Exit Planet Dust by The Chemical Brothers

Exit Planet Dust, the debut album from the Chemical Brothers, hit British shops on 26 June 1995 through Junior Boy's Own, Freestyle Dust and Virgin, with Astralwerks bringing it to America that August. The title is a goodbye note: Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons had started out as the Dust Brothers and swapped names to stop being mixed up with an American production team of the same name. They cut the record between August and November 1994, and "Song to the Siren" was played live rather than pieced together.

What you get is breakbeat electronica with the swagger of a rock band, drums that hit like a wrecking ball and noise swirling around them, the sound that would help drag big beat into the pop mainstream. Critics loved it, it sold over a million copies, and it hung around the UK charts every year from 1995 to 2000. Dig Your Own Hole came next.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.