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In the early 1990s, American alternative rock bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam became mainstream in the US and helped inspire the British alternative rock scene. more...

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By the middle of the decade, the British charts were dominated by Britrock, a melding of British rock and roll forms from the last thirty years. Bands like Blur, Suede and Oasis helped lead this charge.

As the audience for electronica, techno and other forms of electronic dance music matured, various acts topped the charts in the middle of the decade, especially artists like Leftfield, The Chemical Brothers, The Prodigy, Massive Attack and Paul Oakenfold. These forms combined and mutated into dozens of subgenres, including various combinations of drum and bass, trance, house and trip hop.

Later in the 1990s and into the next millennium, melodic British rock groups like Radiohead and Coldplay achieved great critical and commercial success.

Early 90s neo-soul

In the early 90s, a new wave of soul acts emerged from the United Kingdom, drawing on 1980s pioneers like Sade. Soul II Soul, a long-running band, was especially popular, as well Lisa Stansfield's hip hop-influenced sound on Affection, Brand New Heavies' neo-classical soul, Mica Paris, Cathy Dennis and Caron Wheeler. Of these, the Brand New Heavies' return to the 1970s funk-soul of Chaka Khan, Tower of Power and Scotland's Average White Band was perhaps the most influential, paralleling and influencing the rise of American nu soul artists like Lauryn Hill, Mary J. Blige and D'Angelo.

House and raves

In the early 90s, many raves continued in spite of illegality, while legal dance gatherings were also occurring, and dance music saw more exposure at rock festivals in Glastonbury and Reading. The tension caused by the police and increasingly hardcore music caused many fans to return to the clubs, where rave music had given way to progressive house, a return to the original sounds of house music. Other clubs emerged to play the ever-splintering genres associated with the house and rave scene, including hardcore techno, downtempo and trance. Recorded artists further split the scene into subgenres, taking influences from across the musical spectrum. In the course of a few years, genres like hardcore arose, only to diverge into subgenres like drum n bass and happy hardcore.

In the middle of the 90s, Britpop was dominating the charts but British youths were still attending the huge dance clubs, where internationally-renowned DJs spun diverse records.

Drum n Bass

Until the 90s, the British dance scene included countless variations on American forms of acid house, techno, rare groove and other electronic music, but there was no distinctively British dance genre. The 90s, however, saw the development of drum n bass (or jungle) out of the genres mentioned above as well as ragga, hip hop, jazz and dub. Originally developing in London's East End and the Eastern coast of the Britain, drum n bass is an extension of rock and roll's breakbeat heritage. It is often compared to hip hop, and both genres use pre-recorded beats as the basis for an electrifying dance music. Unlike hip hop, however, drum n bass uses beats in a much looser, more malleable fashion, creating sometimes polyrhythmic compositions that are eminently dance-able.

Read more at Wikipedia.org