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English club dance music collective led by Liam Howlett (b ?Braintree, 21 August 1971). Howlett was a rave DJ in the early 1990s when they released their second single Charly (XL, 1991). Like many one-hit rave singles, it combined samples from children's television with simplistic yet memorable synthesized melodies over hardcore and high-tempo backing. They surprised rave's detractors by sustaining this success across several albums. By the time of their second album, Music for the Jilted Generation (XL, 1994), rave had disappeared but they enjoyed mass commercial success by incorporating elements of trip hop and techno. The band's greatest success came with Firestarter (1996), a hardcore ‘big beat’ track which included rock as well as dance elements and caused some controversy, not least through Keith Flint, whose performance and appearance introduced a punk element into the dance mixture. Flint's visual influence was strong (he directed the video for the follow-up single Breathe (1996), making their album Fat of the Land (XL, 1997) their most successful. By the late 1990s, Howlett had returned to being a DJ, releasing Dirt Chamber Sessions Volume 1 (XL, 1999), and Maxim had embarked on a solo career. Leeroy left the band in April 2000 to concentrate on his music as Flightcrank.
Reference Entry. 217 words.
Subjects: music
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