In the late eighties, the UK was home to the most exciting music culture movement since punk as a mutation of house music,? born in Chicago but exported to the warehouses and fields of Britain, re-wrote the relationship between artist and audience.

With Acid House, the crowd and the DJs were a partnership, both there to make equal contribution to the euphoria of the rave. As BPMs got faster in the nineties acid house begat rave which in turn begat jungle.

With the help of pirate radio, jungle (which was starting to be known by the less exciting but seemingly more popular name of ?drum and bass?) became a dominant underground force. The importance of the crowd wasn?t the only way in which dance music challenged a comfortable and complacent music industry. The music may have been disparagingly called ?faceless? but rock?s cult of personality was a tired hangover from its heyday and certainly nothing to aspire to for a generation who had found a genuine alternative.