Cubanate

The '90s was such a great time for electro/industrial music, especially for those of us who never got into the grunge or Britpop that dominated radio. Cubanate was essentially Marc Heal, spewing high-energy aggression out like no one else. This album treads a fine line between noisy electronic music and pure white noise, but it's just on the right side of that line.

ABC

It would be easy to write-off ABC as a lightweight New Wave version of Roxy Music... although Roxy's last 2 albums could be written off as the same... but that's missing the point. It's the perfect soundtrack to your next cocktail party.

Echo & The Bunnymen

It's autumn somewhere... and from out of a foggy haze, with green trenchcoat and tussled locks... it's Mac the Mouth, here to sing us some lullabies.

Gene Loves Jezebel

Beyond the silly clothes and hair and videos of their early years, Gene Loves Jezebel became a solid band by the time of 1987's "House of Dolls" album and continued until their last, 1999's "VII" - and then suddenly reappearing 18 years later for 2017's Dance Underwater.

A Flock of Seagulls

Being the butt of so many jokes and the go-to picture for bad '80s hair-dos, one can easily forget A Flock Of Seagulls made some decent music.

Japan... the band

Imagine naming your band after a country in this Internet age... but nonetheless, David Sylvian, Mick Karn and Co. made pretty original sounding music. After starting as a very punky group, they quickly morphed into something which clearly owed more than a small debt to Roxy Music, but with Karn's fretless bass playing and often quirky rhythms, they became a far more unique entity.

Hugo Race + True Spirit/Fatalists

Hugo Race was in Nick Cave's Bad Seeds for 1/2 a minute in the early years. As he continued on a solo career, he initially mined the same territory as early Bad Seeds' records. His most recent stuff is actually how I envisioned Nick Cave would sound at this point in his career and, personally, I find Hugo Race's music much more satisfying.