Music of the United Kingdom (1990s)
The independent rock scene that had developed in Manchester in the second half of the 1980s, based in The Haçienda nightclub and around Factory Records, dubbed Madchester, came to national prominence at the end of the decade, with the Happy Mondays, the Inspiral Carpets, and Stone Roses charting late in 1989.
[1] The period of dominance was relatively short lived with The Stone Roses beginning to retreat from public performance while engaged in contractual disputes, the Happy Mondays having difficulty in producing a second album and Factory Records going bankrupt in 1992.
[1] Dream pop had developed out of the indie rock scene of the 1980s, when bands like Cocteau Twins, The Chameleons, The Passions, Dif Juz, Lowlife and A.R.
A louder, more aggressive strain of dream pop came to be known as shoegazing; key bands of this style were Lush, Slowdive, My Bloody Valentine, Alison's Halo, Chapterhouse, Curve and Levitation.
[8] Although its more popular bands were able to spread their commercial success overseas, especially to the United States, the movement largely fell apart by the end of the decade.
[20] By the end of the century the grip of boy bands on the charts was faltering, but proved the basis for solo careers like that of Robbie Williams, formerly of Take That, who achieved seven Number One singles in the UK between 1998 and 2012.
Garage tracks also commonly feature 'chopped up' and time-stretched or pitch-shifted vocal samples complementing the underlying rhythmic structure at a tempo usually around 130 BPM.
[21] Pioneered by figures like Club Rage DJs Fabio and Grooverider,[23] in the mid-1990s the genre expanded from an underground and pirate radio scene to form subgenres including the intelligent drum and bass pioneered by LTJ Bukem,[23] and the ambient jungle[23] of Goldie's crossover debut Timeless (1995) and the jazzstep of Roni Size's Mercury Award-winning New Forms (1997).
[21] Subsequent artists included Shy FX, Ed Rush, 4 Hero and DJ Rap, some fusing drum and bass with influences from jazz, film music, ambient and trip-hop.
The result was the development of the breakbeat culture, searching out obscure recordings[27] and the creation of original music, with bands like Stereo MCs beginning to playing instruments and sampling their own tunes.
[32] Arguably this led to a creative renaissance, with British hip hop shifting from the hardcore American template and moving into more melodic territory.
[34] Particularly noticeable was the proliferation of British female black singers including Mica Paris, Caron Wheeler, Gabrielle and Heather Small.
[36] The arrival, and sometimes mainstream success, of acts like Martyn Bennett, Kate Rusby, Nancy Kerr, Kathryn Tickell, Spiers and Boden, Blazin' Fiddles, Eliza Carthy, Runrig and Capercaillie, all largely concerned with acoustic performance of traditional material, marked a radical turn around in the fortunes of British folk music.
[39] Various Electronica styles were less well received in America than at home while genres that were popular in the United States such as nu metal were not picked up by UK artists.
