Rewind: 10 albums still sounding fresh 20 years on

You might remember us paying homage to albums released in 1995 last year, revisiting classics by The Chemical Brothers, Goldie and Moby among others. One year on, we thought we'd look back at records released in '96 and realised there was enough ammunition to load up and reminisce once again.

Aphex Twin and Tricky were riding high on form in the mid-90s, knocking out two stellar albums in two years, making it into this list with the 'Richard D. James Album' and 'Pre-Millennium Tension', respectively. The majority of albums in this list come from British artists - dealing in revved-up rave frequencies and scything techno - but there's still room for a sample-heavy hip hop masterpiece and an LP from one of America's finest rap outfits.

Get stuck in.

Album titles can be tricky to come up with, but sometimes inspiration comes from the most unexpected of places or, in this case, people. Underworld's Rick Smith's then six-year-old nephew unknowingly named the group's fourth album when asked how his time at infant school was going. "Don't worry, I'm second toughest in the infants now," he told his uncle. Attempting to trump the success of 1993's 'dubnobasswithmyheadman' wouldn't have been easy, but the cyber-like euphoria of 'Juanitia : Kiteless : To Dream Of Love' and frenzied techno kicks of 'Pearl's Girl' ensured the feedback was glowing. The use of 'Born Slippy. NUXX' (the B-side of 'Born Slippy') on Danny Boyle's Trainspotting led the album to getting a re-issue with the track included. The record was celebrated again last year with a mega four-CD deluxe edition featuring the original tracks, unheard demos, extra tracks and a heap of versions of 'Born Slippy. NUXX'. Maybe they'll return on the soundtrack for next year's Trainspotting sequel?

DJ Shadow returned this year with new album 'The Mountain Will Fall' and it was no surprise that debut LP effort 'Endtroducing.....' was mentioned in more or less all of its promo. Releasing it this year may well have been a genius bit of marketing since it arrived to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the American producer's classic. Released by Mo' Wax Recordings, it was a hit in the UK, reaching the top 20 in the charts and later going gold, but it took a while for his US compatriots to really 'get it'. Understandable, really, as its (quite excellent) mish-mash instrumental nature was nothing like the type of East Coast boom-bap or G'd out West Coast cuts thriving at the time. The Akai MPC60 sampler was his closest ally in making the album, utilising it to lift sounds from Björk's 'Possibly Maybe' on 'Mutual Slump', Nirvana's 'Love Suite' on 'Stem/Long Stem' and Tangerine Dream's 'Invisible Limits' on 'Changeling'. It wasn't just a gem from '96, this is often listed in the best electronic albums ever.

Aphex Twin's career was already in full flow by the time this came out on Warp, but this is a record that's had copious mentions in any Aphexmania articles and rightly so. Titled after his birth name, Aphex combined intricate, bubblegum melodies ('Fingerbib'), jungle breaks suitable for a nursery ('Girl / Boy Song') and string-filled delicacies ('Goon Gumpas') to create an album joining the dots between the frantic and the far from ferocious. His status as Mr Experimental was well solidfied by this point, following releases on Apollo and Warp, and this one just strengthened his ties to sounds of the weird and abstract kind. Even if the music wasn't all that, this record would probably be remembered for the creepy artwork itself. The music was quality, though, and Aphex returned with more demented photos when promoting last year's 'Syro'. He just doesn't do normal, but we wouldn't have him any other way.

Alex Reece is probably best known for 1995 single 'Pulp Fiction', a gold-star standard drum 'n' bass track released on Metalheadz. Everything about it screams swagger: the bassline twangs, the sexy saxophones (sampled from Coolio's 'Can-O-Corn'), the bird-like cries and that sensual female vocal that appears throughout. However, his biggest tune couldn't be included on his debut album, 'So Far', because Metalheadz had used it on a compilation. Reece's response? A little re-jig and renaming it 'Pulp Friction' for the LP, a slight insinuation that the mood between him and 'headz may have turned sour. 'Feel The Sunshine' unsurprisingly delivered the feel-good, carnival-worthy vibes, the kind to later be heard on material by Brazilian maestro DJ Marky, but 'Acid Lab' is the Hyde to Reece's Jekyll, expressing a much nastier, sinister side to his production. No follow-up album has arrived and 2014's 'The ElectroFlyz Series Vol.' was the last we heard from him.

Jonah Sharp, aka Spacetime Continuum, has been off the radar since the late '90s, but 'Emit Ecaps', his second album proper, carries enough weight to maintain his relevance. Opener 'Iform' lays out the intense workout plan from the off with a barrage of thunderous kicks and its follow-up, 'Kairo', keeps the momentum going with over 11 minutes of splendid jungle twists and turns. Yeah, it has a lively start, but anyone clued up on Spacetime knows it wouldn't be a record solely geared towards the dancefloor. 'Simm City' has the kind of creepy shrills you'd expect to hear in an episode of Goosebumps, 'String Of Pearls' is full of twinkles and warped bleeps and 'Swing Fantasy' is the perfect comedown chiller, albeit with a bumpy collection of drums. Basically, if you're a fan of Boards Of Canada, Autechre and Aphex Twin, Spacetime Contiuum's medley of techno, downtempo and jungle will be right up your street. This one came out on his own imprint, Reflective, and follow-up 'Double Fine Zone' provided more off-kilter beauty on Astralwerks. Fancy coming back, Spacetime?

So much of a big deal reaching the millennium was, Tricky felt the need to give it recognition four years before the year 2000 rolled around. 'Pre-Millennium Tension' was the Bristol-born musician's second album, after '95's 'Maxinquaye', and was yet another insight into that brilliantly odd, haunting mind of his. There's the rustic vibes of 'Vent', the woozy, stoner atmosphere of 'Christiansands' and worryingly titled 'Makes Me Wanna Die', a spine-tingling message to an "insignificant" individual. This album might not be veering towards trip hop as his previous effort was, but hip hop was well ingrained with samples of Eric B. & Rakim, Smif-n-Wessun and Doug E. Fresh & The Get Fresh Crew. You might remember us including 'Maxinquaye' in our albums throwback to '95 and his inclusion in this list about records in '96 proves that he was in a rich vein of form in the mid-90s. Two decades later, he reunited with Massive Attack for a performance at The Downs Festival in Bristol in September. Comeback, anyone?

"Orbital are still light-years ahead of the competition." That was our view on Paul and Phil Hartnoll's fourth album in '96 and we weren't the only ones gushing over their concoction of giddy, playful melodies and cloudy, nasty-minded beats. The public loved it, too, sending it to number five in the UK charts, where it stayed for 12 weeks. Opener 'The Girl With The Sun In Her Head' is a beauty, an ode to photographer Sally Harding, a friend of the brothers, who died in 1995. The sound of a beating heart sets the track in motion, before startling synths cruise in and a slew of crispy breaks roll out throughout the 10-minute track. Interesting fact: this one was made using electricity from Cyrus, the solar power generator owned by Greenpeace. Environmentalism is a prominent theme on the record, linked into the sharp, searing 'Dŵr Budr' (Welsh for 'dirty water'), which was inspired by the "murky water in Brighton", according to Paul. 'P.E.T.R.O.L' is one hell of a screwed-up rampage, featured on Playstation driver game Wipeout, alongside tunes by The Chemical Brothers and Leftfield. They even got actress Tilda Swinton as the lead role in the video for 'The Box'.

It says a lot when someone nicknamed The Baron of Techno has hosted their own arena at one of the biggest festivals in the world since 2011. Tomorrowland in Belgium is where Dave Clarke has been every July for the last five years, joined by the likes of Scuba, Green Velvet and Marcel Fengler, proving that he's still got plenty of pull two decades since his debut album, 'Archive One'. Six years before the LP came out on Deconstruction, he debuted as Hardcore on XL Recordings, producing the "feel the bass"-shouting 'I Like John (Punky Mix)', before unleashing the hectic rave bomb 'Hey R U Ready (Non Minimalist Mix)' on R&S in 1991. By the time he'd reverted to making tunes for the album under his birth name in '96, his output had grown fiercer and was destined to cause carnage on the dancefloor. 'Miles Away' is a pacy, hammering package of house, 'The Woki' chops, screws and flips erratically and 'Storm' is a crash-course of wild techno. Chaotic as the album may be, closer 'Splendour' demonstrates Clarke's knack of being able to drop the tempo and rustle up a moody beauty to ease us out. It's not just techno he excels in.

The importance of Mark Bell is unquestionable. Alongside LFO partner Gez Varley, he pioneered a whole new type of techno: wonky, laden with bleeps and total weirdo club music. His untimely death in 2014 led to an outpouring of tributes from DJs and artists and, as so often happens these days, a petition was started to get LFO's self-titled 1990 rave anthem to Christmas number one. Peaking at number 12 in the UK charts when it was first released, it's a track they'll always be known for and the pair will forever sit in the Warp Records hall of fame. 'LFO' appeared on debut album 'Frequencies', a record co-produced by the pair, but on 'Advance', album number two, producing fell solely in the hands of Bell as Varley (who departed the group in after its release) only wrote two of the tracks. For those who'd heard the Japanese edition of Björk's 1995 album 'Post', the floating whistles from the dizzying 'Shove Piggy Shove' would be familiar to the ear. Bell had previously given a demo of the tune to the Icelandic singer, who chose to use it for the album's Japanese release, before it appeared in instrumental form on 'Advance'. This one represents the dreamy and charming side of the album, compared to the aggressively grinding 'Shutdown', wounding 'Tied Up' and dancefloor Rottweiler 'Kombat Drinking' (the first half of it, anyway). It wasn't praised as much as their debut, but it's still packed out with enough bruising techno to leave you feeling properly shaken.

The most avid A Tribe Called Quest fan may not rate this as the best of the group's albums, but it still reached the peak of the Billboard 200. As if the combination of ATCQ members Q-Tip, Phife Dawg and Ali Shaheed Muhammad wasn't enough, hip hop royalty J Dilla had a hand in this, producing the most of the tracks as part of production outfit The Ummah (along with Tip and Muhammad). They dish out their fair share of fighting talk on 'Beats, Rhymes and Life', throwing the first punch on opener 'Phony Rappers'. "It seems there's a sanitation, y'all full of thrash talker. Sounding good but money can you feed the dog hawker," goes Tip, before Phife lays the smackdown with "his rhyme style is older than a Chrysler car Nova." Even the swish '1nce Again', with the crystal-clear chorus from Tammy Lucas, has Phife piping: "You have MCs dropping bombs that's incredible, some of the brothers, their styles are just despicable." The war talk earned them a Grammy nomination for Best Rap Album in '97, losing out to 'The Score' by Fugees, and come 1998 it had reached platinum status in the US. The album name was later used as the title for a documentary exploring all things A Tribe Called Quest, too. Long live Phife.