Two decades on: 12 albums that will still blow you away

A lot happened in 1995: Princess Diana gave that TV interview opening up about her extramarital activities, Toy Story blew the film game apart by becoming the first computer-generated animation movie in history, the invention of the DVD was announced and, possibly the most jaw-dropping of all, Vauxhall revved up petrol heads with the unveiling of the beastly Vectra model. What's not fondly remembered in wider culture, though, is the importance of that year in dance music. Here, we fill the void by giving you a run-through of 12 classic albums and compilations (in no particular order) released two decades ago.

Where to start with this one? The Metalheadz master's debut album has gone down in history and it's the absolute pinnacle of drum 'n' bass LPs. The gold-toothed yoga enthusiast called it 'Timeless' for a reason and it sure sounds relevant today, 'Inner City Life' (which made our Greatest Dance Tracks Of All Time list) and 'Angel' still beaming with beauty during every listen. In our '95 end-of-year round-up we said it'd get "rewound and rewound and rewound at countless jungle raves", and it'd be no different nowadays. It was only right that it was the first album to be released on his, Kemistry and Storm's 'headz label (as well as London Records/FFRR), opening the way for further albums from his other project Rufige Kru, Commix and Lenzman. It's so classic now that he's been performing it with the Heritage Orchestra at the Southbank Centre in London.

"The single most influential production team in British dance music," we once said about Neil Barnes and Paul Daley, the latter who's no longer involved with the project. They'd been releasing for five years before this wide-eyed, spell-binding LP arrived on Hard Hands and Columbia and they really didn't foresee the impact it'd have. "We put a lifetime of dance ideas into our debut album, 'Leftism', but the massive success was totally unexpected," Barnes recently told the Guardian. So much so that they even found themselves performing album cut 'Original' on Top of the Pops with Curve singer Toni Halliday. 20 years on, Barnes' just completed an album hat-trick as Leftfield with 'Alternative Light Source'.

If Transformers was to be an album, this would surely have to be it. Mechanical rips and screeches aplenty, Rochdale duo Rob Brown and Sean Booth really went to Weirdsville on this, even though it's fairly normal compared to 1997 follow-up 'Chiastic Slide'. From mutant opener 'Dael' to the shredding synths of 'Rotar', Warp Records is a fitting home for it. The album notes state it sounds better on vinyl due to "surface noise" so we're afraid the link below won't do it full justice. Better get on Discogs if you wanna get the most out of it.

The origins of this album title lie in Ed Simons and Tom Rowlands' former moniker. At the beginning of '95 - called The Dust Brothers at the time - they found themselves in a legal tangle with the Los Angeles hip hop duo of the same name. They swapped 'dust' for 'chemical', soon giving a taste of their debut album with the chart-entering 'Leave Home', hitting number 17. "The brothers gunna work it out," the drilling cruncher chants. They sure did that, selling over a million copies of the LP worldwide and nailing a major label deal with Virgin. Wonder if they thought they'd be releasing album number eight in 2015 at the time?

There are plenty of reasons why people were left wiping their drool when Aphex Twin's most recent album, 'Syro', was announced and this was one of them. The Cornish producer's third LP in 1995, the artwork, a freakish portrait of the man himself, may well be more memorable than the music. Not that we're turning our noses up at that - a mangled collection of fucked up synths and brutal drums with brilliantly British song titles like 'Come On You Slags!'. Stare at the album art while listening, we dare ya.

Seven years on from basically soundtracking the aciiiid-led 'Second Summer of Love' in 1988 with 'Voodoo Ray', Gerald Simpson's musical compass was directed firmly towards jungle. And didn't he do it well. Six months before Goldie released 'Timeless' and long before he picked up some film and TV credits via The World Is Not Enough and Eastenders, he lent a hand to AGCG on the beautifully crisp 'Energy'. Brit Award-winning vocalist Finley Quaye even caught a bit of jungle fever on - you guessed it - 'Finley's Rainbow (Slow Motion Mix)'. No wonder this album is so highly rated.

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.

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.

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.

It might not be a studio album as with the rest in this list, but we had to find a space for this cracking compilation by Larry Heard's alias. At the time of the release, some of the bits hadn't been available to buy before La Casa Records unleashed the triple vinyl package. Fruity jam 'Amnesia' and 'Dream' are a couple of his solo cuts to feature, with work by Fingers Inc. (Heard, Robert Owens, Ron Wilson), The It (Heard, Harry Dennis) his Gherkin Jerks and House Factors aliases and Kriss Coleman contributing towards the 15-track gem.

Long before making bangers like 'Shake Ur Body' and 'Don't Wanna Know' with Shy FX, Marc Royal put together this critically-acclaimed collection. Much like A Guy Called Gerald's 'Black Secret Technology' and Goldie's 'Timeless', it's considered one of the most important jungle albums of all time. Packing enough power for the dancefloor, there's also cosmic tunes like 'Turquoise' to make you feel like you're on some kind of space-age adventure. Big up T for remastering it and letting you buy a digital version for about 65p.

Forget about the hoard of music promoted as 'deep house' today, the tunes on here are enough to educate you on what that label really means. The Frenchman is one of the best when it comes to swish dancefloor flavours and 'What's New?' is an absolute dream. Throw in some cruising jazz instruments and a bit of dub and you've got a top piece of work via F Communications. Two decades later he's preparing to release a new one, too!