Chicago had Phuture; Sheffield had LFO: and Paris has The Micronauts, the originators, chosen sons and bastard offspring of the acid flame. 

Which is to say: Phuture invented acid house, mucking around with a dead-batteried 303; LFO added steel, elegance and bass to the acid sound, and The Micronauts took it outside and messed it up, stretching and twisting acid house into jammed-out shapes so gnarled and unlikely that Phuture wouldn't recognise their darling child. 

On the way, The Micronauts were remixed by Daft Punk, inspired The Chemical Brothers and released one of the most startlingly twisted electronic music albums ever to grace a major label. And yet they are, perhaps, still underrated, a serrated square plug that looks askance at round holes.

The Micronauts started in Paris in the mid 90s, when Christophe Monier, already an experienced producer, met Canada-born It kid George Issakidis at the offices of eDEN, a collective / fanzine that Monier had helped to found with Christophe Vix (among others). Issakadis had bought a TB 303 and asked Vix if he knew anyone who could show him how it worked. Vix introduced him to Monier and history was made.

The duo’s first track, Get Funky Get Down, recorded in 1993 and released by British label Phono in 1995, was, according to Monier, him essentially showing Issakadis how the 303 works. 

It’s a pretty remarkable lesson, if so. Get Funky Get Down contains almost everything that made The Micronauts so special, mixing a languid acid line with a perfectly judged sample, swinging Chicago drums and a constantly shifting array of filters and effects, creating seven minutes of acid squelch that wears its experimentation lightly. 

Almost a decade after Acid Tracks and all the song’s impersonators, it feels remarkable that someone could make a 303 song and still delight. But Get Funky Get Down is far from a Chicago rip off: it’s playful, funky and somehow very French, the 303 tweaked in a kittenish kind of way, rather than pushed into the red.

Back to the Bioship, on the B side, is even better. Stretching to almost 12 minutes, it shows The Miconauts easing into their epic stride, aligning an acidic bubble with zoned-out-and-melancholy chords, rough record scratches and about 10 different rhythms, the song flying off in different directions as an increasingly strange raft of effects take over the groove.

Rounding off the record is a remix of Get Funky Get Down by Daft Punk, who Monier met in 1993 “simply because we went to the same parties and raves and shared many mutual friends”.

“I remember taking the RER train with Guy-Manuel and a few friends to the famous Eurodisney rave, where Daft Punk met the Soma crew for the first time. Among those friends were Sven Love and Greg Gauthier, who would later form the garage DJ duo Cheers,” Monier tells me, via email.

“A bit later, in April ’94, Greg organised a rave in a gymnasium, less than a month after Daft Punk’s first 12", The New Wave, came out on Soma. They were DJing and I was performing an electronic live set that brought together my various projects, featuring the people I collaborated with: DJ Pascal R (Impulsion), Patrick Vidal (Discotique), and George Issakidis (we didn’t have a name yet).

“After the gig, Thomas and Guy-Man - whose first incarnation as a rock band, Darlin’, had ended less than a year prior - told us they were impressed by the visual aspect and the atmosphere of the set: a bunch of guys pushing out heavy sound while nodding their heads in time, never looking at the audience, hidden behind a wall of machines. They offered to remix what they called the ‘acid number’; that was Get Funky Get Down - one of the speaker stacks had actually collapsed while we were playing it due to the bass vibrations.”

The Micronauts’ second release, The Jazz / The Jam on celebrated Brighton label Loaded - Monier said that the duo always found a warmer welcome at British labels than French ones - saw Monier and Issakidis give further reign to their monumental tendencies. 

The Jazz - which has very little to do with actual jazz -  is 11 and a half minutes long; The Jam fourteen and a half; but taken together, as streaming encourages you to do, the two songs form a 25-minute-long, tripped out acid epic, like The Grateful Dead meeting Spanky and getting along famously.

It turns out that this was intentional. Monier tells me that all Micronauts tracks up to and including Side A of Bleep To Bleep, their debut album, as well as all of their remixes, were created by “jamming in the studio while a tape recorder was running”. “We would then program, arrange, structure and refine the discovered ideas via MIDI,” he adds. (There will  be more on the group’s recording technique in a future newsletter.)

Both Get Funky Get Down and The Jazz / The Jam were released in 1995. The duo’s next single, The Jag, was finished in 1997. But it wasn’t released until 1999, after The Micronauts had signed an unlikely major label deal with Virgin.

In the interim Issakidis met The Chemical Brothers in Paris and discovered that they were fans of both the Micronauts and Impulsion. “We had followed them since their early remixes as The Dust Brothers and they were absolutely an influence on us,” says Monier. “We played their music out a lot as DJs. In fact, it was upon hearing they were visiting Radio FG - the key local station in Paris at the time - that George decided to go and meet them to hand over our first 12", The Jazz.”

The Micronauts remixed The Chemical Brothers’ Block Rockin’ Beats - a British number one single, no less - in 1997, with fiery, acidic and speaker-troubling results and the Brothers included both this remix and The Jazz on their 1998 mix album Brothers Gonna Work It Out.

The Brothers also helped to introduce The Micronauts to Virgin, where they would eventually sign. “I believe it was through them that The Jag landed on the desk of Steve Brown, the A&R who signed us to Virgin,” says Monier. “Steve handled both the Science and Freestyle Dust sub-labels. It was a long time ago, but I think we were given the choice between the two and opted for Science, as it was a more traditional label with other artists already signed - Stacey Pullen, Photek and Source Direct - whereas Freestyle Dust seemed intimately and exclusively tied to the Chemical Brothers.”

The Jag, when finally released, proved The Micronauts’ masterpiece, eleven minutes of scorching, elegant house that sits perfectly toned between French Touch soul, LFO squelch, electro glide and rough Chicago beats.

Monier has often spoken in interviews of the influence of Chicago acid house and in particular the work of DJ Pierre and Phuture. In a 2019 interview with Gonzai, for example, he called Chicago acid “the perfect blend of groove from Black American music, abstract sounds from contemporary music and the raw energy of rock 'n' roll that blows everything away”.

“It's mind-blowing!” he added, of discovering the music in 1988. “It's the music I've been waiting for my whole life, the music that brings everything together. This is where it all begins.”

This is perhaps to be expected of a French musician making house at the time. Chicago was massive in Paris, with Daft Punk’s Homework bearing the very obvious example of its influence. But Bleep music - the weird, Northern English take on techno that sprung up in Yorkshire at the end of the 1980s, made of blips, bleeps, acidic tones, huge synthesiser sweeps and surges of sub bass - was not such a typical influence on Parisian producers. 

By the mid 90s Bleep had kind of played itself out. Nightmares on Wax was making hip hop, LFO were working away on the peripheries of dance music and Warp Record, the spiritual home of Bleep, was better known for its electronic listening music and Aphex Twin. No one was really talking about Bleep when The Micronauts came along. And yet Monier tells me it was fundamental to him.

“Bleep was actually the first incarnation of the UK leg of bass music (becoming breakbeat, then jungle, then… You know the score), which, I believe, allowed the UK to overtake the US as the creative driver of the musical world 15 years ago and has pretty much replaced house and techno as the dominant force in the underground post-Covid,” he explains.

The Jag sounded fantastic, then. It included the perfect 303 burble, alien, menacing and more than a bit ridiculous, the sound perennially shifting because it had to, rather than the bored flick of some under-worked studio hand; it had the clipped majesty of Prince-style 80s synth riffs (very early Daft Punk); a plunging bass line; drums that have decided you will wait for them; and gleaming orchestral stabs, taken from Inner Life featuring Jocelyn Brown’s much-sampled (and yet still ever-fresh) Make It Last Forever.

And then there’s the vocal, sampled from Joyce Sims’ Natural Woman, a beautiful melody about feeling alive that The Micronauts slow down and mess up, subtly, making it feel celebratory but also ever so slightly sick and paranoid, especially when coming up against the track’s metallic burble (something LFO were also brilliant at doing).

It is this battle of contrasts that really makes The Jag. We have acid versus disco; elation versus danger; the thrilling mixture of melancholy, ecstasy, wrongdoing and a groove that seems to keep growing even when it can’t possibly get any higher. They key moment comes four minutes in, when The Micronauts take Sims’ voice and run it up the octave, an impossible, spine-tingling excitement building all the time. 

The Jag contains everything I have ever loved about dance music, a bugged-out studio jam that is both perfectly constructed and also beautifully live. In the second half, the song takes a turn for the dark and bassier and you can just picture The Micronauts in their studio jamming away with glee, deranged smiles on their face as every tweak makes this outstanding song even better, throwing the sound farther off into the psychedelic ether.

(Or, as Vart puts it on Discogs, “The track’s ability to keep the dance floor engaged for so long is down to the fact that it sounds more like an improvised live PA than a standard club record.” Amen to that.)

The Jag was originally planned as the first single on what would be a borderline conventional major-label album release. But this never happened, for slightly murky reasons. “That was the idea,” Monier explains, “but precisely because of our slow working method, it was not achievable within a reasonable timeframe without including our previous singles. 

“As far as my somewhat hazy memories go, it wasn't entirely possible or desired by everyone involved. On top of that, there was a sample clearance issue on a new track, where one rights holder was demanding 50% and the other 60%.”

When the group’s debut album Bleep to Bleep did come out, in 2000, The Jag wasn’t on there. Nor was it really an album, in the classical sense of the word, more a 44-minute live acid jam that was broken up into nine tracks because that’s what albums do. It was like if Daft Punk had skipped Homework and gone straight to Alive 1997, a fantastically audacious move but not, you imagine, what Virgin was holding out for. 

My first experience of the album was the single Baby Wants To Rock on a free CD given out with France’s venerable Les Inrockuptibles magazine in early 2000. With its soulful vocal sample and pounding techno beat the song was, when detached from the album, about the only thing that could have been a single. 

And yet it was still weird as hell, the vocal twisted and tumbled like disco in the washing machine, the acid lead serrated and unwelcoming, topped off with an array of noises that sounded like R2D2 having a nervous breakdown, the whole song only building in obnoxiousness as it careered towards the end of its three-minute nervous attack. It was also brilliant, of course.

Bleep to Bleep - named in honour of Yorkshire Bleep, Gino Soccio and Underground resistance - was one of the most experimental and downright vicious electronic music albums ever to grace a major label. It sounded paranoid and unhinged, a record where precisely no effort had been taken to make something palatable or in any way nice. 

Baby Wants To Bleep (K) - the eight-minute penultimate track - is acid house at its most viscously unbalanced. The hi hats sound like they’re physically slipping off the record; everything lurches upwards in a particularly stomach churning fashion 30 seconds in, like acid house on a poorly-calibrated waltzer, and there’s a breakdown about three minutes in where the record sounds like it literally breaks down, spilling digital detritus across the sonic spectrum like a fire at an MP3 factory.  Perhaps the closest comparison I can make is Pepe Bradock’s charmingly wonky Acid Test 07, although Bradock’s works sounds positively restrained in comparison.

Elsewhere we have Baby Wants To Bleep Pt. 2, a frankly terrifying piece of Bleep techno that sounds like Carole Anne in The Poltergeist making acid from her terrifying supernatural dimension; Bleeper_0+2, aka seven minutes of primordial ooze and dinosaur screech; and Bleeper, which closes the record with 11 minutes of unsettling rush, scratchy distortion, brutal bass riffs and disco in an acid bath.

Monier says he sees Bleep to Bleep as “a single containing two tracks from the future album”. These are the Baby Wants To Bleep / Rock suite, which is split into four separate songs on the album, occupying side A of the double vinyl (although intended as a single piece), and Bleeper, which occupies side D. “It was only called a mini-album because of its length, not because of its commercial or contractual role,” he adds

Sides B and C of the record - B contains Bleeper_0+2, Baby Wants To Bleep (Pt. 4) and Bleep to Bleep, while C is taken up by Baby Wants To Bleep [k] - are, Monier says “more experimental variations of the first track (the suite), and could potentially serve as DJ tools for the more adventurous”. 

“Bleeper, on the other hand, shares far fewer elements,” he adds. “It heads in a direction we had decided early on not to take for the A-side, which we eventually explored after finishing the main track by assembling unused improvisations. Musically, it is quite distinct.”

Bleep to Bleep is fascinating, innovative and audacious, a record that showed there was still life in the acid beast, when most people had given up the ghost; it was the missing link between Chicago, Yorkshire and Paris, that nobody knew we needed but soon became essential.

Homework, however, it was not and Bleep to Bleep sold badly.  As Monier told Le Fly Case, years later: “The reviews were enthusiastic and the buzz enormous, but the records weren't selling. Virgin was also the label of the Spice Girls, a huge global hit at the time. They knew how to sell crates of records to supermarkets. Less so when the music was niche or too specialised, because they didn't have the right connections.”

The Micronauts hadn’t come cheap either, their contract inked as labels competed against each other in an attempt to sign the next Daft Punk and cash in on the modish French Touch. “Our records had cost them money - upfront, promotional expenses, and music videos - and the pressure from management on our A&R manager was intense, even if he didn't show it,” Monier told Le Fly Case. 

“The relationships between Virgin, our lawyer-manager and within the group were deteriorating. Finally, George left the group sometime in 2000, and Virgin terminated the contract.”

You get a feeling that this was something of a relief for Monier, who had been burning the candle at both ends, thanks to the simultaneous success of The Micronauts, Impulsion and his own solo project as Nature. 

“The pace became incredibly intense and so did the pressure,” he told Le Fly Case. “I became a father in 1998. Can you imagine? I was living in a two-room apartment, a tiny 30-square-metre flat. In one room were my daughter, my girlfriend and me. In the other: the studio with the equipment.

“Every weekend I was touring live or DJing as Micronauts. During the week, I was doing gigs with Impulsion. And then one day… I had a burnout.”

Monier tells me that Issakidis was “greatly demotivated” by the various objects the group faced, as well as the relative commercial failure of The Jag. “The atmosphere suffered as a result and he left the project not long afterward,” he explains. “As for me, the second half of the 90s had simply been too much, since I also had my Impulsion project signed to Sony and my solo project Nature on Distance - and I suffered from burnout.”

That might have been that for The Micronauts and it would have been more than enough: one gloriously unhinged album; one of the best dance music songs ever made; remixes for the Chemical Brothers and Underworld and the duo’s heads held high.

But Monier kept on, creating the Micronautics label in 2004 and putting out a second Micronauts album, the excellent Damaging Consent, in 2007. Their third, Head Control Body Control - another great record - followed in 2018.

And now, as he tells me, more music is on the way. “Your email … arrived just as I emerged from my studio after two and a half years locked in and obsessively focused, working on new material with a no-compromise approach and without regard for economic viability, in reaction to the dictates of tech hyper-capitalism,” he explains in an email.

He also promises to released what he called “a worthy successor” to The Jag, adding with charming humility that, “reclaiming the spark of his youth is a typical ambition of any ageing musician - one usually met with failure - but the harder the challenge, the more motivating it is.”

Amen to that, Christophe Monier, and long live The Micronauts, one of the most weirdly captivating square pegs ever to grace the dance music scene, an explosion of ideas, unusual thinking and epic ambition that bridged borders and breathed life back into acid music. Here’s to many more years bleeping on.

Some listening

Lucrecia Dalt - caes (feat. Camille Mandoki) (Nick León dub)

The original caes, one of many highlights on Lucrecia Dalt’s seventh studio album A Danger to Ourselves, is a gothic-y number that explores the vertiginous idea that “that the sublime can be reached through surrendering to the act of falling”.

On his remix Nick León nudges the tempo upwards, from walk to stroll, a dembow-indebted rhythm and earthy bass surges suggesting that a dance might be possible if you listen in carefully and the vibes are correct, without surrendering any of the original song’s weird majesty. A real cold January day of a song.

Bruce - Dham’s Jam (Untold remix)

For anyone with even a passing interest in UK bass / dubstep-not-dubstep / well you know what I mean, the name Untold is legendary, productions like Anaconda and Stereo Freeze bringing a wild unpredictability to the fertile post-dubstep scene. He’s been quiet of late, though, with his last release being the joint Lip Locked single with kindred spirit Parris. 

Bruce is another producer cut from the same cloth, blasting the foundations of British dance music into strange and often beautiful new shapes. So the hook up on Dham’s Jam, taken from Bruce’s forthcoming four more then four mini LP, is a eureka moment of a track, as Untold stretches Bruce’s already weird and brooding track into nine minutes of dubbed-out and slightly rotted industrial ambience, the bass line throbbing away like the beginnings of a nervous headache, before spiralling synths bring heavenly relief.

Jill Scott - Beautiful People

Jill Scott’s return to the fray in 2026 with To Whom This May Concern, her sixth studio album and first in a decade, could be the comeback of the year, with the sumptuous Beautiful People among the best songs of her career. Does anyone do luxurious melancholy as well as Jill Scott? I don’t think so, with Beautiful People as mixed up, joyous and sad as life itself. 

And, if I would love someone to remix the song, it’s not because it needs it; it’s rather that, from MJ Cole to Theo Parrish, Jill Scott remixes are always among the very best in the game. And Beautiful People feels ripe for reinvention.

Dry Cleaning - Joy

Are Dry Cleaning the best band in Britain right now? I certainly don’t see anyone else who matches them for ingenuity, emotion and surreal joy and their new album, Secret Love, is their finest to date.

The key, I think, lies in the confidence of knowing that any song with Florence Shaw’s surreal-y arch vocals will sound like Dry Cleaning and the band are therefore free to combine Tom Dowse’s abstruse guitar heroics - from heavy metal heft to Johnny Marr jangle - with Lewis Maynard’s toughly melodic bass lines and Nick Buxton’s percussive flair, in a way that sounds quite unlike any other band. And this, in turn, empowers Shaw to go ever further into her enigmatic vocal styles.

Secret Love sees the band veer from the languid, melancholic funk of Hit My Head All Day to the gorgeous acoustic ramble of Let Me Grow and You’ll See The Fruit; from the gnarled intensity of Evil Evil Idiot to the bad jazz of I Need You, without breaking sweat.

And best of all is Joy, which closes the album. Joy is like The Smiths, if Morrissey had pure intentions in his heart and a charmingly surreal imagination; it’s like The Sundays for the terminally confused: a mixture of jangling guitar, rattling percussion and a chorus of divinely casual brilliance. I remember being blown away when they played this song live in Barcelona in October and, if anything, my love for it has only grown. Joy, indeed.

Stranded - Wrangler

Atlanta’s Stranded loves The Happy Mondays’ Yes Please! and Massive Attack’s 100th Window, which makes him a musical soul mate to my deranged musings. 

Wrangler, from his new The Dead EP, calls back to PIL and Liquid Liquid in its canny interplay between groove and dub. But it’s also, for me, not a million miles away from the kind of metallically loose grooves that Massive Attach inhabited on Mezzanine, albeit with the dance-floor on the mind more than the chill out room. Wrangler is, on the face of it, a very simple song, the circular bass and four four drums driving momentum ever forward; but over this Stranded adds an ever-shifting array of effects, twitches and serpentine guitar lines to tease the errant brain.

Things I’ve done

RANKING all MASSIVE ATTACK albums | Tier List | RPS MUSIC 

… in which Johann and I rank the eight Massive Attack albums from Bristol Cream to ‘I mean, I wouldn’t start there’. We had fun doing it. And I’m not promising anything but you may enjoy watching it.

Modeselektor | Line Noise by Radio Primavera Sound

Also on a video “tip”, my interview with Modeselektor is now on YouTube is beautiful, sparkling form!

The playlists

It’s 2026 and that means A NEW PLAYLIST, cataloguing the best new music of this year: you can follow that on Apple Music here: The newest and bestest 2026.

And on Spotify here: the newest and bestest 2026.

The old classics remain in place, too: 

Apple Music: The newest and the bestest

Spotify:  The newest and the bestest.

Paid subscribers get bonus podcasts, you know.