies to break even. The free marketing provided by the music press increased the motivation of musicians to release as much as possible. It was one of the few infallible business plans of the age. The music press was in turn rewarded with free promo CDs: Darwinian competition forced critics to compete for access to promos (no reviews, no advertisers). Thus the musician (not the music critic) held the reins of power and could "blackmail" the music critic into writing positive reviews.

The whole scene was the ultimate in capitalism and consumerism. The idealism of the hippie age and of the punk age had been buried for good.

Mediocre artists were soon releasing their eight or 12th album, with worldwide distribution. But then the very meaning of music-making had changed. More and more artists came to view music-making as simply an endless refinement for one simple idea. De facto, their music was wallpaper. Their first album introduced a mood, a tone, a style, and usually did so without having enough experience, skills or simply help from the producer. The following albums refined that very same trademark sound. The songs were mostly faceless. Each album was simply a repeat of the previous one with slightly different melodies, lyrics and arrangements. The listener could purchase any of their albums and find the same product, except that more recent "releases" of that product were likely to be more refined. The motivation to innovate became inversely proportional to the low cost of making albums.

The Disappearing Album

On the other hand, it was unfair to compare the quality of the "albums" released during the vinyl era (when making and distributing an album was an expensive process) with the quality of the "albums" released during the CD era released during the vinyl era (when making and distributing an album was a cheap process). No wonder that the average quality of albums in the 1960s was so much higher than in the late 1990s: in the 1960s record labels could not afford to release an artist's album until it contained the best music that the artist could produce. The "album" of the 1990s, instead, was merely a snapshot of the artist at the time it s/he made that album.

Ultimately, the "album" was rapidly becoming an obsolete concept.

The 1990s saw the apex and the downfall of the music industry. In 1979 Sony and Philips had invented the compact disc (CD), a digital storage for music, and the same year Sony had launched the "Walkman" portable stereo. In 1981 MTV debuted on cable tv. During the 1980s these innovations spread and redesigned the way music was marketed and sold. As the new paradigm took hold, the music industry seemed to enjoy its best time ever. In 1996 Mariah Carey's One Sweet Day topped the U.S. charts for an unprecedented 16 weeks, breaking all the Presley and Beatles records. In 1997 Elton John's Candle in the Wind became the best-selling song of all times, passing Bing Crosby's White Christmas. In 1999 'N Sync set the new record of sales in the first week of a new release (2.4 million copies)

In 1999 the music world was ruled by five majors:
1. Seagram/Polygram/Universal,
2. Warner/Elektra/Sire/Atlantic,
3. Sony/Columbia/Epic,
4. EMI/Virgin/Capitol/Chrysalis,
5. BMG/Jive/Private/American/Windham Hill. The world's music market was worth 38 billion dollars. The five "majors" controlled 95% of all albums sold in the world, and 84% of the 755 million albums sold in the USA:
1. Universal with 27% (26.3% in the USA),
2. Warner with 20% (15.7%),
3. Sony with 18% (16.2%),
4. EMI with 16% (9.4%),
5. BMG with 14% (16%).

The USA accounted for 37% of world sales, Japan for 16.7%, Britain for 7.6%, Germany for 7.4%, France for 5.2%, Canada for 2.3%, Australia for 1.7%, Brazil for 1.6%, Holland for 1.5%, Italy for 1.4%. Basically, the compact disc had helped the music industry to multiply its revenues. But the record companies missed the real "enemy". In 1999 Shawn Fanning founded the Napster on-line music service that allowed anyone with a computer and a modem to share music files with others over the Internet. They could be played on the PC itself or on the portable MP3 devices (that had been introduced in 1998). Millions of Internet users did not need to pay outrageous prices for their favorite music: in fact, they didn't need to pay anything. Even after the "file sharing" phenomenon was reined in by a series of lawsuits, life was much improved for consumers: Apple introduces the on-line music service "iTunes", which legally sold 25 million songs just the first year. For a long time record labels had ripped off the consumer by forcing the consumer to purchase CDs, regardless of how many songs of that CD a consumer wanted to hear. A completely new dynamic was created by iTunes: consumers were finally allowed to purchase just the song they desired.

In 2001 sales for the record industry slipped 5% (their first decline in ages), a fact that was widely blamed on the on-line sharing services. The same year, Napster was found guilty of breaching copyright law and forced to suspend its service, but others took its place.

In 2000 French media giant Vivendi purchased Seagram: Warner remained the only USA "major", as Universal had become French, Sony was Japanese, EMI was British, and BMG was German. Clearly, the USA was becoming less and less interested in the business of selling CDs.

The downfall of the record industry was long overdue and welcomed by just about everybody. But it was not the only anachronism still in place. As consumers became even more song-oriented, it became even more important to pinpoint a song heard on the radio. Alas, disc-jockeys continued the old habit of not announcing the title of a song and the name of the musician. Consumers remained powerless to actually know what song they just listened to. In the 2000s it remained easier to read a review of an album that one had never heard than to discover the title of a song just heard on the radio. Millions of potential sales were still hindered by the chronic stupidity of disc-jockeys worldwide, probably in cahoots with record labels that wanted consumers to buy CDs based on the marketing campaign and not on the basis of what the songs actually sounded like.

Superficial Listening

The 1990s had introduced technological innovations that changed both the way music was manufactured and the way music was consumed. Unlike the "record", that required a well-funded record label to manufacture and distribute, the compact disc had become cheaper and cheaper to manufacture, and the Internet had allowed an ever larger number of musicians to bypass the traditional distribution channels. Thus musicians were, de facto, in a position to record and release compact discs ad libitum. At the same time, a specular revolution had taken place on the consumer's front. The Internet had introduced means to "download" music, as opposed to purchase it from a store or a catalog. The consumer was no longer a captive in the logic of the record labels. The first dogma to collapse was the dogma of the "album": why purchase an album (most of whose songs are filler) when one can download just the one or two good songs? On one hand musicians enjoyed much more flexibility on what to produce, on the other hand consumers enjoyed much more flexibility on what to consume. The market of independent recordings was flooded with compact discs of mediocre quality (both artistic and technical). In a sense, the very concept of what a recording is underwent a dramatic evolution: instead of being the summa of a period (the best pieces composed during that period), it became merely a sample of the period's sound. Musicians paid less and less attention to crafting impeccable songs. They contented themselves with documenting their current sound with a one-hour long recording of it. In a sense, there was a trend towards releasing the "demo" and never reaching the point of the finished product. The consumer, faced with dozens of recordings by an independent musician, none of them expected to be a milestone, was, in turn, sampling them in the same superficial manner. Thus the cardinal process of the 20th century (the process away from the melody and towards the sound) became also a process of moving from deep listening to superficial listening (just the opposite of what some musicians advertised).

Lo-fi Music

A trend towards hi-fi equipment was dramatically reversed at the turn of the century with the widespread diffusion of lo-fi equipment. Whether the laptop or an MP3 player or a iPod, the device of choise to listen to music became a relatively low-quality device. If psychelic music, cosmic music and even new-age music were basically the consequence of more and more sophisticated stereo equipment, the consequence of less and less sophisticated audio equipment was a lower degree of instrumental prowess (no matter how many layers of instruments were used to arrange a piece of music). The motivation to produce chromatically beautiful music was greatly reduced.
Where to, Chuck?
Chuck Berry invented the paradigm of rock music: three minute melodic songs, mainly driven by the electric guitar over a rhythm section of bass and drums, and sometimes arranged with other instruments. Fifty years later the world audience of rock music had been served more than 100,000 collections of songs, for a grand total of more than one million songs. Every time a musician of the 2000s released an album that was a collection of three-minute songs, that musician had basically answered "yes" to the question "Does the world really need ten/fifteen more of these three-minute songs, so that the grand total goes from one million to one million and ten?"
No matter how much the magazines hailed the new album by this or that "next big thing" or "alternative artist" (obviously convinced of having a unique voice, a unique message and a unique set of refrains never heard before in the history of music), there was something terribly obsolete and (ultimately) tedious about listening to yet another batch of three-minute songs. The magazines hailed them as masterpieces, one after the other, but over a decade the same magazines would remember only two or three of the songs contained in all the "masterpieces" of an artist. This huge library of more than one million songs was fundamentally a junkyard. These boatloads of new songs were moving straight from the store to the junkyard after a brief stop in the CD player of a hapless consumer. Something was fundamentally wrong about an art whose main effect was to create the biggest garbage dump of all times.

Last but not least, the lyrics of a three-minute song are neither William Shakespeare verses nor Henry James novels, despite what most songwriters and most of their reviewers may think. Listening to a new three-minute song invariably meant listening to yet another bad example of storytelling or bad example of poetry oversold by reviewers as meaningful, poignant, touching, thrilling, whatever lyrics. Bottom line: more junk for the junkyard.

This was the mother of all crises facing rock music at the beginning of the 21st century.

The Great Divide

Surprisingly, by the end of the century the white-black divide had not been erased at all. The world of popular music was still largely divided into white and black music. White music was mostly rock and its variations (whether heavy-metal or punk-rock). Black music was definitely not rock (hardly any black musician in heavy-metal or punk-rock bands) and mostly dance-oriented. Forty years after the peak of the civil-rights movement, there were virtually no white bands fronted by a black singer anywhere in the world. The majority of black musicians were still playing in all-black bands, and the majority of white musicians were still playing in all-white bands (or, better, bands with no black musician, because the number of Latin American and Far Eastern musicians in white bands had dramatically increased). White music was still largely "mind" music, while black music was still largely "body" music, although the corporeal music of the blacks often carried a more meaningful message than the intellectual music of the whites. Even when white musicians played black music (as it has been the case since the 1950s), they tended to do it with other white musicians rather than with black musicians. Black musicians, on the other hand, rarely bothered to play white music at all.
If one does not count the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Prince and the Revolution (neither of which was truly a band, as their titles imply), rock music had to wait until 1994 for a white band fronted by a black vocalist, Hootie & The Blowfish, to attain mainstream success. For all its widely advertised rebelliousness, unconformity and liberal lifestyles, rock music remained the most racially segregated art/industry of all.
On the other hand, this racial barrier continued to provide an invaluable creative source. After all, rock'n'roll, ironically, originated from the segregated society of the 1950s. Rock music originated from the wall that the Establishment had erected between white and black communities. Had they coexisted as equals, white teenagers may have never been so morbidly attracted to the music of black teenagers. And probably black teenagers would have been so integrated in the USA lifestyle that soul and rhythm'n'blues and hip-hop would have never happened. Ironically, it was, to some extent, the very racial nature of these genres that kept them in a permanent state of evolution/revolution.

What is Rock Music/ Park Two

As the number of subgenres multiplied and their styles diverged ever more wildly from the original canon of the 1950s, the term "rock music" became less and less meaningful. At the turn of the century, it was difficult to classify Pansonic or Vibracathedral Orchestra as rock music, but their albums were mainly reviewed by rock critics for rock publications. Even garage-rock or heavy-metal bands were becoming so experimental that they hardly related to the classics anymore. The world of the avantgarde had moved closer and closer to the world of rock music. It was not clear who was what anymore. "Rock" had become a federation of genres rather than a well-defined genre.
This schizophreny was already there in the 1960s, when rock music encompassed everything from Dylan's folk-rock to King Crimson's progressive-rock, and every decade added new sub-genres. Eventually, rock music had become a genealogical tree of genres, each one owing its existence to some predecessor going back all the way to the generation of Chuck Berry. Rock music was never a uniform, monolithic style, but simply a historical chain of events: Chuck Berry begat the Stones who begat the Velvet Underground who begat Brian Eno who begat the new wave... etc. As the genealogical tree unfolds, one gets to musicians who play a music wildly different from Chuck Berry's, but owe their existence to a socio-musical revolution that started in the 1950s with rockers such as Berry. Thus it is "rock". But not quite.
"Rock" was born as a music of synthesis (of white and black music), and continued to remain essentially a synthesis of styles, from electronica to grindcore. Fundamentally, there was a need for a new term but nobody came up with one. Jazz also had evolved over the decades, but there had always been a prevailing jazz style (swing, bebop, free-jazz, ...) that played the role of center of mass for all the other jazz subgenres. Rock was a looser term because, at any point in time, no subgenre prevailed.
Rock music was born a music of and for young people (or, at least, young people thought so, not realizing how much their choices were being manipulated by the managers of the major recording labels). Rock music used to be a music for young people only because young musicians were the only ones willing to experiment, and young listeners were the only ones willing to listen to their experiments. This fact remained true to an extent through the following decades (each generation being reluctant to accept the styles in vogue among the new generations), but not as much as it used to be in the 1960s. The adults of the turn of the century were much more willing to listen to something "weird" than their parents had been, although there remained psychological resistance to accepting a style different from the styles one had grown up with. The gap between young people and adults was mainly due to the amount of new music that they listened to. Younger people enjoyed the huge advantage of having a lot more time to listen to music than older people. That, ultimately, was the factor that still created a gap between the generations. Despite this inevitable gap (due more to time constrains than to ideological differences), "rock" music was more "adult" than it had ever been. Both the average age of the musicians and the average age of the audience had increased dramatically from the 1960s. Thus rock music could not even be simplistically termed "teenage music".

Death of the Hero

Among the many social transformations of the new century one stood out: the death of the hero. The generation growing up after the advent of cable news television did not experience had a fundamentally different kind of exposure to world news. Previous generations were fed readio or television news at a specific time of the evening, and shared that event with the entire nation. The entire nation was exposed to the same range of emotions. Not surprisingly, the response to a world event was relatively uniform across the entire nation. The fact that the news was limited to a narrow time window increased its emotional impact. As MacLuhan said, the media created the message. Because the news were delivered in this fashion, they facilitated the emergence of hero figures. Bob Dylan was a product of that age. In the age of 24-hour live news that uniform collective response was lost forever. People absorbed the news at different times in different ways. The Internet further diluted the emotional impact, as people could get the news when they wanted (not when the media delivered them). Inevitably, becoming a national hero became a lot more difficult. The demise of the national hero had a profound effect on all the arts.

The Death of the Icon

Each decade in the history of rock music (the ultimate international koine) was marked by an international icon (a koine within the koine).
The 1950s had Elvis Presley (best selling artist for 40 years).
The 1960s had the Beatles (still the best selling band of all times).
The 1970s had Pink Floyd (still the best selling album-oriented band of all times).
The 1980s had U2 and Madonna, and already one could see the Atlantic divide getting wider, and a non-rock artist (Michael Jackson) surpassing all rock artists in generating worldwide hysteria.
The 1990s had very pale icons compared with their predecessors. No rock artist managed to get even close to the sales of non-rock artists such as Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, Celine Dion, Garth Brooks, Britney Spear, Boyz II Men, etc. The best selling rock albums were one-shot deals from artists such as Alanis Morissette and Hootie & the Blowfish whose popularity lasted only a few years. Radiohead were darlings of the mainstream press, but hardly recognized by the masses or identified with a social trend.
Eminem opened the 2000s with a bang, but faded rapidly in the background as the decade progressed.

Bottom line: the new century continued a trend towards disposing of the "hero", a trend that probably started with the end of the Cold War.

The Digital Era

For the first three decades rock music evolved in a rather turbulent manner. Every ten years or so a major socio-musical revolution caused a complete realignment of its aesthetic paradigm and induced a similar change in habits and values of young western people. Those revolutions work as generational dividing lines. The first one took place in 1955, when Chuck Berry and the other black rockers introduced a paradigm of rebellion to the American lifestyle and a paradigm of bodily music (something similar took place in rhythm'n'blues music at about the same time).

A second dividing line was represented by 1966, when musicians such as Pink Floyd, Jefferson Airplane and Frank Zappa introduced a much more complex view of rock music. That led to the "psychedelic" and "progressive" sounds of the late 1960s and early 1970s. This time the music was openly political (not just rebellious) or spiritual (not just anti-conformist). It was therefore a music for the mind, not the body, and that was, in retrospective, its major innovation: rock music became a more conceptual and more adult form of art than it had been in the 1950s and early 1960s. (Something similar took place in soul music).

The third obvious dividing line is 1976, the "new wave", when musicians such as Pere Ubu, the Residents, Suicide, the Pop Group and Throbbing Gristle reinvented rock music as a rather depressing form of music, a music inspired by the violent and nihilistic "punk" aesthetic. It was a music of anarchy instead of order, and it marked a return to the body, away from the mind. (A parallel trend could be detected in funk/disco music and in hip-hop).

The fourth dividing line was a bit less obvious, as the 1980s witnessed an unprecedented multiplication of styles and a proliferation of musicians, but 1987 can be conveniently used as the year in which independent/alternative rock music took a different shape: the Pixies, Fugazi, Royal Trux, Guns N'Roses, My Bloody Valentine, Godflesh, Jane's Addiction (as well as Public Enemy in hip-hop) continued the "bodily" regression and largely returned to a simpler form of rock music. The key difference was the "emotional" impact, which eventually led to grunge and emo-core.

The fifth revolution came with the mass adoption of electronic and especially digital devices. If electronic keyboards had simply expanded the spectrum of sounds, digital devices allowed musicians to conceive of new ways of organizing those sounds. Digital music had an extra degree of freedom. This revolution was prepared by the likes of Autechre, Oval and Pansonic, but came into its own in 1999/2000 with the generation of Four Tet, Solex, DJ Logic, the Books, the Animal Collective, etc. And something similar happened in black music with "digital" producers and soundsculptors such as Dalek.

Each age was not so much a negation of the previous ages as a re-interpretation of the styles of previous ages. Thus the many "revivals" that took place in each decade.

The watershed years are not difficult to recognize: they are epitomized by a general attitude to innovate as opposed to emulate. Trivially, one could say that at some point people (mainly kids) start behaving in a different way, and it comes natural to them. Later, people/kids will behave the way they are "supposed" to behave. It is the difference between just doing something and doing what one presumes s/he is supposed to do. Hippies did not take pictures of themselves: they were just what they felt like being (the media labeled it "hippy"). But kids who traveled to San Francisco ten years later would take pictures of themselves dressed up like hippies. There are a few years when behavior changes driven by an invisible social force. And then a longer period in which it becomes fashionable to behave the new way.

The transition from one age to the next age was often accompanied by the advent of a new instrument. First came the electric guitar, then the keyboards, then electronic instruments, then a return to the electric guitar, then the laptop.

Each age absorbed elements from other styles of music, but usually one prevailed in each age (as an influence). Thus rhythm'n'blues was the main influence on early rock music, then jazz took over in the second half of the 1960s, then the avantgarde inspired the new wave, classic rock inspired indie-rock, and the soundsculptors inspired the digital era.

And each age had a movement of reaction to this trend (Presley and the Beatles at the beginning, glam-pop in the 1960s, synth-pop during the new wave, pop-metal during the 1990s, and the digitally-arranged pop music of the digital era).

But, mostly, each age challenged the dogmas of the previous one. So much so that very few "fans" migrated from one generation to the next one, each generation remaining convinced that only mediocre imitation or noise was being produced by the following one. The mediocre imitations were indeed such (musicians who kept playing the same old music). But the "noise" was the new exciting music that only some in the new generation were capable of identifying with. Long-term, that "noise" was what mattered.

That "noise" was the history of rock music.
In a sense, this was the main link between each ages of "rock" music: it was meant to be incomprehensible to the previous generations.

Criticism in the age of Download

The availability of music on the Internet, and particularly of recent releases, had a healthy effect on one vital aspect of the music industry: rock critics. It freed thousands of rock critics (both professionals and amateurs) from the psychological deference towards the labels that sent them promos for review. For decades the rock critics and the radio stations had to rely on friendly labels to send them free promos of new music. This created a master-slave relationship that never boded too well for the objectivity of the opinions expressed by the slaves (rock critics and radio stations). Indirectly, the fact that a new release could be downloaded anonymously, without fear of reprisal by the source, allowed the rock critic to become truly independent (for the first time ever). The traditional rock critics, who depended on the labels, had to face the competition of truly independent rock critics, who did not depend on those labels. The only advantage that the traditional rock critic still had was the timely delivery of new music. The masses, though, were so overwhelmed by the amount of music that they quickly learned the value of waiting for objective reviews.

Hip-hop and the digital producer

Hip-hop dominated the charts in the first decade of the 21st century. That represented a dramatic change from 50 years earlier, when black music was segregated in "race" charts. The reason that rap artists appealed to such a broad audience was probably that they boasted, on average, the best producers. Music (whether popular or classical) in the second half of the 20th century had been increasingly focusing on the soundscape, on sculpting the atmosphere, rather than on the melody. Hip-hop music completed that trend by mostly disposing of the melody and setting the lyrics in a purely atmospheric context. The producer (the sound director and sculptor) was clearly more important in hip-hop music than rock music. Competition among producers in turn led to generations of more and more sophisticated producers. Very few rock producers could compete with hip-hop producers in terms of instrumental creativity. Black producers of the 2000s were the real pupils of the white producers (Joe Meek, Phil Spector, George Martin, Brian Wilson) who coined the concept of the studio as an instrument. Another appeal of hip-hop music rested in the fact that the lyrics of rappers tended to be less pompous and indulgent than the lyrics of rockers. It made sense to listen to the raps in a way that did not make sense in rock music. Rockers were largely speaking to an older audience that was still interested in personal existential journeys (the same way that country singers had been speaking to an older audience when rockers were speaking to a younger audience). However, the younger generation (especially in the middle class) was often more attracted to the down-to-earth lyrics of black rappers.

The commodization of atmosphere

Two macroscopic trends emerged. One was typical of the pop crowd, that veered towards more and more sophisticated arrangements, longer songs, complex stories. The other one was typical of the avantgarde crowd, that veered towards ever more abstract soundscapes, whether of colossal post-psychedelic drones or of futuristic electronic cacophony, with a direction that was clearly towards an ever greater reliance on computers. The age of chamber pop and of digital soundscapes was basically the same age. Both deemphasized the central power of the melody and decentralized sound so that peripheric elements (whether acoustic timbres or artificial sounds) became more and more relevant. The aesthetic principle was the same of so much "atmospheric" music of the past, except that now it didn't require an orchestra and a sophisticated producer. In the new century, crafting atmospheres had become as commonplace as writing software.
The loser was the punk generation. That momentum had clearly drained away. What was left of punk aesthetic was the sloppiness not the fury. Both singer-songwriters, one-man bands, regular bands and avantgarde combos often displayed a preference for a casual, careless attitude in delivering music (even though sometimes it had been painstakingly composed). That was punk's true legacy: another nail in the coffin of the Western musical tradition of aiming for the perfect combination of sounds.

The history of music as a remix

The remix became a pervasive concept during the 2000s. The concept had originally served a dj to turn favorites of the old generation into favorites of the new generation. The concept implied that the creation of music was a process of remixing the past. If the concept of rock music as it emerged during the 1960s was fundamentally a "revolution", the concept of rock music (whatever "rock" still meant) was one of remixing the revolution. It no longer aimed at being a revolution of any kind, but simply a reinterpretation. At the same time it was not simply a "cover" song of an old song. A cover song duplicates the original note by note. The remix simply udpates a song to new instruments and new styles, to the point that (thanks to the power of electronic and digital devices) the original song does not exist anymore for any practical purpose. The result of a remix may be even more dramatic than the result of a "revolution", but the spirit is different: it acknowledges a debt to the past, to the previous generation. The "revolution" hated the past and the previous generation, and, in fact, because it had little in common (ideologically as well as artistically).

The demise of the cover art

A little noted side effect of the digital download and of the consequent demise of the CD was the end of an illustrious craft that dated from the dawn of recording: the cover art. That art had peaked during the 1960s, when each album cover was carefully assembled or painted. The advent of the CD had downgraded the cover art, simply because the CD was smaller and did not allow the artists as much space. However, CDs could still came packaged in creative manners (other than the usual environmentally-unfriendly plastic wrap). Once the industry shifted to the digital download, though, the cover art died. For the first time, the music was to be enjoyed with no visual complement. If the music came with a video, then most likely the video was a recording of the musicians.

Part 3 continues here