Why 1999 Is One Of The Most Important (And Underrated) Years In Dance Music
1999 cemented the names that would go on to headline dance festivals for the next decade.
Has there been a better year for dance music albums than 1997? That bumper stretch gave us The Prodigy’s The Fat of the Land, the Chemical Brothers’ Dig Your Own Hole, Roni Size/Reprazent’s New Forms and Aphex Twin’s Come To Daddy, an EP with the heft of an album.
Then there was a little debut called Homework from the not-yet-robot newcomers Daft Punk. The Sony Discmans may have all died, but the music of 1997 powered on.
But hey, ‘97 already got its 20th anniversary party. We’re here to give it up for 1999, a sneakily great year for long form dance music. In that nervy countdown to Y2K, a host of now-lionised acts fired up their machines to make CD magic.
1999 cemented the names that would go on to headline dance festivals for at least the next decade. The year’s key albums also set a blueprint for coming trends and inferior knock-offs. These are a few of the legacy-setting highlights from that heady time.
The Rave Reinventors
The Chemical Brothers were riding high in the last gasp of the ‘90s. Here were two goofy moon-tanned ravers whose previous album, Dig Your Own Hole, hit No. 1 in the UK. Its 1999 follow-up, Surrender, had their New Order idol Bernard Sumner on ‘Out Of Control’ alongside the instant anthem ‘Hey Boy Hey Girl’. A few weeks after the album dropped, the Chems headlined the dance tent at Glastonbury. It was a sign of big font bookings to come, and even today the duo’s set lists nod to Surrender.
Meanwhile, from another shadowy corner of the UK, Underworld delivered Beaucoup Fish. The group’s fifth album, and the last with Darren Emerson in the studio, closed the decade with a rush of serotonin.
By 1999, with Trainspotting long out on VHS, everyone knew ‘Born Slippy’. Its creators could have gone pop, but instead Beaucoup Fish finds its bliss in lock-jawed, sweaty-palmed raves. The album keeps a barrelling pace, exemplified by the ten-minute epic ‘Shudder / King Of Snake’, a highlight of Underworld live shows right up to 2019.
Beaucoup Fish also dovetailed with the peak years of progressive house. Revered DJs Sasha and John Digweed completed their Northern Exposure series with Expeditions in 1999, clearing the way for an early 2000s mix-CD avalanche. A crop of progressive DJs — almost exclusively male, white and sun-starved — flourished on labels like Balance and Global Underground. (Including, naturally, a post-Underworld Darren Emerson.)
The House Upstarts
On the other side of town from the Chems and Underworld, a pair of late-20s producers bottled a very different UK dance vibe. Felix Buxton and Simon Ratcliffe arrived fully formed as Basement Jaxx with Remedy, a debut steeped in Chicago house and London’s multicultural soundclash.
In a year of serious-minded electronica albums from the likes of Orbital and Leftfield, Remedy was bright, brash and thick with would-be hits. Describing their club night Rooty in 2001, Buxton summed up the Basement Jaxx mission: “We made it so it wasn’t just for coke heads who wanted pounding beats all night.”
1999 also gave us Groove Armada’s second album Vertigo, a more sedate and streamlined riff on classic house. (“Don’t expect to hear this down your local aerobics class,” NME warned at the time.)
Propelled by Vertigo singles I ‘See You Baby’ and ‘At The River’, the duo was soon making yearly summer trips to Australia with their live band. While Groove Armada now largely stick to DJing, Basement Jaxx is busy completing dance veteran bingo with full orchestra shows here in April.
The Stratospheric Vegan
Remember Moby’s Play? Of course you do. The unlikeliest of smash hit albums delivered no fewer than eight singles and a blur of commercial tie-ins, but its ubiquity took time. Play flopped on its initial release in 1999, convincing Moby he was officially washed-up. (His previous album, the furious punk curio Animal Rights, had also tanked.)
Resigned to drinking himself stupid, Moby was on a disastrous 2000 MTV tour with grunge also-rans Bush when Play saved him. Thanks to some savvy licensing deals, the album hit No. 1 in far-flung places like Germany and Australia.
Play rang out from General Pants stores and your aunt Jan’s car, its singles spruiking everything from American Express to Bailey’s Irish Cream.
Play rang out from General Pants stores and your aunt Jan’s car, its singles spruiking everything from American Express to Bailey’s Irish Cream. It went on to sell over 12 million copies worldwide.
All this was quite an adjustment for the guy who’d fashioned an electronic album from the dusty field recordings of ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax. While Play joined the Inoffensive Dinner Party Hall Of Fame, Moby took a much rowdier live show to ever-growing stages. Just months after those rock-bottom dates with Bush, he was headlining the Other Stage at Glastonbury 2000.
The Daft Punk Disciples
On September 9, 1999, two years after Homework, Daft Punk became robots. With Y2K at a fever pitch, Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter fashioned a story of a ‘9999 bug’ that fried their equipment and gave them cool-looking helmets. Amazingly, the shtick has endured for 20 years, creating the most iconic look in dance music.
While the duo waited another two years to deliver their opus Discovery, 1999 was still pretty Daft Punk-y. One of that year’s under-celebrated albums, 1999, came from ‘French touch’ peers Cassius. Recorded in a Paris studio over three sleepless weeks, the album is a joyful snapshot of a golden time. One half of Cassius, Philippe Zdar, has since worked behind the scenes for Chromeo, Cut Copy, Kele and Phoenix.
Meanwhile, in late ‘90s New York, English chameleon Stuart Price slipped into his Les Rythmes Digitales mode for Darkdancer. With its air of Frenchiness and Hackers-esque cover art, the album was a cult hit among synth-pop completists. (It was reissued in 2005 when Price was better known as Jacques Lu Cont.) While it never went mainstream, Darkdancer set a template for the coming decade of Goldfrapp, the Scissor Sisters, Annie and The Knife.
A new era arrived on January 1, 2000, with our computers intact and year-defining albums from Peaches, The Avalanches and, yes, Craig David just around the corner. Two decades on, though, we’re still hearing echoes of 1999.
Jack Tregoning is a freelance writer based in New York. He was formerly Editorial Director at the US dance music site Beatport and Editor of inthemix, and has otherwise written mostly about music for sites including Billboard, Red Bull Music Academy, Rolling Stone and FasterLouder. He tweets at @JackTregoning.
All this week, Junkee is heading back in time to relive the greatest moments in pop culture from 1999. For more 1999 content, head here.