Two decades on: 12 albums that will still blow you away
1995 was a very, very decent year for dance music
7 Moby 'Everything Is Wrong'
When a Hollywood director like Michael Mann asks for some of your music, that's surely sign that you're doing OK. That must've crossed Moby's mind when Mann and co used 'God Moving Over The Face Of The Waters' - taken from this Mute release - on the Al Pacino, Val Kilmer and Robert De Niro-starring Heat. You'll be at a loss trying to find a genre for it, there really is so much going on in this: orchestral strings, mind-numbing piano keys, hazardous screeches and turbo-charged drums. Soon after, he released 'Everything Is Wrong: The DJ Mix Album', getting his techno on - re-working some of the tracks in doing so - and getting Josh Wink and Voodoo Child involved for remixes.
8 Nightmares on Wax 'Smokers Delight'
With a beautiful and glistening track like 'Nights Introlude' the opener, it'd be nothing short of a disaster if the rest of the LP fell by the wayside. Luckily George Evelyn and Robin Taylor-Firth managed to keep everything in check, giving us over an hour of funky saxophones, gracious vocals like those on 'Me And You', fruity percussion and the most tender of string work. Still very much part of the Warp Records family, NOW released on the revered Sheffield label again last year when 'Smokers Delight was reissued.
9 Tricky 'Maxinquaye'
Weird and suitably twisted, the Massive Attack man still managed to layer his debut solo album with blazin', blissed out soul thanks to the vocals of Martina Topley-Bird. This made number two in our 1995 Albums of the Year and it's still sounding fantastically fresh now. He even had the bottle to sample Michael Jackson's 'Bad' on 'Brand New You're Retro', so maximum respect for that one. We're not the only ones rating it, either. It scored top marks across the board and put the Bristolian in the category of one of the UK's most innovate musicians.
