The Grid

Long-running British duo the Grid have made giddy floor-fillers as well as reflective ambient pieces, with some of their most well-known tracks featuring innovative uses of acoustic instruments in an electronic dance music context. Formed by Dave Ball (of Soft Cell) and Richard Norris when both musicians were active as members of Psychic TV in the late 1980s, the pair mixed sample-based acid house with synth pop and ambient house on their 1990 debut album, Electric Head. Moving in more of a progressive house direction, the Grid scored a massive hit with "Swamp Thing" (from 1994's Evolver), a rollicking banjo-driven track that anticipated Avicii's EDM/folk fusions two decades later. The duo kept busy with additional projects, but occasionally reconvened, continuing their high-energy dance sound with 2008's Doppelgänger, then returning to ambient explorations with 2018's One Way Traffic and 2021's Leviathan, a collaboration with Robert Fripp.