Underworld

Before Karl Hyde, dance music lyrics were mostly slogans; he gave the rave a narrator. After a decade of new wave near-misses as Freur and Underworld Mk1, Hyde and Rick Smith teamed with DJ Darren Emerson and shattered everything. On 1994’s dubnobasswithmyheadman, they fused Hyde’s cut-up urban poetry with Smith's relentless, gorgeous techno architecture, creating a new language for the genre. Then came Trainspotting. Director Danny Boyle bolted the lager-soaked howl of “Born Slippy.NUXX” to his film's final moments, and the trio’s sound—a mix of total euphoria and bleary-eyed melancholy—became the definitive pulse of the ‘90s. They didn't just make tracks; they built entire worlds.