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 | | The pioneering force behind the rise of trip-hop, Massive Attack were among the most innovative and influential groups of their generation; their hypnotic sound -- a darkly sensual and cinematic fusion of hip-hop rhythms, soulful melodies, dub grooves, and choice samples -- set the pace for much of the dance music to emerge throughout the 1990s, paving the way for such acclaimed artists as Portishead, Sneaker Pimps, Beth Orton, and Tricky, himself a Massive Attack alumnus. |
 | | The driving creative force behind the groundbreaking synth pop group Depeche Mode, composer and keyboardist Martin Gore was born in Basildon, England, on July 23, 1961. |
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 | | When Chris Vrenna left Trent Reznor's influential industrial/alternative rock powerhouse Nine Inch Nails in 1996, it certainly wasn't the end of the line for the drummer/producer/songwriter -- far from it. |
 | | The Texas-based band Ghoultown combines punk rock, Western stylings, mariachi, and a dose of B-movie trappings that has earned them attention since their formation in 1999. |
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 | | Nine Inch Nails were the most popular industrial group ever and were largely responsible for bringing the music to a mass audience. |
 | | Considering Curve's towering monolith of guitar noise, dance tracks, dark goth, and airy melodies, it's strange that their two core members -- guitarist Dean Garcia and vocalist Toni Halliday -- met through David Stewart of Eurythmics. |
 | | The recipient of numerous international awards, including the Lili Boulanger Memoria Fund Award of Boston (1960), and two awards from the Polish Minister of Culture in 1967 and 1976, Wojciech Kilar is one of Poland's most famous and highly respected composers. |
 | | Screamin' Jay Hawkins was the most outrageous performer extant during rock's dawn. Prone to emerging out of coffins on-stage, a flaming skull named Henry his constant companion, Screamin' Jay was an insanely theatrical figure long before it was even remotely acceptable. |
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 | | Darkwave garage rockers The Deadlines came together with their love of pulsating rock growling and eyeliner in 1998, all in an effort to redefine the state of music. |
 | | Alan Wilder has released solo material as Recoil since 1986. A keyboardist, songwriter, arranger, and producer, Wilder was a key member of Depeche Mode for well over a decade, throughout the band's most successful years. |
 | | Britain's answer to Elvis Presley, Cliff Richard (born Harry Webb) dominated the pre-Beatles British pop scene in the late '50s and early '60s. |
 | | Bauhaus are the founding fathers of goth rock, creating a minimalistic, overbearingly gloomy style of post-punk rock driven by jagged guitar chords and cold, distant synthesizers. |
 | | Singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Richard Warren is the driving force behind Echoboy, a psychedelic electronic project influenced by Bob Dylan, Television, Kraftwerk and the Chemical Brothers. |
 | | The Ghouls were an in-studio-only creation of writer and producer Gary Usher, designed to cash in on two current crazes in 1964, hot rod tunes and campy monster movies. |
 | | Matt Saunders and John Hanson make up Magnetophone, an eclectic British electronica duo equally inspired by pop, electronic pioneers like Morton Subotnick, contemporary electronic artists like Autechre, and Krautrock. |
 | | City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra is made up largely of Czech musicians and frequently plays film soundtracks. |
 | | Bath, England's singer/composer/keyboardist Allison Goldfrapp began exploring music as part of her studies as a fine art painting major at Middlesex University, mixing sound, visuals, and performances in her installation pieces. |
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 | | More apt to cite stately rock paragons Burt Bacharach and Brian Wilson as their inspirations than Derrick May or Aphex Twin, the French duo Air gained inclusion into the late-'90s electronica surge due chiefly to the labels their recordings appeared on, not the actual music they produced. |
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 | | The musical mastermind behind The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Richard O'Brien was born March 25, 1942 in Gloucestershire, England. |
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 | | Siouxsie and the Banshees were among the longest-lived and most successful acts to emerge from the London punk community; over the course of a career that lasted two decades, they evolved from an abrasive, primitive art punk band into a stylish, sophisticated unit that even notched a left-field Top 40 hit. |
 | | Formed in 1965 in Billings, Montana, the Frantics were a sextet who drew their influences from Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, and, later, Jim Morrison (note the Lizard Records imprint for their second album). |
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 | | One of the most enduring English singer/songwriters since the early '80s, Tracey Thorn began making music with the all-female quartet Marine Girls, a minimalist pop group that released a pair of albums -- Beach Party and Lazy Ways -- inspired by Young Marble Giants and the Raincoats. |
 | | Alabama 3 was one of the oddest musical outfits to arise from late-'90s London, but also one of the most original. |
 | | After goth pioneers the Birthday Party called it quits in 1983, singer/songwriter Nick Cave assembled the Bad Seeds, a post-punk supergroup featuring former Birthday Party guitarist Mick Harvey on drums, ex-Magazine bassist Barry Adamson, and EinstĂĽrzende Neubauten guitarist Blixa Bargeld. |
 | | Scandinavian pop singer Bertine Zetlitz is a well known artist in Europe who makes catchy disco-influenced dance-pop with a slightly dark, ironic edge. |
 | | Barry Adamson's work as a bassist for Magazine and Nick Cave's Bad Seeds gave little indication of the complex, cinematic works he has composed as a solo artist. |
 | | Although the Builders and the Butchers formed in Portland during the mid-2000s, the band's hybrid of folk, country, and twangy rock evokes the Great Depression more than the contemporary Northwest. |
 | | The mind behind The Chipmunks was actually a seasoned songwriter with several straight hit recordings to his credit. |
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 | | 16 Horsepower were a Denver-based alternative country band that revolved around the unique songwriting and singing of David Eugene Edwards. |
 | | Born Kenneth Gordy, Rockwell is the son of Motown Records founder Berry Gordy. He changed his name so as to avoid charges of nepotism, wanting to make it in the music business on his talent alone. |
 | | Pickett is, of course, the man doing the Boris Karloff impression on the Halloween hit "Monster Mash. |
 | | .45 Grave was a Los Angeles-based death-rock band whose macabre, morose and sometimes amusing music helped to get the goth-rock genre off to its shambling life. |
 | | The founding fathers of American goth rock, Christian Death took a relentlessly confrontational stand against organized religion and conventional morality, with an appetite for provocation that made Marilyn Manson look like Stryper. |
 | | Name-checking a diverse cast of progenitors including Varése, Xenakis, and Robert Moog, as well as Can and Stereolab, Add N to X are electro-historians of a sort, collectors of vintage synthesizer technology, and fierce propagators of the man-machine aesthetic (the cover of their second album features member Ann Shenton on the operating table with a synthesizer either being inserted or taken out of her organ cavity). |
 | | The trip-hop trio Sneaker Pimps formed in 1995 in Reading, England, following the success of Portishead's Dummy and Tricky's Maxinquaye. |
 | | Primal Scream's career could in many ways be read as a microcosm of British indie rock in the '80s and '90s. |
![The Attraction to All Things Uncertain [Bonus Tracks] Album Cover](http://images.slacker.com/isv1/album/v1/527102/aol/1/center/5,0/70.jpg "The Attraction to All Things Uncertain [Bonus Tracks] Album Cover")
